Your phone is collecting SO much information on you. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can, at the very least, control some of the data it gathers by limiting the time you spend on some of the worst-offending apps when it comes to your private data. If you want to protect your personal data, start by deleting or limiting the amount of time you spent on these two apps.
Social Media Apps
Whether your social media app of choice is Facebook, TikTok, or Snapchat, the bottom line remains the same: social media apps collect a great deal of information about you — that’s how they provide all of the fun features that seem perfectly catered to you and your interests. As soon as you sign up for one, you’re forking over personal details like your email address, birthday, location, and even your relationship status in some cases. And the more photos you upload to these apps, the more they continue to learn about you.
Pretty soon, you find yourself texting a friend about a pair of shoes and finding ads for those same shoes all over your Facebook feed. Or, you’re complaining to someone over Messenger about a breakup and encountering one paid post after another about breakups.
Spooky and invasive, huh?
Short of deleting these apps, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to keep them from collecting your data. But you can adjust your settings to limit the permissions you allow them to take when collecting your data. Anything is better than nothing at all.
Food Delivery Apps
You can easily forget how much data food deliver apps have to collect just to make it possible for you to receive your delicious dinner. They have your financial information, location, email address, contacts, and usage habits. And they may even gain access to information about your physical health, ad interactions, and search queries.
So maybe the solution isn’t delete all food delivery apps and suffer the fate of having to pick food up. Instead, choose one app — whether it’s Seamless, DoorDash, or UberEats — and limit the number of these apps you use. Doing this will, at the very least, minimize the number of app that contain your personal information.
