EVEN as a technology journalist, it is hard not to switch off when someone starts preaching about personal data. I know, I know – we are telling our deepest secrets to mega-corporations for free, and they are using our innermost desires to sell us ads. But for most of us, much of the time, it’s out of sight, out of mind.
Yet it shouldn’t be – we should at least be on the ball when it comes to who we give our data to. So to force myself to confront this head-on, I have spent the last week doing a digital cleanse.
To help, I grabbed a data detox kit produced by the Tactical Technology Collective in Berlin and the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit that promotes an open and free internet. The kit has been launched on the back of a London exhibition called The Glass Room that runs until 12 November.
Advertisement
The Glass Room looks like an Apple store, but is filled with exhibits designed to make abstract concerns about data more tangible. One tracks my level of attention while I browse Facebook. Over 2 minutes, I give “1060 units of attention” and “50 units of scrolling”. I am told that on the minimum wage I could have earned £0.25 with the same effort. The average person spends nearly an hour on Facebook apps a day.
The data detox kit is meant to help you kick some of your worst phone habits. It consists of an instruction card for each of the eight days of the detox – and because it is made of paper, I can rest assured that it won’t directly collect any of my personal data (you can also ).
“The data detox is about working out what is right for you,” says Jascha Kaykas-Wolff at Mozilla. “We need to choose what we share and what we don’t.”
Day 1 of the data detox: Escape the Google funhouse mirror
The kit starts by asking me to identify the problem. Search for yourself online, it demands – not just with Google, but also a search engine such as DuckDuckGo that doesn’t use your data trail to tailor results to you. Why not switch to this permanently? And if you find any pictures of yourself, try a “reverse image” search using TinEye () to see where else that image turns up.
Luckily for me, I am as antisocial on social media as I am in real life, so there aren’t that many pictures of me online. But if you do find something you are unhappy with, the kit has instructions on how to do something about it.
Days 2 and 3: Who am I?
I am tasked with finding out what Google and Facebook think they know about me. Using , I find out that Google is tracking where I am going, what I watch on YouTube and what I have searched for, pumping it all back into operation data slurp. And because I have a phone that uses Google’s operating system, Android, the company is also monitoring which apps I am using. I turn all the tracking off and perform a to make sure everything is in order.
Using a neat tool called , I then find out what Facebook, um, thinks I like. The social media platform thinks I am into Science and 91av, which is fair enough. But it also thinks I am keen on Beer, Alcoholic Drinks, Beverages and Jägerbombs. I did do a lot of Facebooking in my student days, but come on Zuckerberg, everyone knows Jägerbombs are so 2008.
Surprisingly, there are also a lot of gambling-related categories, too. I don’t gamble and am not interested in it either, so I find it odd that Facebook thinks I am a fan. I go through every page I have liked on Facebook and unlike it.
Day 4: Watching my shrinking data footprint
One of the slyer tactics harnessed by companies is using trackers. These sit all over the web and try to work out your surfing patterns by tracking your browser’s digital footprint. The kit proposes installing a browser extension such as Privacy Badger, which blocks trackers. Another helpful tool called AdNauseam clicks on random ads as you browse to confuse firms that monitor you.
Days 5 to 7: Changing my data metabolism
Spurred on by a trip to The Glass Room, I am pleased to find that little fixes aplenty come in the next few days. How many apps do you have? I guessed 50, but I actually had 93. According to the kit, I have high exposure. So I delete some apps and revoke some permissions.
Day 8: Cleansed
After a week, I feel purged. We give away data all the time and there isn’t much we can do about that, but this stage is about getting into some good habits. I am still giving the megacorps some data about me and it is handy to have some things sync across devices. But that is now my choice
This article appeared in print under the headline “My week-long digital data detox”