I wrote this post in 2020. In October 2026 I went through it again: I fixed what was outdated or inaccurate and replaced the recommended tools. In part two I write about what changes now that we also talk to artificial intelligence.
In fact, let them take it! After all, I get to use great, reliable software for free. I’d rather watch ads than pay! Arguments like these tend to come up whenever I get into a debate about protecting our data. I have to admit, I think similarly: I’m only willing to pay for software when there’s a very good reason, even though many people put a lot of work into building it. This post is about why the issue isn’t that simple.
Is this all right?
I don’t like it when someone argues that they’re beyond reproach anyway and don’t care if everything is known about them – they could stick their data on their forehead for all they care. Let’s assume that’s true; let’s not even go there. But if you look at it this way, you’re missing the point entirely. The point, once again, is power. Monopolies over this much power have never ended well, and the tech giants have swept everyone else aside and, through the internet, can be present in all of our homes.
Our data is turning out to be the most valuable raw material of our time. In this post I’ll focus on the two biggest players, Google and Facebook (now Meta).
Let’s assume that those who hold most of our data currently act ethically and, besides raking in profit, pay special attention to making sure no one can ever abuse these treasures. Even then, we can’t be sure that the next management, shareholder pressure or a human error won’t push our future in a fatal direction. So the mere fact that this much power is concentrated in a single organisation is bad news. We all make mistakes, which is a risk even if Google is driven by goodwill and love. But let’s also be clear that they’ve already proven they can’t handle our data responsibly.
First, let’s get clear on what this data actually is. I know that you know your data makes money, and let’s say you don’t mind companies making money from it, since they don’t say who the data belongs to – you’re just an ID. But let’s try an experiment: try to work out what these companies know about you. Have no illusions: every flick of your finger is tracked, analysed, used to draw conclusions and stored. I’m sure it has happened to you that after a conversation on Messenger you started getting ads on the topic. But whatever you search for, whatever email you write, wherever you travel, whenever you click through from a page, look at a shoe ad a bit longer, skip a boring part of a YouTube video, cut your Thursday jog short or arrive early for a meeting – they’re always watching everything. If you spend only 40% of your day at a computer or on your phone, you experience 40% of your thoughts being watched. It may only be an ID, but behind that ID a good part of your thoughts is being stored.
When I was looking for an engagement ring for Orsi, I was extremely careful not to be tracked, and as you’ll see in this post, that’s not so easy. I had to be, because it would have been awkward if Orsi had caught me scrolling past a ring ad on Facebook – this market has particularly aggressive ads too, with many companies targeting people who want to get married. A friend of mine wasn’t so careful. The poor guy hadn’t even got as far as buying the ring, and his girlfriend’s phone was already flooded with engagement ring ads. Of course it’s no big deal, but it describes the problem nicely.
Here you’ll find most of the data Google has collected about you: searches, apps on your phone, YouTube videos, browsing history – everything you’ve done through any Google product. Based on this, it works out what you’re interested in; this is worth a look too – that’s the 40% of you. At Google you can delete this data too, but it already helps if you turn off personalised ads in the ad centre. You can check the same on Facebook; the list is endless. In the EU you can now choose: either pay for an ad-free subscription or ask for less personalised ads. It’s something, but it shows clearly that here, your data is the price.
No wonder it sometimes happens that someone finds out from Facebook that they’re gay. Or that they know your biggest fears better than you do. And with this data they can steer your thoughts in whatever direction they like. Let’s look at a terrible example.
Story time
Cambridge Analytica was an innovative, young, hugely successful advertising agency. They mainly took on political campaigns in many countries around the world. Through an innocent-looking Facebook quiz app they got hold of the data of about 87 million people – most of them without ever taking the quiz, simply because they were friends with someone who did. They worked on Trump’s 2016 victory and were deeply involved in Brexit too. Their method was chilling: every target group got a solution to its own fears in the ads. A film was made about the company, The Great Hack, which I recommend watching. Of course they’re not the only company doing this; Facebook can sell you more than shoes. Because of the scandal, Mark Zuckerberg had to explain himself before the US Congress, in a legendary Q&A the whole world watched. Facebook was fined 5 billion dollars and tightened its data handling, but the principle hasn’t changed: the data is there, and they make money from it.
