Axios

Any search engine can quickly reveal your phone number, address and family information with a surprising level of detail. This information, combined with social media posts, can be used by anyone to intimidate, harass, or stalk high-visibility people like politicians, business leaders, celebrities and journalists. However, going through smart opt-out processes can reduce your online footprint, making it more difficult for malicious actors to target you. Here’s how: Go to one of the lists of people aggregator sites, like the one provided by IntelTechniques, and go through the opt-out steps.

Google is launching the Local Experiments Project, an effort to fund dozens of new local news websites around the country and eventually around the world. The tech giant says it will have no editorial control over the sites, which will be built by partners it selects with local news expertise. The first effort within the new Local Experiments Project will be ‘The Compass Experiment," which is a partnership between Google and McClatchy to launch three new, digital-only local news operations on multiple platforms. Google says the investments will be significant.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has reached a historic settlement with Facebook over advertising practices that allegedly discriminated against minorities. As part of five settlements totaling nearly $5 million, Facebook has agreed to make major changes to its ad platform that will help curb discrimination against certain people when it comes to employment, housing and credit ads. Facebook is creating a new advertising process, specifically for marketers that are purchasing ads around employment, housing and credit.

While Democrats' campaign launches have sucked up national attention, President Donald Trump's re-election campaign has quietly spent nearly twice as much as the entire Democratic field combined on Facebook and Google ads. Political advertising strategists say that this level of ad spend on digital platforms this early in the campaign season is unprecedented. The data (captured between December 2018 and now) provides a window into the Trump campaign's 2020 strategy, which until now has been virtually invisible aside from a few rallies.

For all the many controversies around Facebook's mishandling of personal data, Google actually knows way more about most of us.  It likely knows everything you've ever typed into your browser’s search bar and every YouTube video you’ve ever watched. But that's just the beginning. It may also know where you've been, what you've bought and who you communicate with.

On Facebook's map of humanity, the node for "you" often includes vast awareness of your movements online and a surprising amount of info about what you do offline, too. The company has near-total awareness of every move you make on its website or in its apps. Facebook does scan your chat messages, but it isn't exactly reading them — it runs an automated scan for child pornography and other banned content. Facebook sees you less thoroughly outside its own digital turf, but it still sees a lot.

When leaders in Silicon Valley assess the new antitrust fever among candidates and policymakers, the prospect of corporate breakups isn't their biggest worry. Instead, insiders fear missing the next cycle of industry change if they're distracted and hobbled by antitrust conflicts. If executives are busy answering lawmaker inquiries and defending regulator lawsuits, they're less likely to be protecting their businesses from upstart challengers.