I got key-logged by an abusive parent when I was 14. If that doesn’t make you take digital privacy and security seriously, nothing else will.

I hate ads.

PRISM, the American empire mass espionage program

I thought I was doing great protecting my information. Then a former employer was hacked and everything is out there including my mother’s maiden name.

But hey I got one year of credit monitoring for free… helpful when my credit has been locked since forever…

Initally Facebook, but then also Google and Microsoft.

Piracy

I’ve been online since the early 90s, when it was just understood that there were risks, so you had to protect yourself. So it’s not so much that I got into internet privacy as that I’ve never done things any other way.

The only thing that’s really changed is that I’ve had to shift more from passively protecting myself to actively protecting myself, since corporate and government shitstains are constantly scheming to destroy our privacy in order to expand and protect their own wealth, power and privilege.

Data breaches and just in general, what every company seemingly knows about me even if I never used their products, and how much reach those companies have on you that’s just plain inescapable like health insurance and banks?

Do I really care that Banana Co knows I like bananas? No. Do I care that my health insurance could deny a claim based on what I purchase at the grocery store? Absolutely. Companies use that data to serve their interests first. Especially when it comes to endangered rights like LGBTQ+, people of color and abortion rights, it makes it easy to feed all that data in an opaque AI black box and discriminate against you, with no way to prove it and no legal recourse.

Especially true with for example, Jews during Nazi germany, or right now anti-war russians in Russia. Lack of privacy can be plain dangerous.

I wanted the freedom of Android/Linux, then privacy was easy

Common sense.

If I’m being honest the switch from Reddit to Lemmy and this instance…

Data breaches where my information was leaked and used against me. I didn’t know any better unfortunately at the time.

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Big tech made me do it. I wish it were the standard procedure.