What you don't give away can't be sold.

null recommends tried and tested, scored tools for protecting your privacy. No account, no tracking, and none of the links are affiliate links.

Open the tools Why does it matter?

The layer around the planet is not atmosphere, it is data: @ your address, # your ID, $ what you are worth.

If it's free, you are the product.

The ad market lives on knowing as much about you as it can. In this business a fine is not a punishment, it is a line item.

$237.9 billion: Google's advertising revenue in 2023.
€1.2 billion: Meta's record fine in 2023, for unlawfully transferring European data.
Under 1%: What that fine came to as a share of Meta's revenue that year.

Source: the 2023 annual reports of Alphabet and Meta, and the decision of the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC).

Photo: Peter Forster, Unsplash

The dots become a face.

An advertiser does not need your name. A few data points are enough: where you go, when you sleep, what you click. Together they make up your profile, and it fits you exactly.

Move the pointer over the picture, and whoever is watching comes out from behind the dots.

Encryption says no for you.

A well-encrypted message is read only by the person you meant it for. Not the provider, not the advertiser, and not whoever is listening along the way. That is guaranteed by mathematics, not by a promise.

Pick an end-to-end encrypted messenger, such as Signal.
Turn on disk encryption on your phone and your computer.
Use a password manager, and a different password for every account.

One data point is nothing. Ten thousand is a pattern.

Every grain of sand is a small trace: a search, a location, a like. Each is insignificant alone; together they draw your habits.

Move the pointer through the sand, or click in it.

You don't stay because it's good. You stay because everyone is there.

The strongest chain the big platforms have is not technology, it is the people you know. If your family, your school and your workplace are all with one company, the price of leaving is being left out.

The family group: It lives in one messenger, and nobody is moving for your sake.
The work account: Mail, calendar and documents all come from the same company.
Ten years of photos: They sit in one cloud that is hard to take everything out of at once.

The white pixel is you. Try dragging it away from the others: it gives, but it does not let go. The threads can be retied one at a time, though, with these tools.

If you can't disappear, make noise.

One half of defence is giving away less. The other half is making sure that what gets collected anyway is worth nothing: fake clicks, random searches, poisoned images. A profile is only a product while it is true.

Every drop is a false trace. Move the pointer, and yours gets lost among the rest. The tools of active resistance.

Tools

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Every move you make leaves a trace. Here it fades.