{"id":12204,"date":"2026-02-03T16:24:50","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T16:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advisorator.com\/members\/?p=12204"},"modified":"2026-08-14T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:19:10","slug":"easy-privacy-improvements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advisorator.com\/members\/2026\/02\/03\/easy-privacy-improvements\/","title":{"rendered":"Easy privacy improvements"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Six simple ways to protect your privacy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Plus: Chrome’s AI push, better drag-and-drop, and remembering to call someone back<\/h3>\n\n\n
Jared Newman<\/span><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>February 3, 2026<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
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One of the most frustrating things I hear as a tech journalist is the idea that your phone is listening to everything you say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I understand why that feeling is so pervasive: If you’re with a friend, and they tell you about a product you’d never heard of, and then you start seeing ads for that product on your phone, surreptitious recording is the simplest explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But reality, companies like Google and Meta don’t have to record your conversations to achieve this level of invasiveness. They already know who you’re with from location data. They know what apps you’ve both been using, what websites you’ve been visiting, and what you’ve been searching for lately. Putting those data points together is far easier than processing live audio from billions of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence my frustration: If everyone just took a few minutes to shore up their privacy settings, that feeling of being secretly recorded would go away. Instead, the conspiracy theory covers up the real privacy invasion that’s happening in the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, that’s my rant. Now, here’s what you can do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Disclosure: I stole this idea from my pal Rich DeMuro, who recently wrote his own list of phone settings to change<\/a> in honor of Data Privacy Week<\/a>, which I forgot was a thing.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop Facebook from following you<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Because so many apps and websites share data with Facebook, it can see a lot of what you’re doing online even when you’re not using it directly. This is a major contributor to the feeling of being recorded, but you can stop it if you know where to look:<\/p>\n\n\n\n