Protect Your Online Privacy by Exporting Personal Data: 4 Reasons Why it's Important
Are you aware of the data that online platforms are collecting about you? From browsing history to personal information, it's crucial to take control of your personal data and protect your online privacy by exporting it. In this article, we'll explore four reasons why you should start exporting your personal data today.
For European citizens, exporting personal data is a great opportunity to:
1. Discover their digital alter-ego:
- See how their personality (tastes, habits, etc.) is perceived by commercial and advertising algorithms.
- Discover the categories or broad categories in which companies place them.
2. Make a copy of valuable information:
- Remember that behind cloud services are humans: an error can always happen. Exporting is an essential backup method to avoid losing various types of files.
- For example, for those who use a web service dedicated to online storage of photos taken by a smartphone. By accessing the export function, you get a compressed file that you can easily save on a hard drive.
3. Benefit from data portability:
- Since the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into force, it is possible to switch from one service to another more easily. On the request of a client, the company is required to provide an export of their data. And this, in the form of a file that a machine or human can process without a problem.
- For example: transferring emails stored in an email box to another is now much simpler thanks to exporting data.
⚠️ Our advice: use this export feature wisely. Indeed, generating exports regularly has a high digital impact. It's better to export data only if there is a real need. Few parameters to take into account : the volumetry (weight of the export), or the distance between the data on the server and the computer of the requester.
[Cover photo: Stillness InMotion]
