You probably think of your online life as a series of small, harmless moments: a quick search, a few likes, a photo posted from the couch. But those moments add up, and most of us don’t realize how much they say about us. According to Pew Research Center, about two-thirds of Americans say they understand little to nothing about what companies do with their personal data.

Here are five online habits that reveal more about you than you’d expect, and what you can do about each one.

1. The Posts You Like

You don’t have to write anything personal for a platform to learn a lot about you. A well-known 2013 study of more than 58,000 volunteers found that Facebook Likes alone could be used to predict sensitive traits like sexual orientation, political views, religion, and personality. In head-to-head comparisons, the model could tell Democrats from Republicans 85% of the time. Follow-up research found that computer-based personality judgments from Likes were more accurate than those made by friends, family, and spouses.

That study is over a decade old, and Facebook has since changed how public Likes work. But the underlying idea, that small behaviors reveal big things, is the foundation of modern ad targeting.

Try this: Check who can see your likes, follows, and activity on each platform, and limit it to friends or turn it off where you can.

2. The Photos You Send

Every photo you take can carry hidden information, including the date, your device, and sometimes the exact location where it was taken. Most big social platforms strip that data from the copy other people can download, but they still receive your original file first.

The bigger risk is how you share. Email attachments and cloud-storage links like Google Drive or Dropbox typically send the original file untouched, and some messaging apps keep location data when you send a photo as a file rather than a regular picture.

Try this: Turn off location tagging in your phone’s camera settings, and before you send an original photo to someone you don’t know well (or post it in a marketplace listing), strip the metadata first.

3. How You Type

This one sounds like science fiction, but it’s real research. The rhythm of your typing is unique enough that it was first developed as a way to verify your identity as you type. Scientists are also studying whether typing speed, pauses, and accuracy can point to changes in stress or mood. One study of daily typing found that people with more severe depression tended to show more variable typing speed and shorter typing sessions.

It’s important to keep this in perspective: much of the research is early and based on small groups, and it’s mostly used in studies and authentication tools, not to diagnose anyone. But it shows how even your most ordinary behavior can generate data.

Try this: Review which keyboard apps and third-party keyboards you’ve installed and what permissions they have. Stick with your phone’s built-in keyboard or a keyboard app from a company you trust.

4. The Apps That Know Where You Go

Your phone’s location history can tell a story you’d never post online: where you live, where you work, and where you go when you think no one is watching. The Federal Trade Commission has taken action against several data brokers over this. It alleged that one company, Mobilewalla, sold raw location data that wasn’t anonymized and used it to build audience segments, including one aimed at women who visited pregnancy centers. In another case, the FTC alleged that Gravy Analytics used location data to sell products targeting people by political