Remember the old days? When you used to visit any website, you had to enter your login details again and again.
Remember the old days? When you used to visit any website, you had to enter your login details again and again. Like, you login once, close the site, come back after some time, and again you have to enter username and password. Every time you visited, the website treated you like a completely new person. The website had no memory at all. It couldn't recognize whether you were an old visitor or coming for the first time.
Then came a guy named Montulli with something called "cookies." Today, when you visit any website, it immediately shows a popup asking "Accept Cookies." When you click accept, the website saves your details in your browser. These cookies basically work like the website's memory.
Same thing happens with shopping websites. If you enter your debit card or credit card details while shopping, the website remembers that too. Then there are these things called third-party cookies where different websites talk to each other. You must have noticed sometimes—you visit a website and see a Facebook like button there. When you click it, it reflects on your Facebook profile. That's third-party cookies working behind the scenes.
The Data Business
All these websites are connected with each other and they keep sharing your information. Whatever details you enter on different websites while browsing here and there, they track everything. The website which gets more visitors gets more attention, more data, and ultimately more money. That's why websites try different tricks to bring you to their platform and make you a user—so they can collect maximum details about you.
More users means more data, and more data means more money. Once users come to the website, these sites don't directly approach advertisers. Instead, there are middlemen like Google AdSense, Facebook Audience Network, Microsoft Advertising, or Amazon Advertising. These guys act as brokers between the website and advertisers. Their job is to show relevant ads to website visitors, and they do all this using third-party cookies.
For instance, if you visit Times of India and see an ad on the side, then later if you continuously search for shoes on some shopping site, next time when you come back to Times of India, you might see shoe-related ads. This is how third-party cookies connect all these websites together.
Now you might think, "So what? They are just showing ads. We won't buy from them. We'll go outside and purchase." But understand this with an example. Suppose you and your parents decide at home that you need to buy shoes for school. But before you even step out of your house, the entire market knows that three of you are coming to buy shoes. And whichever shopkeeper pays more money to these middlemen for showing ads, only his shoes will be displayed to you.
That's why today, people's data is considered more valuable than oil in the Middle East. In 2017, The Economist published a report where they said data is more valuable than oil.
The Dark Side: Data Theft
Because this data is so valuable, hackers keep attacking different websites to steal data for identity fraud. Suppose you created a profile on Ola, Uber, or similar apps. Hackers can attack their servers and steal your data. After stealing, they either sell this data or use it for identity fraud.
Like in 2021, hackers stole data of 4.5 million Air India customers. People had been maintaining their accounts there for years, and hackers just came and took everything. Similarly, in 2020, BigBasket's 20 million customers' data was stolen and sold on the dark web. There's a high possibility that your email ID or card details have also been compromised in such attacks. You can check this on a website called "Have I Been Pwned"—just enter your email ID there to see if it's compromised or not.
How Much They Know About You
This is not a small thing. With the data being collected, companies can control your behavior and predict your next actions. And this technology is improving day by day. Using this data, they can find out who you are dating, what job offers you have, what insurance you hold, who can pay for what, who cannot, which advertisement you will click, which political party you support, what are your religious opinions, and whom you might vote for.
Let me explain with a real example. There was a girl named Judith in Paris. After her breakup, she started using Tinder. She was not satisfied with her profile rating on the app, so she continuously emailed Tinder for 6 months requesting her data. In Europe, data protection laws are strict, so users can ask for their data like this. After continuous follow-up, Tinder sent her 800 pages of data. Just from using Tinder for a few days, they had collected 800 pages!
Judith was shocked because Tinder knew more about her than she knew about herself. The data revealed that Tinder knew how many times she felt lonely in a week, what type of boys she liked, at what times she got attracted to boys, which boys she messaged, that she spent New Year alone, her music taste, her location preferences—every single detail was with them.
Now just imagine, if you get so many details about someone, how easy it becomes to manipulate them. Whether it's changing their political opinion or making them click on some advertisement—everything becomes easy.
Are They Listening to Us?
There have been multiple inquiries on social media companies regarding whether they listen to your phone conversations through your device when you talk to friends. Though this hasn't been proven, actually what was happening with people was that whatever they talked about with friends on phone, next day or after one-two days, they started seeing ads for those exact products.
Although this couldn't be proven, social media companies have definitely made this data game very strong. So next time when you casually accept cookies on some website or enter your details somewhere, remember—your data is worth more than oil, and everyone wants a piece of it.