Many applications use your private data as the product to sell. Let’s go through the reasons your personal info is precious and should be protected by you.
After installing an application like Facebook, we give it our personal information to create our account. We think that it is safe and private. But what we didn’t know was that it’s a treasure for that application. That information becomes part of data mapping for the companies to match from various databases to get the best of your info.
But the question that arises is why do they value our data? Why is it so important to them? And if it’s vital, what are the ways we can protect our personal information?
So let’s not wait and discuss the value of protecting your data in today’s article.
What is the value of our personal information to organizations?
All big platforms like social media ones are free to use. Moreover, there are no paid updates to use them. So how do they earn and make a profit? Well, first is through us using their application, and second is with our personal information. That’s right! Let’s see how these platforms are using our information as currencies.
Getting money through adds
Advertisements have been a major route for earnings in any industry. Either it’s billboards or television ads, they have been there all the time. But nowadays, the advertisements have gotten a little personal to the databases full of your information.
When you give an organization your private info, they already get an entrance into your life preferences. These applications or software track down your choices, things you like, places you travel, or something you want to buy. With the help of your search history, they do target advertisements on your account.
This tracking is the main reason why you get related advertisements after doing specific searches. These particular displays help these platforms to earn a fortune, and the tool to make that is your data and search history.
A billion-dollar market
What makes organizations and applications that you use for free worthy? It’s your data. Major platforms like Google and Facebook that you use by creating your account have data of billions of people, which are worth billions of dollars.
They sell your data to the companies and product sellers in an indirect way. In this method, the company gets a targeted audience, and the platform earns a fortune in just a day. With this growing data pool, companies use data privacy software to prevent it from leaking to cybercriminals.
How is our personal information at risk?
The primary threat that can damage our assets through our personal data is hacking. Tons of expert hackers can get into your personal information. They can do so in the form of third-party cookies etc. Nothing can stay hidden from them, from hijacking your account to getting access to your bank details.
Precautions to protect your data
Even though data protection is the sole responsibility of the companies that possess it, there are specific methods that you can use to make your information way stronger and more secure than usual.
- Two-step authentication
Being aware of the clever hackers, you always have to be two steps ahead of them. 2-step authentication is one of those steps. It builds a more robust and unbreakable gate to get through for third parties.
Another way of two-step authentication is your cellphone update. So whenever you open your account on any platform, you will get info on your phone via text. In short, you will get notified whenever someone logs in to your account.
- Think before click
On our daily surfing, we see a ton of advertisements that attract us to click on it. But one should be sure if the given ad is secure or not. Because behind these advertisements, there could be a bunch of jackals trying to breach your info.
So, do not click on every advertisement you see, especially those ads that tell you to click phone cleaning options by saying that it contains viruses. It is essential to know that every unknown ad could become a threat.
- Stronger passwords
Forgetting passwords is a big issue among users. Therefore, they use their or their loved one’s names as the security code to keep things simple. That is what you don’t want to do to keep your account safe. It would help if you kept your password complex and complicated enough that it is hard to crack.
- Update your software
All the applications come up with regular updates. These updates are there to increase the security of your info and guard it with string mechanisms. Hence, make sure that you keep your software updated all the time for better protection of your assets.