ATLANTA -- The rules have changed when it comes to the information businesses can collect about your web surfing habits.
Why?
Whether you know it or not, you give businesses plenty of information about yourself each time you cruise their website. Google keeps track of your searches, the apps you use, and the websites you visit. Twitter collects data about your “likes” so they can push ads the site thinks you’ll like.
You may have missed them, but there have been alerts telling you that sites have changed their privacy policies that allow you to stop or at least limit the data they collect.
Earlier this year, the European Union passed new regulations. Since businesses here reach people there, websites in the United States have updated their policies to obey the law.
To comply, businesses have to give you information about the data they’re collecting from you when you visit their website.
“It’s supposed to give you better protection,” says Milton Mueller of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy. “You get out find out more of what they’re collecting and opt out if you want.”
For example, by going to your “activity controls” in Youtube, you can stop the site from keeping track of your search history.
