Author: Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

We sum up our four-part privacy series with some thoughts on where the tech firms need to improve for the consumer.

Apple is less data hungry than Facebook, Google and Amazon and processes data on device instead of Cloud. But apps still track you on iPhone and iPad.

Facebook denies it monitors your conversations to serve you ads on your News Feed. So what does it really do? And why are there so many coincidences?

You can turn off some of the tracking, but then many Amazon features won’t work. And if you want to delete your Alexa recordings, you need the app.

Search giant’s “Location History” is an opt-in feature, but Google prompts users to turn it on for better recommendations. In turn, they get followed.

The Google owned network has come under fire for showing videos to children that aren’t appropriate. Children’s programming is the No. 1 category on YouTube.

Kids programming is YouTube’s most popular category. But with no curation, kids can stumble into sex, hate, conspiracy videos, and parents are upset.

Apple, Google & Facebook’s instant sign-in is safer than tough passwords, says Google exec. If true, no more fiddling with #s, letters and symbols.

Your smartphone camera timer, flashlight app, using the back facing camera instead of the front one and paying attention to lighting can really help.