Everyone wants your email ID. Think twice before sharing it

NEW YORK: When you browse the web, an increasing number of sites and apps are asking for a piece of basic information that you probably hand over without hesitation: your email address. It may seem harmless, but when you enter your email, you’re sharing a lot more than just that.

First, it helps to know why companies want email addresses. To advertisers, web publishers and app makers, your email is important not just for contacting you. It acts as a digital bread crumb for companies to link your activity across sites and apps to serve you relevant ads.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is. For decades, the digital advertising industry relied on invisible trackers planted inside websites and apps to follow our activities and then serve us targeted ads.

There have been sweeping changes to this system in the past few years, including Apple’s release of a software feature in 2021 allowing iPhone users to block apps from tracking them and Google’s decision to prevent websites from using cookies, which follow people’s activities across sites, in its Chrome browser by 2024.

Advertisers, web publishers and app makers now try to track people through other means — and one simple method is by asking for an email address. Imagine if an employee of a brick-and-mortar store asked for your name before you entered.

An email address can be even more revealing, though, because it can be linked to other data, including where you went to school, the make and model of the car you drive, and your ethnicity.

“I can take your email address and find data you may not have even realised you’ve given to a brand,” said Michael Priem, the chief executive of Modern Impact, an advertising firm in Minneapolis.

“The amount of data that is out there on us as consumers is literally shocking.” Advertising tech is continuing to evolve, so it helps to understand what exactly you’re sharing when you enter in an email address. From there, you can decide what to do. Your email address has become a potent piece of data.

For many years, the digital ad industry has compiled a profile on you based on the sites you visit on the web.

Information about you used to be collected in covert ways, including the aforementioned cookies and invisible trackers planted inside apps.

Now that more companies are blocking the use of those methods, new ad targeting techniques have emerged.

“Websites and apps are increasingly asking for email authentication in part because there needs to be a better way for publishers to monetise their content that’s more privacy-centric than cookies,” Ian Colley, the chief marketing officer of the Trade Desk, said in an email. “The internet is not free, after all.”

However, in an analysis, Mozilla, the nonprofit that makes the Firefox web browser, called UID 2.0 a “regression in privacy” because it enabled the type of tracking behavior that modern web browsers were designed to prevent.

There are simpler ways for websites and apps to track your web activity through your email address.

An email could contain your first and last name, and assuming you’ve used it for some time, data brokers have already compiled a comprehensive profile on your interests based on your browsing activity.

A website or an app can upload your email address into an ad broker’s database to match your identity with a profile containing enough insights to serve you targeted ads.

If you’re wondering why you are continuing to see relevant ads despite the rise of privacy tools that combat digital tracking, it’s largely because you are still sharing your email address.