Yes, for me this has probably been the biggest and also the easiest one. So much data, in my case, willingly given to one of the worst companies from a privacy stand point. Every photo, email, etc, etc. Email was a very easy transition over a few months, I’m shocked but how quickly I’ve got the point of only logging into gmail once every 6 months or so just to check if anything still going there. I realized I didn’t really need all of my photos going to their servers, now running no backup for photos although my plan is to start using iTunes for periodic encrypted local backups to my PC, mainly for photos and contacts.

This is an excellent one and one I’ve been dreading getting to. I have a system that works great among several credit cards all setup to optimize cash back and track certain spending my having specific purposes for the various cards. These are all mainstream providers, although I haven’t looked I can assume the privacy policies are not great.

I’d love a service that could offer both an internally good privacy policy as well as allowing for many virtual cards that don’t require a real name to validate. I could envision a service that works like this…

• Still a credit card.
• Unlimited or near unlimited virtual cards, no real name required with merchant to validate.
• Similar protections as other credit cards regarding fraud etc, generally accepted as much safer than using debit.
• Binning to allow categories for the various virtual cards (only really helpful for tracking purposes, guess this could always be done by hand).
• Decrease cash back amount - say 0.5 % with the difference between the more typical 1-3% based on category being extra profit to offset what is lost by not sharing any customer data with other parties.

I realize Privacy.com probably comes close on some of these but works more like a debit card from what I understand. Of course cash is the best but I’m not sure that convenience tradeoff is one I’m ready to make yet, but more power to you. That is a LOT of personal data not bouncing around various parties.

I think the issue is with what is implied by the headline as well as the context of being posted on a privacy community. I as well as many others probably ready that headline assuming the police somehow had access to that data from the app outside of the person’s phone. I know that also makes some assumptions, but probably the ones most people on a privacy community are thinking/making. Most of us would be assuming that if the app was sharing this data with police, or the police had some back door way of accessing it, then this would be a big privacy news item. The fact that they viewed the data on an unlocked phone and app is much less a privacy concern, more of a policy concern that they are allowed and able to do that (admittedly, still privacy related but to me this is like 80% policy concern and 20% privacy related). Also what actually happened is pretty different from what the headline on a privacy community implies which is where people are having issue. Some examples of this to make it even more clear…

• Statement: Facebook post “My aunt got her covid vaccine and died within 24 hours! Don’t trust these vaccines!”
• Implication: The covid vaccine killed her.
• Reality: She was in a car accident on the way home.

The statement isn’t technically false. The first sentence is true, the second sentence can absolutely be the opinion of the poster. But the combination implies that she died from the vaccine, something totally different from what actually happened.

• Statement: c/Privacy post “Police use OneNote information to convict murder suspect!”
• Implication: Moreso because of being on a privacy community, most would read this as police somehow having access to OneNote data either through sharing or backdoor.
• Reality: Suspect had a print out of their shopping list made in OneNote consisting of a shovel, ducktape, bleach etc and coordinates of a remote spot where body was found laying on their desk at home.

If it was posted to a non privacy related community, the assumption that there was a privacy concern may be much less, but I think the headline would still be misleading. In the facebook example the person was misrepresenting what happened to push a political agenda that vaccines are bad. In both the murder example and in the article linked in your post, the headline is trying to misrepresent what happened to increase engagement.

There are very clear reasons why the headlines weren’t the following:

• British police use data found on unlocked phone to investigate miscarriage. (Still concerning for reasons of morality and policy, but probably not going to get tons of attention on a privacy community)\
• RIP my aunt who died in a car crash on her way home after getting the covid vaccine.
• Police convict murderer found with evidence of crime on suspect’s desk. (Yes, I realize the list isn’t “evidence” per say, but you see what I mean. This post would not get any attention either.)

Since this got really long, it’s important to say I was just trying to show how the headline is misrepresentation of what happened. I don’t think you posted it with any ill intention or that there aren’t other moral and political issues with what is happening.

The assumed connection between advertising and privacy. While they are often related, there are situations where they can be different concerns. Two very common lines of reasoning I see a lot:

• Regarding Brave - that is is just an advertising company so shouldn’t be considered for privacy - without getting into a whole debate about Brave, I think advertising can (and used to for many years) be done in a way that doesn’t harm privacy. And while many privacy advocates may be 100% against advertising of any kind, I think there are some people out there that care a lot about the privacy but not as much against any ad of any kind. The idea of a model that respects privacy but allows for advertising supported free content is at very least interesting to me.

• The assumption that Apple’s growing advertising business must mean declines in privacy coming. While they certainly could lead to that, I don’t think that is a given. There are several areas (specifically areas where already browsing 3rd party items such as apps or businesses) where contextual ads could be effective without harming privacy at all. Not saying I approve at all of these advertising moves on what are sold as premium devices, just that the assumed decrease in privacy is assuming a lot.

My point is only that these can and potentially should be looked at as separate issues. I’m not ignoring that there is a conflict of interest created where a company like Brave could go back on privacy features to improve the advertising features or that Apple does the same for their advertising money, but I think it’s a bit of a miss to assume the worst possible outcome in these and other scenarios.

And at least that entity has some stake in doing what they say they are doing. Proton VPN just to pick one as an example should care a lot about if a story were ever to surface about not being trustworthy as users would leave since that’s it’s only purpose.

My ISP on the other hand probably doesn’t care too much since my choices are A) take it, or B) leave it and go without internet (or drastically subpar services, 5G internet, satellite, etc).