You Are Easier to Track Than You Think and Harder to Erase Than Advertised

You think you are pretty good at privacy.

You have a VPN. You use incognito mode. You once cleared your cookies and felt like Edward Snowden for about forty five minutes. You have told at least one person at a brunch that you are "pretty careful about your digital footprint," which is the modern equivalent of saying you eat clean while your DoorDash history looks like a crime scene.

You are not careful. None of us are. And you are not being tracked by some supercomputer in a bunker under Utah, at least not only that. You are being tracked by the most boring, most efficient surveillance apparatus ever invented: capitalism with good APIs.

Welcome to the part where we talk about how exposed you actually are.

The Lie of Being Boring