I have neither time, resources nor know-how to like go all out on data privacy. But I try doing things like using Proton for Mail, browsing with DuckDuckGo or Ecosia, messaging on Signal instead of WhatsApp, etc.
But I’m having a hard time responding to people who say “why do you do that, it’s completely pointless since companies like Google have all of our data anyways unless we go all out, and nobody has time for all the effort that takes”.
Nothing, because the confidential financial & health information was already protected by other laws, and the rest was bullshit metadata[1] only good for targeted advertising to pay for free services. It’s their problem.
It only makes sense to protect data that truly matters after you’ve assessed the risk & impact to rationally identify it. Information sufficient for identity fraud, financial records, health records, private communications & online activity you don’t want others to see: protect that. Security in layers is good. However, web browsing activity to public sites that don’t matter, public activity, etc: doesn’t matter, not worth your time.
either already found in the phonebook, plainly observable in the open internet to accessed systems, or voluntarily given ↩︎