In the summer of 2015, Alexandra Franco got a letter in the mail from a company she had never heard of called AcurianHealth. The letter, addressed to Franco personally, invited her to participate in a study of people with psoriasis, a condition that causes dry, itchy patches on the skin.The explanation is at Gizmodo.
Franco did not have psoriasis. But the year before, she remembered, she had searched for information about it online, when a friend was dealing with the condition. And a few months prior to getting the letter, she had also turned to the internet with a question about a skin fungus. It was the sort of browsing anyone might do, on the assumption it was private and anonymous.
Now there was a letter, with her name and home address on it, targeting her as a potential skin-disease patient. Acurian is in the business of recruiting people to take part in clinical trials for drug companies. How had it identified her? She had done nothing that would publicly associate her with having a skin condition.
22 June 2017
How companies harvest your web search info
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how to keep your privacy online.
ReplyDeletethere is a browser add on called ghostery that blocks website trackers. its blocking 8 trackers from your website as i type this. also using an adblocker will block ads from tracking you across multiple sites. switch you searching from google to duckduckgo. this is the bare minimum you need to keep your privacy. you could also look at using a vpn.