Most people think online privacy is about hiding things. It’s not. It’s about protecting yourself, your family, and your future.
Every time your family uses the internet, whether kids are watching videos, parents are shopping online, someone is using social media, or you’re helping with homework, small pieces of information are created along the way.
These pieces of information are often collected and stored by websites and their partners to help measure traffic, personalize services, and show advertising. Most of this happens behind the scenes.
What’s Really Happening Behind the Scenes
Many sites also load small pieces of code called tracking scripts and cookies. These help websites understand how their services are being used.
They may record things like:
- What pages were visited
- How long someone stayed on a page
- Which links were clicked
- Approximate location
- The type of device being used
This information is frequently shared with advertising networks and analytics providers.
Research from the Electronic Frontier Foundation has shown that many popular websites connect to numerous third-party services that collect usage data across different sites.
Individually, each piece of information might seem harmless. But when collected at scale, it becomes powerful.
A 2023 report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) shows that most popular websites share your data with dozens of third parties, often without clear consent, creating vast data ecosystems that track you across the internet
How Data Brokers Make Money Off You
- Collect: They gather information from your web browsing, public records, loyalty cards, mobile apps, and even your location history.
- Combine: They merge that data with other lists to create a detailed profile; your name, age, interests, habits, income, shopping patterns, and more.
- Sell: They sell this profile to advertisers, insurers, political campaigns, and sometimes questionable actors.
Real-World Example: Flight Prices
Many online services adjust what you see based on past activity.
For example, if you search for flights to visit relatives, the travel site records your interest in that route. If you return later, the site may increase the price slightly or highlight “limited availability” to encourage booking, a tactic called dynamic pricing.
Similar systems appear across many online services:
- Online stores may adjust promotions depending on location or shopping patterns.
- Streaming platforms and video sites such as YouTube recommend content (often addictive) based on viewing history to keep users engaged.
- Social media platforms personalize feeds based on past interactions.
These systems are designed to maximize engagement and advertising revenue. The more data they collect, the more precisely they can predict behavior and influence decisions.
That data doesn’t always stay in one place. It is often shared across advertising networks, analytics providers, and partner companies. As profiles spread across these systems, they become harder for individuals to see or control.
This creates several real-world risks:
- When personal data is spread across many companies, it increases the number of places where that information is stored. If one of those companies experiences a data breach, certain details-often email addresses, phone numbers, usernames, or account information-can be exposed and circulated online. These are some of the reasons why you should limit what information you may freely give to a website or company asking for it.
- Scammers frequently use this type of information to make phishing messages, fake customer service calls, or scam websites appear more believable. A message that references a service you actually use, sent to the correct email address or phone number, is far more likely to catch someone off guard.
- Advertising and recommendation systems can also use behavioral data to tailor promotions, prices, or content suggestions based on past activity, shaping what people see and how they interact online
Understanding this ecosystem doesn’t mean avoiding the internet. It means recognizing how data moves online and taking reasonable steps to limit unnecessary exposure.
Why Families Should Care
Adults aren’t the only ones creating digital footprints, kids and teens do as well.
Apps and online platforms collect information about how their services are used. In some cases, companies may also build what are known as shadow profiles-profiles created from indirect data such as uploaded contact lists, tagged photos, shared posts, or interactions with other users.
This practice has been widely reported on large social platforms like Meta (Facebook).
Children and teens often use apps without realizing how much information they’re sharing. Helping them build healthy digital habits early can significantly reduce long-term exposure and risks and teach them that their personal information has VALUE and should be handled thoughtfully.
How Proton Helps You Take Control
Note that these links are affiliate links and that we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you should you choose to purchase one of them through our page
- Proton VPN: Encrypts your internet traffic and hides your IP address, making it much harder for trackers and data brokers to connect your activity to you.
- Proton Mail: Keeps your emails private with end-to-end encryption; no scanning, no ads, no selling your data.
- Hide My Email (through Proton Pass): Lets you use different, disposable email addresses that forward to your real email address so websites can’t easily link all your activities together.
- Proton Pass: Helps you create and store strong, unique passwords for every account so one compromised site can’t expose all your logins. By using different passwords everywhere, a single breach is far less likely to affect the rest of your accounts
With Proton, you can browse, shop, and communicate without being turned into a product for someone else’s profit.