Now, we don't intend to make people panic and think they are under constant surveillance in their life. We're only here to try to explain to people what big Internet corporations are doing with all the data they potentially have access to.
They could do like all the different software companies, developpers or communities listed in the Alternatives section and choose not to collect or treat this data.
But unfortunately, they do.
They have access to the list of all your friends, your phonebook, your (private) conversations, files, pictures, centers of interest, political opinions, relationship status, where you live, your habits...
And they use this data to make money by directly selling it, or by analysing your tastes and serving you personnalised ads online, getting paid a lot by advertising companies - personnalised and targeted ads cost more than general ads like you get on TV.
The other problem, is centralisation. As mentionned in the data section on the home page, 80% of all Internet traffic uses Google Analytics. It means that Google has the ability to monitor the majority of worldwide Internet users.
When using Google Analytics, a website gives the Big Corp access to the user's browser, IP adress and many more things.
Your browser has a unique fingerprint. This enables them to accurately identify you among all users.
You can use EFF's Panopticlick to test your browser. After that test, you can observe what parts of your browser identify you the most accurately and fix these issues.