If you are a regular user on Reddit, you may be wondering, can Reddit track you?
Yes, Reddit can track you. Reddit often tracks your user data that they can sell to advertisers. Their online privacy policy even states that they will in fact share your information to third parties for advertising purposes.
This is a fair question to ask since Reddit is one of the largest websites on the planet with a massive user base. As such, there is a lot of information available that could be useful to advertisers.
Additionally, since Reddit is an online discussion forum, users are regularly giving away information about themselves, making them especially vulnerable to ads.
Reddit does have a Premium option wherein users can pay a subscription fee every month for ad-free use.
However, most users obviously do not opt for this option and thus will have to see ads. Since ads are based on your preferences and data.
Want to know when your Reddit post will get the most visibility? Check out our guide on the best time to post.
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Can Reddit Track You?
Reddit can indeed track you, and this is one of the main reasons why Reddit has been able to make so much money as a private company for such a long time. While Reddit initially started as a content aggregator, the site has slowly become more and more like a social network, and this is not without its reasons.
As you may know, the vast majority of social networks make their money by selling their users’ information. By encouraging users to share more about themselves, Reddit has made their job of collecting and selling your data quite a bit easier.
Reddit is a massive online hub that caters to a vast array of users on a global scale. As such, it is only natural that they would aim to track and collect user information to give to advertisers and marketers. On the app, you are also helping them by providing your thoughts, opinions, and ideas on many different topics of interest to you.
The depth of information at Reddit’s fingertips from its active users is immense. If privacy is a massive concern to you, then your use of a public online forum may not be the best idea. However, there was a security breach wherein the personal data of thousands of users was compromised. As such, knowing that the answer to the question ‘can Reddit Track you”, is yes, you should make sure you are cognizant of your activity on the site.
What happens if I sign into Reddit with another Site?
Although Reddit has its own mobile app service where you can make an account, many users choose to access Reddit via a third-party application such as their Facebook or Gmail. If you do this, you are also giving these third-party applications the ability to track your information and online activity for their own use.
For example, if you sign in using Facebook, Facebook will now have access to your activity on Reddit and can use it for their own targeted advertising.
If you find yourself asking yourself, ‘can Reddit track me’, then you should also wonder if third-party sites are also tracking your Reddit use. Adjust your privacy settings on those sites as well to protect yourself while using Reddit.
How can you change your privacy settings to protect your privacy?
To ensure your use of the app is safe and secure, you can likely adjust your User Settings. When you are on the website, you will likely find the settings option in the top right corner. Although there are not too many settings options, you do have a ‘privacy and security’ tab that will come in handy here.
Under that tab, you will see different privacy options. The first thing you can do is to turn off search engine indexing and log off any outbound links.
Reddit generally allows search engines like Google and Bing to index your profile. This means that Google can track your posts and comments as well as your subReddits. If you do not want this information openly visible, then turn off this setting.
Additionally, your data is recorded whenever you visit some website through a link on Reddit. To avoid this, turn off outbound links.
What other steps can I take to protect my data?
One of the main things you can do to protect your data is to avoid using your legal name and to come up with some other username. This means that your data, even if tracked by Reddit, will not be available to random people.
Secondly, you may want to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to hide your identity. Even if you change your name, your IP and geographic location will be available to the company. However, if you use a VPN, you can make sure sites like Reddit cannot track your IP.
If you wish to remain truly secure, these two things will definitely do it. However, your user data will still be tracked for advertising.