Recently I have come to really hate the fact that my every move online is tracked and categorized and fed back to me in ad format. Doesn't seem to matter if it's from an email, facebook post, or anything, I always get it fed back to me (often times in less than 60 seconds).
What are good alternatives to google, gmail, facebook, and the like
So far, I'm thinking duckduckgo as a search engine (though I get ads from searches I make on there too). Slack as a workaround for facebook contacts (though at some point, I'd like my own website/forums). No real clue on email. I'm also debating just making a fake facebook account so I can continue to benefit from the groups (bands, hobbies, and etc.).
any help or ideas for reducing my online footprint would be great!
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Your actions are being tracked in the modern digital economy, as metadata. There isn't so much of a big brother as a million algorithms, and the effort to extract yourself from it really doesn't do you any favors and can do things like lower your credit or make you more likely to suffer identity theft and/or physical theft.
The risks are... that you get targeted add content. That's really it. Unless you are involved in illegal or grey-legality matters none of it is a hinderance so much as just the way things are.
You can do that but I’ll warn you, the non targeted ads generally devolve into the lowest common denominator type advertising and instead of seeing dumb ads about kickstarters I’ve already backed or race car office chairs I don’t want, I end up getting long form libertarian bs advertisements. I personally prefer the former intruding on my timeline rather than the latter so I’ve decided to let them go ahead with the targeted ads.
Next you'll want something like privacy badger
You might want some sort of javascript blocking beyond those, but honestly ublock and privacy badger will help pretty much completely.
Even if you wiped out, they would still find your data by picturing it together with the absense. You are off grid, but your previous records exist and your friends and family still use these services, so instead of as targeted as they currently have instead they build a predictive picture of what you would do from association maps between your network information.
The only way you can stop companies like Google and their ilk is by voting. Only state and federal law can constrain them, no amount of end user changes will effectively alter their behavior.
I made that switch already
I realize it's mostly futile, but what the heck. A few addons, a new email address, and a different browser won't hurt me. Not a whole lot I can do about the car or credit card. I guess it should be noted at least that I don't get location based ads anymore since I turned off google tracking.
edit: and I vote!
It's inescapable now, unless you divorce yourself from society as a whole. And the only thing that can constrain it is society as a whole. So swap browsers, use proxies, etc. If that makes you feel better, but it really won't make a difference and your end result will still feed Google, just through a slightly different automated process than filtering your searches.
thanks to you, google already knows of my sadness!
Clearly, Google knowing of your sadness made your life better!
A good VPN also makes what you do more private
Most tracking is done via server-side identity tracking at this point.
I always use cash for anything I buy, I use a prepaid burner cell phone because of no monthly cost. Public computers for the same reason and a cheap old car.
I haven't really found it to be that much more of a hassle and I save lots of money.