I gave up on the Privacy Battle, so did you. But, we can do better.

A person is good and honest, it takes a people to lie and cheat.

Toby Balsley

I used be extremely protective about my Social Security Number, and my birthdate. I used to never use my Credit Card online. I used to fight the battles of 'face-recognition' in public malls, the reading of license plates, the use of RFID. It drove me crazy, and i thought it was the end of the civilized world. Used to. Read on.

Mis-use is the problem, not the sharing. And lets be clear, they DO abuse. Yet, the services are often useful, desirous, and free for us, and in turn, should be viable and profitable for the data gather. Let's look at a few and how to protect your data.

Facebook

Facebook is evil incarnate - never trust them. My belief is that every person at Facebook may good, it is Facebook that's evil. The turnover at FB is near instantaneous. People are not there long enough to allow good to prevail. This does not mean don't use them. There is value to me, as i am more connected to my peripheral world than without. They are peripherally helpful but not life-alteringly so. Obviously to world believes at least this by Facebooks prevalence and penetration, and its is viable due to its profitability (even in view of 2018-2019's year of facebook privacy missteps.). So complain all you want, they are not going away, and most all the world WILL increasingly continue to use them.

They have abused my information too many times. Certain corners of my life, merged with other nooks and found out things i didn't want them to know (nothing embarrassing , i just like compartentalizing parts of my life) - and i knowing tried to manage this. While just keeping my feet wet in the ocean of facebook, this happened. I still am on facebook - I expect and accept (and almost want), that they know all me, my age, family, gender, know all my friends, my travel locations, my like and dislikes. I like the service, and begrudging use it on a semi-regular basis and therefore willing the give something up for that. Facebook should be profitable an I am ok with all this. However, you don't get to change my privacy setting (by creating new ones) on updates. You don't get to flag me where id not want to be flagged. Don't track my 'intra-message' location. Don't buy and aggregate data beyond your boarders. And for gods sake - you don't get to make a financial system (libra) that the world may start to use a real currency. The privacy lawsuits show the intent of the company. I don't trust you and you should be reigned in. I hope congress breaks this o And all other options suck. But once you know and accept these things, and are careful (by diligent settings management, game selection, and attentive likes/posts), go forth and share.

Google

Google is an amazing company. Some of the smartest mathematicians in the wold work here. They have changed the world, and continue to mold it. While the original motto may potentially have been "don't be evil", today they do a good job of looking at things that can help both you and them, while attempting to not look specifically at you. While there are lawsuits, and google did lose 22 civil suit in a privacy judgment, they seem to be operating reasonably legal - albeit a bit scary.

So here we go.

• What do they do and know?
  • The computer reads your mail, and targets directly in your gmail screen. But its much more, all your email (across several ID's) is categorized and mined for interesting bits of information.
  • Who you will vote for. Your political affiliation is easier than you think.
  • What you look like (android photos / google photos), your age, race, gender, and preference, and what you SOUND like (ever use google
  • Who your fiends are
  • Where you go, where you live, where you work, how fast you drive, what restraurnt you frequent, your health club, what church you go to and where your kids go to school.
  • When you and where you WILL travel or wish to travel.
  • Much more. Do you know how much the computers can glean about you by looking at just a few Youtube videos you have seen of the past few years? Let's not even talk about 'like and subscribing'.
  • More - here is a great info-graph from a VPN company.
• How can I limit them? Google does a good job at giving you access the components of what they know, and control of what they track. Even deletion if you want. Now, once data is anonymised you cannot trace it once it is in the hands of others - thats the idea of anonymisation.
  • Check and adjust your myactivity / privacy settings. Look around, be shocked, and then delete it.
  • Get and use a VPN
  • Turn off location monitoring
  • Clean up your old online data
  • Switch to DuckDuckGo. Set it up in all your devices. Its a little bit of a pain but here's how.

Apple continues to be a privacy forward thinking company. Why? Well you pay big buck for what you receive from them. The business model is to sell computers, phones, and other cool hardware - and not information about you. Hardware is money, not you.

Google, Facebook, Apps, and most other compnaies on this list -YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.

Weather Apps use your location data 24hours ( read more on that here ) a day, 365.2425 days a year. But how many of us know these weather apps abuse and sell the data in appropralty? TheWeatherChannel app is been sued for misuse and covertly selling to the highest bidder. WeatherBug, was caught by the NY Times sending precise location data to questionalbe third-parties. In 2017, Accuweather bested them all by being the sketchiest weather app as it collected and sold information even when users had location data turned off. Today i asked for all my data from them, deleted the data, then turned all of them off (Accuweather, TWC, WeatherBug, MyRadar, and more). Then i PAID $3.99 to Dark Sky because i like their privacy statement. Basic simple rules that minimize data proliferation and the few downstream folks must follow the same statement (not separate statements ). I want accurate and hyper local forecasts, am willing to pay for this. I want privacy to be understandable, used appropriately. and honored. I hope they work out.

Amazon

With all this said - WHY do you care if your location is sent to everyone? Your social security (as long as the system is protected with good security), your credit card (you give it to a 19 year old waiter who can swipe twice, and pocket the difference) or your face? Abuse of power is a big reason, and should be aggresibly protected. Governments

We need to demand appropriate general world wide reguslation on how to manage this problem - each county has different.