I honestly feel defeated right now, it feels like currently it’s impossible to truly stay private online unless one is willing to move to a cabin in the woods with no internet and you stop using tech all together and truly become a ghost and stay offline. Can someone help me feel like everything I am currently doing is actually making a difference? Because right now it doesn’t feel like it.
consumers feel companies hold discounts hostage behind data tracking
Unfortunately it’s even worse than that. They hold MSRP hostage. They’re not offering any discounts for tracking you. They’ve marked everything up, and are only willing to give you the regular price if they can track you and reap that extra data money. Otherwise they’re going to charge you extra for getting in the way of their second revenue stream. Apparently running an honest business isn’t enough for corporations now. Squeeze blood from a turnip, or GTFO.
Just give fake data for everything you are not legally required to give your real info for.
I guess it depends on your age and how old you look but even when I did have to show Id it was just that, show it to the cashier. I wouldn’t let any random person scan it.
That being said I could totally go without alcohol if needs be.
And even if you ‘exit’ to the woods, you’ll be easy to note, just by your absence (When the majority of the population are present, it is easier to note who is absent).
But we have to keep pushing back about these absurdities.
I totally agree we need to push back, especially when this information can be used for more than just selling you toothpaste.
https://gizmodo.com/how-to-get-an-abortion-keep-personal-information-safe-1848874362
We are absolutely sleepwalking into the worst possible tech futures. It’s so ubiquitous now that even if you’re able to explain to someone how bad things are, trying to avoid this type of data collection would almost take Edward Snowden - level planning and obsession, so people just kind of give up before they even start.
The truth is that even the small actions you can take help make your data a little less valuable. They’re collecting so much data from so many people, that they really don’t have any easy way of verifying the data in your profile. So while there’s essentially no way to go back to when you had NO data, the accuracy and relevance of the data can be soured so that their use-cases for it are less successful. Assuming you’re already using an adblock or VPN to do most of your browsing, the biggest things are phone app data collection and purchases through a credit card via online portals as well as in-person. If you can avoid those, most of what they use the data for is a lot less successful. I would also avoid social media apps or sites where login is required, as they can scrape data on how long you look at any given image or ad with a pretty high degree of accuracy.
If you’re dead-set on perfection, you’re bound to feel helpless. But you should feel good about the little steps you take that 80-90% of people aren’t, because you’re that much harder to target via your data footprint.
It’s interesting to me to see articles about this now, when the first rewards card I saw (every bit of 20 years ago) it was obvious why they would give you such steep discounts for using nothing more than a free card.
Reminds me how a popular pharmacy here won’t give you the real market price of medicine until you give them your national ID number, if you don’t they are horrendously jacked up.
Here we just skip straight to the horrendously jacked up prices.
Just use cash or prepaid. Simple.
