About this video

• Video Title: Everything You Do in a Day That Leaks Data (And How To Fix It)
• Channel: Proton
• Speakers: Not specified in the transcript.
• Duration: 17:00

Overview

This video follows YouTube creator Tony Angelo for a day to illustrate how various daily activities can lead to personal data leakage. Privacy advocates analyze Tony's actions, highlighting how information is extracted from phones, online activities, smart devices, and even subtle behaviors, and suggest ways to mitigate these risks.

Key takeaways

• Morning Routine Data Leakage: Even simple actions like turning off a phone alarm can reveal activity patterns to apps via motion sensors. Checking emails, even suspicious ones, can activate hidden tracking pixels that confirm the email was opened, when, and on what device.
• Travel and Online Activity: Searching for flights, even without booking, flags interest and can lead to price increases. This data can be sold to various entities, including governments, and combined with other information to build a detailed profile.
• Smart Devices and Security: Smart car technology logs driving behavior, which can impact insurance rates. Home security systems like Ring, while offering a sense of safety, have had past security breaches where cameras were compromised.
• Third-Party Tools and Services: Plugins used for channel growth can access sensitive account information. Similarly, smart car data is often shared with manufacturers and data brokers, and Facebook Marketplace activity can reveal high-value user information ("whales") to advertisers and potentially malicious actors.
• Digital Footprint and AI: Sharing images, even with obscured faces, can be analyzed by AI to create shadow profiles. Online behavior, including scrolling and engagement with certain content, is tracked and can influence future recommendations and even lead to increased costs for services like flights.
• Chromebook Security and Sleep Data: Chromebooks offer some built-in security features like encrypted containers and easy power washing. However, even when sleeping, phones continue to collect data about user activity, location, and health signals, which can be used to inform risk models for insurance.

Smart cars pose risks because nearly every action a driver takes – every turn, brake, and stop – is recorded and sent back to the manufacturer and data brokers.

Data brokers like LexisNexis can then sell this collected information to various entities. This includes insurance companies, who might use driving behavior data (like frequent braking) to adjust insurance rates. It can also be sold to lenders, employers, government agencies, private investigators, and even former romantic partners, essentially to anyone willing to pay for the data.