ExtremeDullard, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

I get you want privacy, but there’s a line where it just stops making sense, and your personal info isn’t that valuable. Anyway

Actually, you don’t need perfect privacy. You just need good enough privacy, and here’s why:

If you’re a low-value target - i.e. a random internet user, that’s you and me - always remember that your value is low: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook… expend a certain amount of resources to fish for enough of your data to earn them a return on their investment. We’re low-value targets, so they first and foremost go for the low hanging fruits: the people who don’t know, don’t care, wallow in social media without any restraint and make it particularly easy to gather data from.

All you have to do is make it hard enough and expensive enough for the corporate surveillance collective to lose money on you: create accounts full of fake data and don’t post personal information - or make up fake personal information in your posts - to poison their wells. Don’t post photos of you or your family. Use throwaway email addresses. Use a deGoogled phone. Don’t browse without an ad blocker set on reasonably high. Use a browser with anti-fingerprinting. Don’t fill out Costco membership cards. Pay with cash stuff that you don’t want anybody to know about. Etc etc.

In other words, adopt a reasonable-enough privacy hygiene so that you’re not part of the low hanging fruits. It doesn’t have to be drastic, just good enough to make you not worth the sonsabitches’ time and effort.

If you’re a high-value target however, a Snowden or an Assange, that’s a different proposition. But for the rest of us, private enough is good enough.