"In the not-too-distant future, your internet habits could help determine how much house you can buy and the rate on your next auto loan." - Yahoo Finance, 9/19/21

This recent story from Yahoo Finance came as no surprise to us. We have been yelling this from the rooftops for several years. All signs have been moving in this direction for a long time.

China has a social scoring system where approved behavior is rewarded and others are penalized. Leaders in various countries including the United States have been paving the way by giving big tech virtually unlimited powers over what we are allowed to see and who is allowed to keep track of what we do.

While this might sound like a conspiracy theory to most, it is most definitely not. Every aspect of our digital lives are being tracked and recorded and our data is for sale.

So, who is buying our data? Well, of course there are the obvious ones like retailers and advertisers. But, there are others that may surprise you. These include banks, finance companies, insurance companies, colleges and universities, governmental licensing agencies, law enforcement, political parties, and on and on. Knowing about you is big business.

For many adults, enough data is already available to paint a pretty accurate picture of their habits and preferences, their politics, and their religious affiliation or lack thereof.

Soon, it will be minor children who have already been tracked from the day they picked up their first iPad. Lifelong digital histories will soon be commonly available for young adults and will factor into every aspect of their lives.

Protecting your families privacy is something that just cannot be ignored.

There are four major ways that your personal information is obtained.

Advertising on web sites. You think you are just seeing an ad while you browse websites, but advertisers know what websites you visit, how you get there, and how long you stay there. And, if you click on their ad, they learn even more information about you.

Trackers and profilers embedded in websites. These are invisible bits of code that grab information about you and whatever device you may be using to access the internet.

Information from internet enabled devices. The list of these kinds of devices is long and getting longer every day, but how many things do you see every day that are sold with a smartphone app? If you have a wireless blood pressure monitor that connects to your smart phone, it is very likely that this data is being tracked somewhere else too.

Social media. Every post you make, every friend you have and everyone you follow is tracked, recorded and analyzed. In most cases, your real name is revealed as well as your phone number. Information gleaned from social media tracking is often the glue that enables big tech to tie all the little pieces of data together and associate them to you as an individual, as a household and as a family.

With the Covid 19 pandemic crisis as well as general political unrest, more and more people are seeing information and answers to things that concern them. This makes it more important than ever that you take measures to protect your privacy.

When you visit websites, be sure to read their privacy statements, especially if you post there. Privacy statements usually explain what data they collect about you and how they use it.

Always reject cookies from websites you are not confident about. Most websites that use cookies to collect data will allow you to opt-out.

You should also consider using software or hardware to protect yourself. This is where we can help. Our business has always been about protecting our users from the dangers of the internet. And, we have been doing it longer than anyone, almost 27 years.

We offer three products that will virtually eliminate tracking and profiling. We have been building these capabilities into these products for several years.

CYBERsitter has long been thought of as strictly a "porn blocker" because 27 years ago, that was its original intent. However, in addition to its various categories designed to protect younger members of the family, it also contains an ad blocking filter that blocks advertising, trackers, and profilers.

Ad-Attack is similar to CYBERsitter except it only blocks advertising, trackers, and profilers.

CYBERsitter BLACK is a hardware device that offers the whole suite of blocklists and works for every device on a network. CYBERsitter BLACK is the most powerful of all of them because it works with all kinds of devices, including appliances, game consoles, cameras, or any other internet enabled device. Most people don't realize it but if you have a recent model television that is internet enabled, it is sending information about your viewing habits. We block that too!