Many internet companies use tracking techniques to track your online movements. At first, this was mainly aimed at the websites you visited on your PC, but increasingly also at the smartphone level. In this article we fight back against this. Blocking trackers on Android can be done in the following ways.
Tracking is often done via persistent cookies. Every time you visit a webpage that has only a small part of an ad network, the servers record your visit. In this way, the company gets a good idea of ​​what you visit and they can offer you targeted advertisements.
You may not mind, but know that this information is increasingly being used for data mining. With the help of smart algorithms, based on artificial intelligence, personal profiles are compiled in great detail. Political or sexual preferences are often determined in this way, while someone has never (consciously) released anything about it.
In this article, we focus on tracking techniques within the Android platform and look at how you can guard against it. Most tips and tools are also applicable to iOS.
Tip: In the Course bundle: Security & Privacy privacy on your smartphone is also amply discussed.
Identify trackers in apps
A visit to the website of Exodus is already shocking. This shows that the five most active trackers come from Google. The following five are from Facebook. The top tracker (Google AdMob) appears to be present in more than 50,000 Android apps.
Do you want to check which trackers are in an app and which permissions that app appropriates by default? enter the app name here. For example, the Facebook app contains eight trackers and asks for 56 permissions.
You can also install the Exodus Privacy app, which can be found in the Play Store. The app checks which trackers and permissions your installed apps are using.
You can still adjust the set permissions of apps. To do this, go to Settings, Apps, tap the relevant app and tap Permissions. You can now per authorization To allow or Refuse.
In this place you will also find View all apps with this right. You will then immediately see which installed apps have appropriated the same permission.
Location tracking and personalized ads
Your smartphone can determine your location based on GPS satellites, cell towers and even public WiFi networks. This can be useful for weather forecasts or to show your friends where you are, but Android (Google) and a lot of apps want that information too. Even if only to show you ads from a local store.
You disable this location determination as follows. Go to Settings and put Location from. To clear the location cache, tap at the bottom Location history from Google and adjust the slider Location History also on Off. Repeat this for every Google account on your smartphone.
Research has shown that certain Google applications can still store location data when location determination is turned off. For more certainty, sign up with your Google account and click on Privacy and Personalization on Manage your data and personalization. In addition to Location History, toggle here too Web and app activity and optionally YouTube history from.
To have your activity automatically deleted, click Manage your activity options and on Automatic deletion. Choose the desired time frame, for example Automatically delete activity older than 3 months. Also click on Manage activity, on remove and on Custom range and indicate from which period you want to remove the saved activities.
If you think turning off location tracking is a bit too drastic, you can also limit this ad tracking in another way. You can reset your ad ID, which will break the link between your device and existing profiles for targeted ads.
The number of advertisements does not necessarily decrease as a result, but they are then not or less personalized. Open again Settings and choose Google, Advertisements. Turn on the switch at Opt out of ad personalization.
Unsubscribe from advertisements
You can also unsubscribe from many ads based on your interests. Surf from your phone to the site of WebChoices. You may need to temporarily disable the blocking of third-party cookies in your browser.
In Chrome this can be done as follows. Tap the button with the three dots, click Settings, Site Settings, Cookies and choose Allow cookies.
The webpage of the Digital Advertising Alliance, an association of self-regulated advertisers, will now scan your system. After you hit the bottom Continuous you will get an overview of ad companies, including Facebook, Google Inc and Microsoft.
You can now place a check mark in the column for the offending companies Opt Out. Or you tap Opt out of all to unsubscribe from all companies at the same time.
Afterwards you will see how many companies have succeeded. In our test, there were 106 out of 132. On our desktop PC, there were 92 out of 133. Please note that in principle you have to repeat this for every browser and device.
Alternative browsers and search engines
Now it is still important not to let things get that far again. That is why we go a step further. A logical first step is to use a different browser than the data-hungry Google Chrome. Give it a try Firefox Focus. With a touch of the trash can icon it clears your browsing history and by default ad, analytics and social trackers are blocked.
A solid alternative is the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser. It also blocks all kinds of trackers and tries to set up a secure https connection where possible. Click B + to the left of the address bar to see which trackers the browser has blocked. Put here Site privacy protection if you still want to allow the trackers on that site.
It will not surprise you that the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser uses its own search engine by default. After all, it does not collect or share personal data. This also applies to the European search engine Qwant. Handy is further StartPage. This is a metasearch engine that anonymously sends your searches to search engines such as Google.
Or, after all, you make use of Search Encrypt, which encrypts your searches locally with encryption keys that expire quickly, before they are sent to the search engine via https. You can find more privacy-aware search engines here.
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