Vivid Zero
Your data is a business. You’re not a customer of it.
There is an industry whose product is you. Data brokers, ad networks and the platforms you use every day collect what you do, trade it, and build a version of you that you have never seen. You were opted in without being asked.
Most people either ignore it, or disappear down a rabbit hole of paranoid advice. Zero is the third option: understand how it actually works, in plain English, then close the doors that matter, settings first. Nothing here is for sale.
Every guide is re-verified on a schedule and corrected the moment it drifts. Start with the first guide below, or pick the question that brought you here.
Vivid Zero
17 guides live. Every guide is re-verified on a schedule, and corrected the moment it drifts.
The data economy
How tracking actually works, and where your data ends up.
- Start here
How Companies Track You Across the Internet
Companies track you through a layered system: cookies on websites, invisible pixels in emails, fingerprinting techniques that need no cookie at all, code embedded inside mobile apps, and offline data from loyalty schemes. All of these data streams tend to flow toward a relatively small number of advertising technology firms who build profiles used to target adverts. The good news is that a handful of practical habits, combined with a few browser settings, genuinely reduce how much of this happens.
Read the guide → - 02
The Data Broker Economy: How Your Data Is Collected, Shared and Sold
Data brokers are companies that collect personal information from dozens of sources, combine it into detailed profiles, and sell those profiles to advertisers, insurers, employers and others. Most UK adults have never heard of them, yet have profiles with hundreds of data points. UK GDPR gives you the right to see, correct and request deletion of your data, though removing yourself from every broker is genuinely difficult and requires ongoing effort. This piece explains how the industry works and gives you practical steps to reduce your exposure.
Read the guide → - 03
What Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok Actually Know About You
Every major platform holds two kinds of information about you: what you actively gave them, and what they inferred from your behaviour. The inferred file is the commercially useful one, and under UK GDPR you have the right to see it. This piece walks you through the official tools at Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok that let you do exactly that, and explains why spending ten minutes with each one is the most clarifying privacy exercise you can do.
Read the guide →
Your data on social media
What each platform takes, and how to take it back.
- 01
Your Data on Social Media: What Each Platform Collects and How to Take Control
Every major social platform collects far more than the posts you make, including your behaviour off the app, your device details, and inferences about your personality and finances. UK GDPR gives you the right to download and inspect your own data file. A handful of settings on each platform, changed today, can meaningfully reduce what gets collected and how it's used for advertising. You don't have to leave social media to regain some control.
Read the guide → - 02
Instagram Privacy, Locked Down Step by Step
Instagram's default settings share more than most people realise, from your activity status and location data to your contact list and browsing habits off the app. This guide walks through the highest-impact changes first, then covers every layer including the Accounts Centre, third-party app access, and contact syncing. Some changes make the app less social, and this guide says so honestly. Meta moves these menus regularly, so a re-check every few months keeps the lockdown holding.
Read the guide → - 03
Facebook Privacy, Locked Down Step by Step
Facebook's defaults are tuned for reach, not privacy, and most people have never touched the settings that matter most. This guide walks through every key control, from audience defaults and old post visibility to the off-Facebook activity feed that tracks you across thousands of websites. It covers what each setting actually exposes, the social trade-off of changing it, and where to find it, so you finish with a genuinely tighter account rather than a vague sense you should do something.
Read the guide → - 04
TikTok Privacy, Locked Down Step by Step
TikTok builds its picture of you mostly from what you watch, not what you post, so the privacy story is about inference as much as exposure. Five settings do most of the protective work: private account, switching off contact syncing, limiting ad personalisation, restricting who can duet or stitch your videos, and turning off activity status. Work through the full sweep once, then re-check every few months because TikTok's menus move.
Read the guide →
- WhatsApp privacy, locked down step by stepin verification
- Snapchat privacy, locked down step by stepin verification
- X (Twitter) privacy, locked down step by stepin verification
Everyday defence
Wi-Fi, passwords, browsers, phones: the habits that quietly protect you.
- 01
End-to-End Encryption, Explained Properly
End-to-end encryption works like a sealed envelope that only the sender and recipient can open, so even the company carrying your message cannot read it. You almost certainly use it already, in messaging apps and on banking sites, without thinking about it. But it does not hide who you talk to or when, and a cloud backup can quietly undo the whole protection. This piece explains all of that, and ends with a short checklist you can work through today.
Read the guide → - 02
VPNs: What They Genuinely Do, and What They Do Not
A VPN encrypts your traffic between your device and a server run by the VPN provider, hiding which sites you visit from your internet provider and anyone on the same Wi-Fi network. It cannot make you anonymous to sites you log into, stop cookie or fingerprint tracking, or protect you from scams. It moves your trust from your internet provider to the VPN operator, so the quality and honesty of that operator matters enormously. Most UK readers will find a VPN useful in specific situations rather than as an always-on necessity.
Read the guide → - 03
Secure Storage at Home: Drives, NAS and Cloud, Explained
Most people lose files through loss, theft or hardware failure, not hacking. Your phone and modern laptop almost certainly already encrypt your data by default. Cloud storage is convenient but hands your files to a company with its own terms and interests. A solid household plan treats privacy and backup as two separate jobs, and keeps at least one copy somewhere physically different from your home.
Read the guide →
- Public Wi-Fi: the real risks, and what actually protects youin verification
- Passwords done rightin verification
- Two-factor authentication without the confusionin verification
- And 3 more in this series, being written now.
Your rights, used
UK law gives you real levers. These guides show you how to pull them.
- 01
Your UK Privacy Rights in Practice
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give you six practical rights over your personal data, and most people never use a single one. This piece explains when each right applies, how to phrase a request that gets answered, and what to do when an organisation ignores you. It also covers PECR, the separate law that governs marketing calls, texts and emails, including how the Telephone Preference Service fits in.
Read the guide → - 02
The Personal Privacy Audit: Find Out What the Internet Knows About You
Most people have a much larger digital footprint than they realise, spread across search results, people-search directories, platform activity logs, old accounts, and data breaches. This guide walks you through a structured afternoon audit covering all of those areas, using official tools and UK-specific resources. The goal isn't to alarm you. Most findings are fixable, and knowing what's out there is the only way to start fixing it.
Read the guide → - 03
Getting Yourself Removed from Data Brokers and People-Search Sites
Most UK people-search sites get your data from the open electoral register, so opting out at your council is the single most effective first step. From there, UK GDPR gives you a right to erasure you can use directly against data brokers and directory sites, for free. Some records, such as Companies House entries and court judgments, cannot be removed, and that is fine to accept. Because records reappear when sites re-publish, a twice-yearly check beats a one-off purge.
Read the guide →
How verification works
- Written, then checked. Every guide is researched against primary sources: the platforms’ own settings, UK legislation, and the regulators’ published guidance. No recycled blogspam.
- Dated in the open. Each guide carries its last-verified date where you can see it. If a date looks old, that is your signal and ours.
- Re-verified on a schedule. Settings paths rot. Guides are re-walked on a rolling schedule and corrected the moment they drift; anything awaiting its check is marked in verification rather than published anyway.