The Hidden Side of Browsing Sports Content Online

You switch on your laptop or mobile to catch the second half of the game or see a score during a working meeting. Everything seems to be easy: you type the name of the team, the video appears or the score changes, and you get back to your tasks.

What happens behind the scenes of such an operation, however, is not as obvious. You give away more private data than you think when you browse sports, and many companies get paid to harvest it.

This article will tell you how your personal information is being collected while you are watching sports, how it affects your privacy and financial well-being, and what measures you can take to enjoy your favorite pastime safely.

What Happens Behind the Scoreboard

Modern websites on sports topics are not simply sports websites. The article you are reading about a possible transfer or a playoff is likely covered by dozens of scripts that run in the background of your computer. Some of them perform useful functions such as loading pictures or remembering your favorite team, but most are here just to spy on you.

By opening a web page, you could contact not only your bank and the company behind the service you use but also many external players, including advertising networks, analytics providers, and data brokers. They are going to track your clicks, the time you spend on the web page, what device you are using, and where you are located approximately. 

During the day, with multiple matches to follow, one sports portal could contact up to fifty parties, and you would not know anything about it. The actual content of the webpage is the least of your worries.

The process is not exclusive to sports websites, as many sites gather information like that, and fans are an exceptionally profitable audience for advertisers due to being loyal and emotionally attached to their favorite teams and clubs. Thus, if you are checking sports every weekend, it is worth the money for them.

The Data You Give Away Without Noticing

The overwhelming majority of users believe that their privacy is secured as long as they do not provide their names, addresses, and other contact details on websites. In reality, you leave much more information, doing it involuntarily.

Here are a few items that you disclose every time you visit sports-related sites:

• Your approximate location is obtained from the IP address – you can be tracked within a city or a particular neighborhood even if you do not have GPS enabled on your device.
• A device fingerprint made up of your screen resolution, browser versions, font types, and settings. You can easily guess where the information goes.
• Your browsing history and habits, such as the teams you follow or the times when you are most active on the internet.

All this data forms quite a detailed picture of you. Although you have never mentioned your team preference on any site, you still start seeing advertisements for its gear as soon as it wins a cup. Of course, it is no accident and comes from the fact that your profile is being bought and sold in the advertising market.

It is not said that the gathering of information is always used maliciously or inappropriately. Sometimes it serves to improve the services users really need. However, you cannot be fully aware of how much and where this data travels.

Free Streams and the Price You Actually Pay

When a game becomes available only with a pricey subscription, it is tempting to find free alternatives. But, in fact, the illegal stream sites often involve risks greater than just annoying pop-up ads.

Quite often, these services generate income from aggressive ads, hidden redirects, and even malware. Once you press the wrong button, a fake download starts, a phishing page shows itself under the guise of the authorization form, or cryptocurrency mining begins on your computer. As security specialists state, pirate sports portals contain a lot more of malicious content compared to mainstream sites.

In addition, there are also the quiet risks involved. Those websites usually contain trackers that follow you after you close the tab. At first, you wanted a free stream of the game you are interested in; in the end, you got an additional layer of personal data that can be misused in various ways, plus the computer you have been watching the match on is less protected now than a minute ago.

Does it mean you are forced to buy access to the game you love and watch it on TV? No, but it is important to realize that “free” is synonymous with something being paid by you, be it privacy, the safety of your device, or both.

Ads, Trackers, and the Slowdown You Feel

Have you noticed that a page showing a match score becomes slow to respond, consumes lots of battery life and uses an immense amount of cellular data? It happens because of many ads loaded to the website you are visiting. Every added script equals more requests to make, files to load, and processes that work in the background. All of this makes a significant burden on the phone or a laptop with a poor network connection in particular.

The answer to this issue is in the use of a special adblocker, and they deserve a separate discussion since their functioning varies significantly depending on what kind of blocker you are using. A browser extension, for example, can prevent the appearance of ads on one web page. But a network-level blocker filters the requests of any device connecting to the router, meaning that not only browsers are free from intrusive scripts.

Currently, many privacy services and routers are equipped with built-in ad-blockers that filter known ad and tracker domains and apply the filter to everything coming to your device through the connection. By doing it prior to the content loading, you save yourself from unnecessary delays and can expect much faster browsing. Moreover, your devices that cannot install extensions automatically benefit from it, for instance, a smart TV or a streaming stick.

The approach can hardly be called infallible, but as a minimum, you limit the amount of data transmitted to your smartphone. Even a determined tracker finds a solution to bypass the filter, and some websites can detect the presence of a blocker and warn you. Nonetheless, as a base approach, this strategy proves effective in reducing the load on your devices.

Public Wi-Fi and Game Day Risks

As soon as sports become the object of your interest, you inevitably begin checking the lineup, live updates, or streams at coffee shops or stadiums. The wireless network of the venue becomes quite a popular and convenient means of communication, but it is rather easy to be monitored on that network.

Here are a few basic tips:

• Use websites and applications with a secure connection indicated by the lock icon and the HTTPS protocol.
• Do not log in to any account and avoid any payments on public Wi-Fi, especially during major sporting events when fraudsters know for sure there will be lots of people online.
• Think of using reliable privacy solutions that encrypt your data in a public network.

Of course, many fraudsters and scammers exploit the passion of sports fans, sending emails about free tickets and organizing phishing websites for watching live broadcasts. Do not fall for these tricks as they might bring you trouble.

How to Watch Smarter

The point here is not to frighten you with the hidden dangers of online sports browsing. Instead, it is to show what is happening with your private data in the background while you are reading articles on your favorite teams. Some simple actions are quite sufficient to improve your online sports experience:

• Always prefer reliable websites and applications, update your browsers and other software regularly;
• Clear your cookie data occasionally and review the settings of your frequently visited apps;
• Block ads and trackers at the network level;
• Stay vigilant while using public Wi-Fi;
• Ignore “too good to be true” offers;

Sport is meant to bring fun and pleasure. You should be able to follow news about your favorite team without disclosing too much information to marketers or hackers. This invisible side of watching sports is inevitable, yet manageable when you know about it.