Private browsing is a sham
If you click through from a Google search or open an article from Facebook, you can be sure it has been recorded. But what if you’re logged out of your browser and type the address of the page straight into the address bar – can they still identify you? On a large share of websites, Google’s code is sitting there doing its job. Some pages show a Facebook share option or a like button, and those are all there for this too. On top of that, Chrome uses your browsing history in the same way. But even if you go further and put on the private-window mask, everything will still be geared towards linking your browsing to your ID. They watch your behaviour, your operating system, your browser version, your IP address, your screen resolution – even your processor type. Based on all this they can, and will, identify you. All a private window does for you is spare you from deleting the browsing history on your own computer.
That this isn’t a conspiracy theory has been admitted by Google itself: in 2024, to settle a lawsuit, it agreed to delete billions of data records it had collected about people browsing in Chrome’s incognito mode.
Can we do anything at all?
The EU voting in the GDPR is great news. It may have been a headache for smaller companies, but restrictions are needed against the multinationals. Decisions like this need public sentiment behind them, though. I think many people underestimate how much depends on what we think about these issues. If you manage to get enough people to understand a problem, sooner or later something starts to change. It has to be said that countries don’t have much power over these multinationals – for a long time they couldn’t even get them to pay their taxes properly. So think about the topic a little, read up on it, talk about it now and then, and have an opinion! Because this is one of our most important public issues, and we don’t have a firm enough opinion about it.
Many people think a VPN solves everything; in 2020 I promised too much about it myself. A VPN hides your IP address from the sites you visit and encrypts your traffic towards your own network, which is useful on public Wi-Fi, for example. But it only moves the trust: from then on your traffic goes through the VPN provider. And it does little against tracking if you’re logged into Google or Facebook at the same time. If you use one, choose one that has been proven not to keep logs, such as Mullvad or Proton VPN (which has a free plan too).
Use an ethical alternative
The best way to limit the influence of the big companies is not to use them. There are alternatives, and they work pretty well.
For a browser I recommend Brave, on both desktop and phone. This is my simplest and most useful tip. Brave blocks ads and trackers out of the box, no extensions needed. Click the lion next to the address bar to see how many trackers it caught on a given page – it’s worth checking now and then, it can be surprising.
If you want to dig a little deeper, look into Tor. It’s eye-opening how hard it is to avoid being trackable altogether. Tor Browser sends your traffic through three randomly chosen servers, so none of them knows both who you are and what you’re looking at. In exchange, it’s slower.
Instead of Google Maps there’s CoMaps or OsmAnd. Both use the community-built OpenStreetMap, work offline, and don’t send anyone your whereabouts.
Since 2019 I’ve been using DuckDuckGo instead of Google for search. This company doesn’t build a profile of you and doesn’t save your searches. It can be done. Brave Search works on a similar principle and is built into the browser by default. Or there’s Ecosia, a search engine that plants trees with its revenue. I have to admit that on DuckDuckGo I can feel it doesn’t know me, which lets me sleep very well, but it does make searching harder. A specific search noticeably takes more effort than on Google. But it’s worth it to me to use a competitor that also takes privacy seriously.
If you torrent, it’s good to know that anyone who knows your IP address can look up what you’ve downloaded recently, because there’s no encryption here either. In Germany, for example, this is how fines are sent out. On this site you can see when you downloaded what, and it kindly offers to show you what your neighbours have been watching too. If you torrent, use the BiglyBT client, because it has no ads. It’s good to avoid those, because ransomware can slip in with them (in Hungarian); this has happened with several other free programs too.
Google’s code can be on so many websites because we developers put it there. We’ve also switched to ethical analytics: this site now uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which measures only in aggregate, without cookies. If you’d rather run it on your own server, Umami is a great choice too. I recommend it to every web developer!
More and more of my friends tell me they’re trying to use Facebook less. Instead of Messenger I recommend Signal: it’s free, developed by a non-profit foundation, and its encryption is so good that WhatsApp is built on it. Of course it’s nearly impossible to leave the big companies’ web completely. There’s an alternative for everything, but they’re more cumbersome to use, especially since all the big companies make incredibly usable software that really does figure out what you want to do. I believe the ones I’ve recommended above hold their own.
Right, off I go to put that sad, resigned full stop at the end of this post, and then share it on Facebook. I continue in part two: there it’s no longer about our clicks, but about how we think.