Somebody’s Watching Me: How Our Online Behavior is Being Tracked

I always feel like somebody’s watching me/And I have no privacy (ooh ooh)/I always feel like somebody’s watching me/Who’s playing tricks on me?

The lyrics from the 1984 song, “Somebody’s Watching Me,” by Rockwell eerily ring true today. Our online behavior leaves a trail of information wherever and whenever we click — a digital footprint that is stored, tracked, and sold — whether to online data brokers or cyber thieves.

Today, we have user names and passwords, Google searches, social media accounts, online banking accounts, Zoom calls, public WiFi networks, Yelp restaurant reviews, smart speakers that listen to our conversations, mobile phone games, doorbells that monitor and record our comings and goings, and so much more.

Take smart home devices, for example. They record data about their users and sell the information to other companies. “It might sound like something out of a horror story, an artificial intelligence device that's always listening,’” cautions Reader’s Digest.

Today, with work-from-home arrangements being widely adopted, everyone is cross-contaminating their work with their personal, elevating privacy and security issues. “This remote working on a vast scale continues to be a major headache for the IT security bosses of companies large and small around the world,” covers BBC News.

Is Somebody Actually Watching You?

Yes. More than we think. Apple walks through in their A Day in the Life of Your Data, about John and his daughter, Emma, how their simple day at the park was tracked by companies around the world. How clicks (visiting a news site), acts (taking a selfie, playing an online game), and purchases (buying ice cream, visiting a toy store), are tracked.

Based on tracking user data across websites and apps, companies know the location of the family’s house, the park they visited, the news websites they read, the products they browsed, the ads they watched, their purchasing habits, and the stores they visited, explains Apple. Data collected by these trackers is pieced together, shared, aggregated, and monetized, fueling an industry valued at $227 billion per year.

Data Tracked...and Sold

Credit cards, Paypal accounts, and fullz — full credentials, such as Social Security Number, name, DOB, etc. — are the most popular types of stolen information traded on the dark web, writes Security Magazine.

Individuals’ credentials and identities are valuable to a criminal and can be reused in many ways. With so much information, the buyer can open new accounts or take over existing accounts. Last year, 267 million Facebook profiles were hacked and sold on the dark web, according to Mashable. Stolen identities can be a long-term investment for a criminal, since an identity can be sold multiple times and a buyer can use the stolen information to commit multiple kinds of fraud over a number of years. Read more about Identity Trafficking on the Dark Web.

Being aware of your digital footprint is important. This footprint can be used to identify you: social media posts, employment records, shopping and entertainment preferences, geolocation data, and financial and healthcare information. Think about everyday activities, such as searching Google, filling out online forms, posting a photo on Instagram, agreeing to have cookies installed.

This data is highly sought after, both by online data brokers to analyze and by thieves to sell on dark web marketplaces — most often stolen through phishing, credential stuffing, data breaches, and card skimmers. Learn about How Thieves Convert Your Identity into Cash on the Dark Web.

IDX Privacy helps users take charge of their digital privacy and reduce their digital footprint. Tom Kelly, IDX president and CEO of IDX urges, “By putting privacy protections in place and keeping your digital footprint clean, you can prevent yourself from becoming a victim of this year’s wave of cybercrime.”

Monitoring the Dark Web and Other Proactive Steps

To protect yourself, your customers, and employees, dark web monitoring, such as IDX CyberScan / IDX Privacy / IDX Identity, sends you alerts when your information becomes available to thieves, so that you can head off trouble by changing passwords, set up multi-factor authentication, and pay special attention to the accounts most at risk.

With millions of Americans working, schooling, and even digital happy hour-ing from home, our digital footprints are off the charts. As we continue to join digital meetings and socialize online, we have to be extra diligent. Here are 12 privacy tips to keep your digital privacy private.

As you think about how you can help everyone minimize exposure and risks, look into IDX’s comprehensive privacy solution to take charge of their digital privacy. After all, your employees work from nine to five and will appreciate that somebody is watching out for them.