<p>Let’s say you want to buy some productivity software from Google. It looks great, works well, but there’s something off about the experience. You talk about “fly fishing” in an email to a friend, and suddenly ads are showing up around the web with offers for fishing gear and trips. Not good.</p>
<p>Apple claims to be a privacy advocate, but its not uncommon for a “secure” iMessage to somehow convert to a recommendation from an Apple entertainment service.</p>
<p>And let’s not even mention Facebook and its horde of data-vacuuming sites and services.</p>
<p>All these services and companies seem to be connected by an even shadier collection of data brokers and salespeople willing to profile and collate all our private data so that we can be targeted, judged, assessed, sifted, sold. It has to end. But how?</p>
<p>Companies like Brave, Signal, and Federated, and projects such as GrapheneOS, Nextcloud, Linux, and many others are building “Privacy Always” services, applications, and companies, BUT the solution starts with customers.</p>
<p>Customers must begin to understand key points:</p>
<ol>
<li>Centralization is dangerous. Decentralization gives the customer control. You don’t put all your money in the same account with all the other customers at the bank. So why do that with your priceless, important data?</li>
<li>Payment must be private. How and who we pay is one of the ways “they” get hold to profile us and measure how effective their data harvesting is…</li>
<li>Your data should be protected by keys only you hold. If you don’t hold the keys, then someone else is looking through your stuff, indexing it, profiling it, and using it against you.</li>
<li>You don’t want to use a service that can cancel you if the service doesn’t like your point-of-view or data. Did you know Google is now throwing off files and customers from Google Drive if Google doesn’t like the content of private files under the cover of “terms of service”. It’s not about the politics. It’s about freedom.</li>
<li>Customers have options that respect their privacy and integrity. Customers need to vote with their feet else they will continue to be abused.</li>
</ol>
<p>The time is now. Choose privacy. Choose freedom.</p>
