This is how I leave my digital footprint

[suchona.kani.z]

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stipulates that data must be deleted when it is no longer needed. In reality, however, this is not taken too seriously, which can lead to personal data being processed long after the end of active use of a service, as the negative example of the birthday reminder at the beginning of this article shows.


So much for the active digital footprint. Things get really exciting when you look at the area of ​​the so-called passive digital footprint, i.e. all the data that has been collected about me by third parties (sometimes without my knowledge).

A practical example: I open a website
Before I can do anything else, a cookie banner jumps into my face and suggests that I should accept everything so that I can finally read the content of the desired website.

Now you could say that I know what is going on in the background venezuela consumer email list because, as a responsible citizen, I have made an informed decision about which data is collected about me when I visit this website. But let's be honest, how many Internet users make the effort to click on the inconspicuous, somewhat hidden link "only use necessary cookies"? If I don't do that, a lot of my data is processed - including:


how often I visit this page,
where I come from,
what my IP address is,
how long I spend on which content,
which links I click,
who or what I like,
where I surfed next,
and, and, and …

This data is gold for people or companies that run a website. The whole thing happens in the background and leads to profile creation and personalized advertising messages or, in the words of the data processors, to "optimizing your individual service offering for the maximum user experience." Sounds much better. *winky smiley*


So there are a lot of reasons to deal with your digital shadow.

Once data about me, my activities and preferences are public, I no longer have sole control over what happens to this data.