[ef4]

> Getting off GMail is one of the best ways to take back your data in the face of dragnet surveillance.

This just isn't true. You can host your own mail server and GMail will probably still end up hosting a large fraction of the email you read and write, because the people you correspond with are still using GMail.

(In the same vein, you can refuse to have a Facebook account but Facebook probably has a dossier on you anyway. Enough people you know have dumped their contacts into Facebook that they already know your place in the social graph.)

[dade_]

That is a very defeatist position.

[KeepFlying]

Defeatest of realist?

You can and should work to reduce your footprint if that concerns you, but there are still systematic issues that make it hard to stay completely outside of there services. Mainly what OP mentioned with contact uploads.