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But how bad are they, exactly?
This is what the team atIncogni, a data removal service provider, set out to discover.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps,Facebook and Instagram came out as the worstwhen it comes to protecting our privacy.
Reddit, Snapchat, and Pinterest (in order) are the platforms representing the lowest risk.
Another variable researchers looked at was the level ofuser control and consent.
These include privacy controls, default privacy controls, and opt-out or visibility options.
Again, some Meta platforms (Messenger and WhatsApp) performed the worst alongside TikTok.
Thetransgressionscategory refers to fines and data breach incidents.
Here, Telegram, Reddit, Quora, and Discord obtained a very positive score: 0.
Needless to say, Facebook products performed badly here, too, alongside Google-owned YouTube.
Jasinska-Dias believes this may be intentional.
She said: “It seems that theyre constructed so that people wont read them.”
Yet, as the report points out, “account deletion ought to be a relatively easy process.”
“In some cases, it might be as long as 6 months.”
On the contrary, Telegram retains your data for just a few days after deletion.
So, are these measures helping at all?
Well, according to Incogni, not much.
WhatsApp, another Meta-owned product, was fined five times, while TikTok and X received four fines each.
Despite this, the research clearly shows how these platforms remain among the worst for privacy protection.
It’s then crucial to learn how to minimize the data you share.
I would refrain from signing up with your phone number if you could, too.
For example, last week LinkedIn silently began training its AI data with user data.
