What practical steps have you taken or are you thinking of taking to make sure that you don’t find yourself trapped in a filter bubble or in a situation where you are giving up more personal information on the web than you’d like?

In terms of avoiding getting trapped in a filter bubble, I try to get my information from a variety of sources. Whether it be news articles, features of educational value, or even shopping deals, I do not really on one website to keep me informed. For example, even though I fall on the hyper-liberal end of the political spectrum, I read more than just The New York Times and TIME. I don’t like to rely on the likes of Buzzfeed for news either. (For the record, I try to only turn to Buzzfeed for leisurely purposes–basically just to kill time with pointless quizzes.) I follow a diverse group of people on Twitter, and when I try to fact-check news bytes that I come across in tweets. On a social level, I try to talk different kinds of people not only to help me broaden my worldview, but also so that they can introduce me to new things.

Going forward, just so I feel more comfortable with how much personal information I’ve unwittingly put on the Web over the years, I will try and read the Terms and Conditions of every new website/service I sign up for. When websites change the Terms and Conditions on me, I will actually try and pay attention. Furthermore, I will try and take advantage of stopdatamining.me, which tells users what websites broker their information and how to remove their information accordingly.