How can normal users increase their privacy, safety and security online?
Over the last two decades, the internet quietly rebuilt itself around a business model that depends on knowing everything about you. Every app you install or use, every account you create, every website you visit, and every form you fill out becomes another data point feeding a system designed to track, profile, and monetize you and your identity.
This process is often referred to as surveillance capitalism and creates an economy where attention and personal data are the product and you are the raw material.
The mechanics of this are almost invisible day to day. A single email address becomes the thread that ties together your shopping habits, your health searches, your location history, and your social connections.
Data brokers exist specifically to aggregate these threads, buying, selling, and cross-referencing fragments of your life until they can construct a profile more complete than most people would recognize about themselves.
