Can you disappear online? (feat. Peter Dolanjski)

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Sep 21, 2025

In this engaging conversation, Peter Dolanjski, Director of Product at DuckDuckGo, dives into the unseen world of online data collection. He reveals how companies like Acxiom and Experian track user behaviors far beyond basic identifiers, even predicting personal traits and spending habits. Peter shares practical steps for reclaiming privacy, such as using private search engines and data-removal tools. He emphasizes the growing challenge of tracking children and the importance of conscious online behavior in an increasingly monitored digital landscape.

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INSIGHT

How Hidden Identifiers Tie Your Behavior Together

Trackers build identifiers (cookies, advertising IDs, fingerprints) so companies can link behavior across sites even without your name.
These stitched identifiers let companies infer purchases, relationships, and interests without explicit user input.

INSIGHT

Analytics Tools Created A Surveillance Network

Most websites embed third-party trackers (Google/Meta dominate) via simple JavaScript for analytics and ad tools.
That convenience created a global surveillance network because sites willingly include code that shares visitor data externally.

INSIGHT

Profit And Lack Of Disincentives Drive Tracking

The ad-tech industry profits from mass data collection and faces few disincentives, driving rampant tracking.
Technical self-regulation failed, but legal tools like Global Privacy Control can enforce 'do not sell' choices in some jurisdictions.

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There’s more about you online than you know.

The company Acxiom, for example, has probably determined whether you’re a heavy drinker, or if you’re overweight, or if you smoke (or all three). The same company has also probably estimated—to the exact dollar—the amount you spend every year on dining out, donating to charities, and traveling domestically. Another company Experian, has probably made a series of decisions about whether you are “Likely,” “Unlikely,” “Highly Likely,” etc., to shop at a mattress store, visit a theme park, or frequent the gym.

This isn’t the data most people think about when considering their online privacy. Yes, names, addresses, phone numbers, and age are all important and potentially sensitive, and yes, there’s a universe of social media posts, photos, videos, and comments that are likely at the harvesting whim of major platforms to collect, package, and sell access to for targeted advertising.

But so much of the data that you leave behind online has nothing to do with what you willingly write, post, share, or say. Instead, it is data that is collected from online and offline interactions, like the items you add in a webpage’s shopping cart, the articles you read, the searches you make, and the objects you buy at a physical store.

Importantly, it is also data that is very hard to get rid of.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Peter Dolanjski, director of product at DuckDuckGo, about why the internet is so hungry for your data, how parents can help protect the privacy of their children, and whether it is pointless to try to “disappear” online.

“It’s not futile… Taking steps now, despite the fact that you already have information out there, will help you into the future.”

Tune in today.

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For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

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