Your VPN and Incognito Mode Are Not Keeping You as Private as You Think

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Most people believe basic habits like using a VPN or clearing cookies make them reasonably private online, but digital tracking is far more pervasive than these measures can address. Everyday actions — checking the weather, connecting to a coffee shop's Wi-Fi, or posting a photo — quietly feed data to ad networks, loyalty platforms, and data brokers. A single phone number can be used to link a person's name, address, purchase history, voter registration, and reused passwords into a detailed profile sold for as little as two dollars. People do not need to be hacked for this to happen; years of clicking 'agree' on Terms of Service agreements have made most users willing participants in their own data collection. The tracking ecosystem is not targeting individuals because they are interesting — it targets them because predictable behavior makes people easy and profitable to monitor at scale.

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