How to keep your privacy online and stop Facebook and Google stalking you

Google and Facebook have voracious appetites for personal data, but there are things you can do to stop them stalking you.

Protesters with the group "Raging Grannies" hold signs during a demonstration outside of Facebook headquarters in April. Picture: AFP

Facebook and Google have never been good at letting you protect your privacy, given their business models are powered by your data.

Both services are great at effectively tracking you wherever you go online — even once you’ve left their websites — serving you ads and keeping you under their watch.

In a real world first, the ACCC report this week made clear that the tech giants have gone too far, with the regulator recommending changes to the Privacy Act to give consumers greater control over their own privacy, and more transparency about what data is collected.

The ACCC also recommended forcing the tech giants to change their settings that enable data collection to be preselected to “off’, meaning by default Facebook and Google would no longer be hoovering every minute detail of your life without your explicit consent.

These proposed changes will not happen until at least next year, but until then there a number of sensible steps you can make to better manage your privacy online.

Install a VPN

The first step is to install a virtual private network, or VPN. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between you and whoever is operating the VPN, and all of your internet traffic goes through that tunnel. It means that your data is secure from prying eyes, and masks your identity and location. There are many popular VPN options, no matter if you’re on a Windows PC, a Mac or a smartphone/tablet. My personal favourite is VPN.ac, and popular options include NordVPN and ExpressVPN. They generally cost around $5 per month, and are well worth it, even if you think you don’t have anything worth hiding.

As soon as you install a VPN, everything you do online becomes anonymous, as long as you are not logged in to those services. For example, every Google search you do is no longer traced back to you, but is instead anonymous thanks to the VPN.

Change privacy settings

The next step is to change your Facebook and Google settings for maximum privacy. This is likely to become far simpler if the ACCC has its way, but for now here are a few things you can do.

Facebook: The most pressing thing is to block third party apps and websites from using your data. To do this, click the drop-down menu in the top right hand corner of the Facebook app or website, and click settings. On the left, select apps and websites. You can then see active, expired and removed apps. From there you can control which companies can have access to your data — and which can’t.

The next step is to block advertisers from using your data. To do this, go to settings via the dropdown icon in the top right. Select ‘ads’, and open the ‘your information’ tab. There’s then an ‘ad settings’ tab, which you can use to either allow or block advertisers from having your personal information. While you’re still in settings, check the ‘location’ tab. You can then delete all the location information Facebook has on you.

Google: It’s a bit easier to control your privacy settings with Google, given everything is largely in one place — your “My Account” page.

Your first step however is to visit privacy.google.com, which sets out exactly what Google is collecting, and what it does with it. As it turns out, Google knows where you’ve been, what you’ve searched, and what you’ve watched on YouTube … And that’s just the start.

From there go to ‘My Account’, which will allow you to do a “privacy check-up” and a “security check-up”. Any items marked with a yellow warning exclamation mark should be investigated. A device you haven’t used in a long time could be one source of these warnings.

Make sure you activate two-step verification, meaning someone can’t just log in to your account with your password — they need your smartphone as well.

Also check which sites have access to your password, and delete any you don’t recognise.

The key thing here for most Google users is the “personalise your Google experience” tab, which is all the stuff that Google learns about you and uses to better tailor its products to you. There is a tick next to all the items that are collecting data — and you can see under “manage activity” exactly what Google has on you.

You can also click ‘manage your ad settings’ to see the list of topics that Google thinks you like — and you can delete all of those. You can also visit Google’s ‘AdChoices’ tab to opt out of personalised Google ads on any non-Google sites.

Install an adblocker

The final tips are to install an adblocker, in order to keep at least some pesky personalised ads at bay, and to browse in Incognito mode wherever possible. The internet can be a scary place, which is why it’s important to be as informed as possible about what the tech giants know — or are at least guessing — about us.