From the time you wake up through the hours of your workday and even while you sleep, you’re being watched. Your personal data is being mined and then used, sold, given away or stolen.

During a typical day, your location is being monitored by hundreds of entities, your personal data is extracted and shared over and over, images of you or related to you are taken and transmitted, and details of your identity, your activities, your likes and dislikes, the content of what you say and write are recorded and stored.

Surveillance Society is a Post-Gazette series examining the implications of such privacy intrusions. This interactive shows the surveillance that occurs on a daily basis, and what it means for individuals and society.

Apps

It’s time to wake up, and as soon as Zack checks his phone for a weather report, it asks him to enable location services, allowing his whereabouts to be monitored.

6:15 a.m.

Apps are a key entry point to your personal data. Apps want your location because that’s a valuable piece of data for advertisers. They also often have access to your address book and calendar, more valuable information for advertisers.

When you click “I agree” on the “terms and conditions” form, you are often giving away your rights to control what is done with your personal data.

Police Cameras

Even if Zack is driving under the speed limit during his commute, his plate could be snapped by a license plate recognition camera on a police cruiser and information about him stored in a police database for years to come.

7:15 a.m.

Whether you’re in a high-speed chase or stopping for every red light, your presence may be logged in a police database. Several communities in Washington County have police cars equipped with automated license plate recognition cameras. The plate cameras -- along with a handful in Pittsburgh, a few other suburbs and even distant Johnstown -- annually log around 2 million plates, times and locations that are stored for around five years on a computer server in North Strabane.

Smart Meter

Zack can pay for parking with a swipe of his smartphone at a smart meter, but it’s another portal for personal information to flow to outside companies.

7:45 a.m.

Smart parking meters generally take money and credit/debit cards, and now some vendors offer service through mobile phones. Pittsburgh is seeking proposals from companies that allow people to pay with their smartphones. Parkmobile is one such company, and in State College parkers can use their cell phones to pay. Though it doesn’t share that data with advertisers without your permission, it retains the right to “disclose personal information about you to our affiliates.” That includes Parkmobile’s investors, ranging from Detroit-based venture capitalists Fontinalis Partners and Chicago-based parking concern SP Plus Corp., to Dutch firms Bluefield Investments and BCD Group, and German automaker BMW Group.

Rewards Programs

Zack can get more caffeine for his buck by being part of a rewards program at Starbucks, but such customer loyalty programs are marketing tools that allow companies to hone their pitches and hook customers on their products. And sometimes they overshare.

Rewards Programs

Zack can get more caffeine for his buck by being part of a rewards program at Starbucks, but such customer loyalty programs are marketing tools that allow companies to hone their pitches and hook customers on their products. And sometimes they overshare.

7:50 a.m.

Starbucks is using the My Starbucks Rewards program to keep customers coming back and to collect their data to market more effectively. But last year it was revealed that Starbucks was storing information in “clear text” (unencrypted) so that anyone with access to the phone could get passwords and usernames, as well as geolocation tracking points. The company remedied the situation only after security researcher Daniel Wood, who had tried to reach the company regarding the matter, published some of his findings.

Global Banking

When Zack goes to an ATM to get money, he’s tapping into a global banking system that is fertile ground for hackers.

8:05 a.m.

Data breaches have put personal and financial information increasingly at risk. In 2010, you had a one in nine chance of becoming a victim of identity theft after your financial or personal information was swiped. By 2014, the odds increased to one in three, according to a survey of ID theft victims by the National Consumers League (NCL) and Javelin Strategy & Research.

Web Monitoring

When Zack is at the keyboard at work, he is being monitored constantly -- by his bosses, by the websites he visits, and by a host of other watchers.

8:30 a.m.

Employers own the phone and computer systems used by their employees so workers can have no expectation of private communication. A recent American Management Association survey found that a quarter of employers who monitor email have fired an employee over inappropriate emails. CMU researchers have found that most of the companies secretly tracking your web travels don’t say what they do with your data.

Shopping Habits

Zack browses Amazon.com for pepper mills, and even if he doesn’t buy, lots of new information about his taste, shopping habits and what he might buy next time is accumulated.

9:45 a.m.

Amazon gets a trove of information not only when you buy online, but when you browse. It uses the data to instantly target ads, special offers and suggestions to you.

Fitbit

Zack is tracking his steps on his lunch hour with his Fitbit. It’s tracking him as well.

12:15 p.m.

Fitbit and similar devices log vast amounts of data about the wearer, tracking the number of steps taken and calories burned, heart rate and sleep patterns among other information. After the wearer syncs the device with a smartphone or computer, the device links the information to a user account online and sends the information to the cloud, or a server, for safekeeping. However, the possibility of a breach or hack into the actual device exists.

Social Media

Zack is thinking about bragging about his 10,000 steps on Facebook.

2:10 p.m.

A huge amount of personal information is shared on social media, and users are often sharing data with a host of Friends and Friends of Friends, as well as with FB.

As CMU researcher Alessandro Acquisti puts it, we’ve “created de facto a database, incredibly accurate and incredibly large, of peoples' names and faces” that can be tapped by data brokers and the government.

Shopping Patterns

Zack stops to do some shopping, checking out the running shoes on sale. The store is checking him out too.

Shopping Patterns

Zack stops to do some shopping, checking out the running shoes on sale. The store is checking him out too.

3:30 p.m.

Brick-and-mortar retail tracks you in the store as well as through your credit cards to learn shopping and buying habits.

Tailored Ads

Zack checks out Facebook, and "likes" a post from the local vexillology (study of flags) club. Suddenly, his feed is clogged with sponsored posts by local political candidates -- all, mysteriously, waving flags.

6:15 p.m.

How politicians can order, at inexpensive rates, demographically specific data that allows them to tailor ads to specific groups.

Smart Appliances

Zack has lots of smart appliances at home. They know what he wants before he does.

Smart Appliances

Zack has lots of smart appliances at home. They know what he wants before he does.

8:20 p.m.

Whether it’s your smart thermostat, smart tv, or smart device that automatically orders refills, homes are becoming more intelligent, and more able to collect personal data.

Credits

Art & Design: Dan Marsula
Development: Zack Tanner
Photography: Steve Mellon
Editor: Lillian Thomas
Reporting:
Rich Lord
Chris Potter
Deborah M. Todd
Jacob Betzner