We all know that privacy has become a myth in recent times. A decade ago, we had a lot of privacy while using our devices but as time progressed, more and more people started using social media so companies had a lot of traffic and needed a better way to make more money to keep themselves profitable so they introduced trackers.
Meta is one of the big players in the social media market. They hold the keys to the most used social media platforms but they're manipulative too.
What are trackers?
They introduced trackers, a new way to spy on people, harvest their data , and use that data to promote personalised ads. These trackers are very intrusive and follow you almost everywhere. One of the big player in this tracker market is Meta. There are other big players like Google and Microsoft but they aren't as predatory as Meta.
These trackers follow you almost everywhere on the internet. They know which websites you're visiting , how many times you visited the website and other important information thats useful for companies. It's very hard to escape these trackers.
These trackers are present almost everywhere. Nearly every website you visit sends trackers after you but you won't even know it.
What do they do with the information?
Meta's whole business model revolves around data. They harvest the data from their users and even non users and use that data to send people relevant ads. They know everything about you. Your likes, your dislikes, your favourites, everything. Sometimes they even know more about you than you do about yourself.
There are even rumors that Meta creates shadow profiles of non users. They collect and store all the information related to that person and create a shadow profile that can be used if this specific user joins the social network at a later time to serve them relevant ads.
If you've deleted your facebook account and made a new one without giving any information like phone number and a brand new email, it would still show you your old account's friends in the "you may know" section. They automatically know that it's your account.
Why should I care?
Most of the people in the modern world use the internet but are quite unaware of the dangers of it. They unknowingly follow a lot of unsafe acts and not caring about your privacy on the internet is one of them. To these companies, you're not a user, you're the product, you're their money making machine, not the platform. Your data is their money. They're making a profit off you but most of the people don't realise it.
These companies not only harvest your data but can also change your opinion about something. You'll be heavily influenced by the targeted content. Creating unnecessary hate, debates and chaos. There were a few lawsuits about this in the past.
It's also a bad practice to let these companies harvest your data because if this data goes into the wrong hands, then it'll make you more vulnerable to targeted scams.
How to protect yourself from Meta or trackers in general?
Protecting yourself from these trackers is quite simple. You just have to make a few changes to your browsing habits. It's not possible to completely get rid of these trackers but you can limit the data collection to an extent.
The only way to get the most out of these practices is to avoid giving too much information about yourself to these platforms. Don't use a profile picture, don't use a bio etc. While this may make it harder for your friends to find your profile, its a sacrifice that you have to make if you want your privacy
On PC or Mac:
If you mostly browse the internet on your laptop or desktop, you can start by switching your browser to Firefox or Brave. Brave works out of the box and blocks most of the trackers and ads by default so it's a good way to get started if you're not that tech savvy. Do not use Google Chrome because its not only a RAM hog but it also collects a lot of data from you.
Another option is Firefox and I recommend this. Firefox doesn't collect a lot of data when compared to other browsers and is lighter when compared to other Chromium based browsers. It doesn't work out of the box so you have to install add-ons like UBlock Origin. uBlockOrigin is the best one out there and I highly recommend it. It's very efficient and blocks most of the trackers and ads. You don't even need Spotify Premium or Youtube Premium if you use uBlock Origin.
Doing these will limit the trackers and the data collection. However, they'll still collect the data that you're manually providing.
On Android:
There aren't really good ways to protect yourself online on Android.
Firefox on Android isn't that good so your best option is Brave.
If you use native social media apps on your android phone, you can set up a sandbox/work profile using an app called Island. With Island, you'll be able to separate your data and the social media apps in the work profile won't be able to access your data on your phone.
On iOS:
The latest iOS versions come with an option to disable tracking by default so you can use that option.
My thoughts
It's okay to share your data with the app or the company if you trust them. I trust Google so I don't have a problem with sharing my essential data with them but some players like Meta take advantage of this and try to profit off it so the only way to make these companies lose money is to not give your data.
Unfortunately, privacy on the internet is becoming difficult day by day. Nowadays operating systems come with a lot of tracking and telemetry so it's pretty much impossible to escape that kind of tracking.
There are alternatives to escape from these OS based trackers like Linux or Custom Android ROMS but your workflow might be severely affected because of the switching.