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

Snowden

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.

Common sense.

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

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

Advertisements and how media tends to treats people like they’re stupid

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

I was actually praising Google for some reason when I was still in elementary school. I discovered Firefox, uBlock Origin and other stuff then got into privacy at the age of 14.