[NeedMoreTea]

Right, and the logical conclusion of this is to stop interacting with companies. Any companies. All companies. Always. Because they are all doing it to an offensive degree. GM want to know where your car has been, and what radio stations you listen to. Facebook want everything, Google have everything. The pretty light bulb you bought is both a privacy risk and an attack vector.

Phone apps want to know your location all the time, Google maps constantly nags you to enable constant location tracking. Every other app has dark patterns to accidentally get the land grab on every mis-click, like Facebook's "Accept", "not yet" and no is buried many clicks deep in a new set of check boxes in some 8th level settings page.

Presumably if I had made my career in a different field like medicine or plumbing you would expect me to "educate" myself enough about IT to understand the real implications too, and the ways the tables can be joined. The genius who tunes your classic car should be learning advanced Wireshark to understand the complete fucking liberties and data mugging the weather app his friend recommended is taking multiple times daily.

It doesn't occur to you that this is ever so slightly asymmetric? Each individual should "take steps" whilst single-handedly going up against the combined might of regulation-free corporate America, where we learn everything can be sold and probably already has been. So what steps if it's not "go live in a cave and buy nothing made since 1999"?

Next week how Vatican City can successfully invade Russia and USA at the same time.

[beaconstudios]

I was thinking more along the lines of don't post stuff online you don't want anyone to know, but sure you could make a whole big deal arguing against a straw man too if that's your bag. There's also some fundamental industry practices that want changing but if you want to do anything more practical than stomping your feet, avoiding posting personal info is a good start.