How much time do you spend connected to the internet? If you're a message junkie, YouTube addict, or use the web for business, you are leaving tracks that can be followed. We all have what has been dubbed a 'digital footprint' with some being larger than others.
The question being asked today is how is this footprint affecting our privacy? And when we want to remove content, why is this so difficult, as many celebrities have discovered over the last few years?
In 1995 the EU introduced privacy legislation that defined 'personal data' as any information that could identify a person, directly or indirectly. Since then the use of digital devices, and the data they allow us all to use, has increased the complexity of that definition.
And the amounts of data are huge. IDC states that the amount of data created in 2011 had reached 1.8 zettabytes or 1.8 trillion gigabytes (which is enough data to fill 57.5 billion 32GB Apple iPads). By 2020 this is expected to reach a server-straining 44 zettabytes.
What is worrying is that all this data isn't anonymous. The opposite is true, as each piece of data within your digital footprint can be analysed to understand who you are, what you like and, of course, what you might want to buy in the future. And the future will become even more data-rich, as wearable technologies become commonplace – each collecting data about your health and buying habits.
As the Internet Society points out: "If a service provider holds account information for you, such as your email address, payment details, purchase history or other personal information, the cookie links everything you do with this information. The concept of linkability is a key one in any analysis of online privacy, because linkability does more than almost anything else to erode users' ability to keep personal data within a single context, and thus to manage their own privacy."
We are now living in the era of big data. With masses of personal information about us all swimming around the internet, big data can pull all this information together to form a surprisingly accurate profile of any given person. The more you use online services the more data is available, and therefore there are more opportunities to make your digital profile more accurate. Ubisoft's recent ad campaign for the game Watch Dogs made for unsettling viewing when users found an uncanny accuracy when the app interrogated their Facebook profiles.
We all sign up for hundreds of newsfeeds and email newsletters, but often only read a fraction of these. Unsubscribe from the ones you don't read will reduce the data available for personal profiling.