I've been wondering for a long time about the privacy paradox.

If I said Kim Smith earlier now, it says suggest a friend.

He is best. How creepy is that?

And I'm always suspicious. I'm like, how are they getting my name?

We need to treat the data with the utmost seriousness and confidentiality.

I realize I was giving Google all of my children's faces.

Welcome back to Note to Self Special Weeklong Project, the privacy paradox.

This is our five-part plan to help you take back your digital identity and yourself.

I'm Anish Zomerodi. Day one was called What Your Phone Nose and we delved into metadata.

This is Day Two and it's called The Search for Your Identity.

You know who you are. But who do the algorithms think you are?

How do they see us?

Today we're going to dig into online advertising and how our identities get sorted, defined, and tracked.

If you just found Note to Self in this project, you can head over to privacyparadox.org to sign up.

It takes less than a minute. Our goal is to help you understand more about where your

information goes, to weigh the trade-offs, and then make digital decisions that you can feel better about.

If you haven't already, go back and listen to our launch episode, The Paradox of Privacy.

It explains a lot more the economics and technology behind what we're talking about, too.

Let's get on with today's challenge and the search for your identity.

American shop like crazy, that's what we do.

Joseph Toro is a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

He studied the marketing and advertising industry for decades and he has a new book out called

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