5 Tips to Make You More Digital Literal (hopefully)

I work in digital marketing, which means I get paid based off of user data online. But just like everyone else, I am concerned about how my personal data is being used online. Here are 5 tips/thoughts for you to protect yourself, or to keep in mind when you are online:

1. Nothing comes for free. You always have to pay.

This is a notion I find so many people do not acknowledge. When you use an online service, you have to pay. If it’s not money, most of the time it is your data. As a publisher, you have to find a way to monetize your business. The business model, if not asking members to subscribe for a certain amount, would be leveraging user base and data and selling those to advertisers. In short, you either pay money or you see ads. 

2. Your personal data is safe with me.*

From my experience, when I select what kind of people I want to target to serve my clients’ ads I have less than 0% chance of knowing their personal information. The platforms I use to manage online ads would already have categorized the data  for me to choose from. Age, gender, location, interests, user behavior, so on and so forth. I analyze my clients’ brand and product to develop a persona. We use that persona and options available on the platform to complete audience targeting. 

3. Do I really want to give away my name and email for free Wi-Fi?

Just a question I ask myself every time when my data isn’t working. The risk of sharing your name and email to a service provider you don’t know about is, you don’t know what they’re going to do with your data. They might work with another vendor who wants to sell things to people who visit certain places. Or you shared your name and email in another place before here, now if the two providers are connected they know where you are spending your afternoon. Risky not risky?

4. Who is the author of this content I am digesting?

When we were in school teachers censored contents we should digest. But when we are out there, we are responsible for censoring contents ourselves (or for your students). You should not believe every piece of content without some sort of justification. The author of this post belongs to which media? For this media, what kind of position/bias do they have (if there is?) Does the author provide any references/sources to support his point? When was this article first published? Indeed, information is so easy to access and comes in large amounts. In my opinion, viewers should also share a level of responsibility to censor contents to protect ourselves and be smarter.

5. Think before you post.

Whatever you post online will leave a trace. Yes you can delete the post, or your post could be taken down for inappropriate content, or your content is appropriate but you live in a place without freedom of speech. But after it’s submitted, it leaves a record that you have posted. Even if you post something anonymously, or you choose to only share with friends you know, there is no way for you to control how your post will be shared 100%. People can take a screenshot of your post and spared wherever they want. Photos you take can be used for random boring evil people for purposes you do not like. Just think about it before you post.

*I know there have been cases where companies sell their data to a third party without users’ consent. So I guess your data is not completely safe. At least not yet. But this is why I am sharing this article so we can all be more careful (or carefree) when we are online!