‘Should i bother installing door locks? Someone’s already been in my house’

Yes. They have everything up to X date. Protect your future

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

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Should you quit smoking even though you’ve already been smoking for 7 years?

Better to not have started smoking, but still good to stop now.

The longer you go without giving new data, the less useful your old data will be. 6 months without new data? Not that big of a difference. 6 years without new data? Now that’s a big deal.

If you found out that your mechanic had been ripping you off for the last 7 years, would you keep going to them for car repairs just because you’d already lost so much money to them?

It’s not just about the practical aspects, it’s about the principle. The big corpos make money from selling your data, do you really want to keep helping them make money off you after finding out how they do it?

You absolutely should. With time, the data they have on you will grow outdated, meaning they won’t be able to track an analyze your behaviour because they’ll have no idea how you behave now. It’s like the trail going cold. Hell, just becoming privacy focused already makes it near-impassible to be tracked, and since privacy-aware software doesn’t track, collect, sell or buy your data, what little they have will be much less useful. Also, if you live in the EU, the GDPR gives you a right to request the deletion of all data they have on you, and they must comply. Most other places probably also have laws in place to request the deletion of your data.

You probably had different interest, travel, and product usage patterns now than you did ten years ago. I don’t see why behavioral patterns wouldn’t continue to change going forward, so as old data becomes obsolete taking care of present and future data is still worth doing to some extent even if past data might be freely available.

Everyone should be more aware, custom ROMs, Linux, Foss applications, use Foss YouTube clients, privacy focused email account and tor browser, VPN if possible, torrent things you want to watch rather than Netflix, use cash not card and definitely do not add cards to your mobile devices. People need to stop using non-pirvacy respecting service as it negatively impacts everyone.

But I also understand that some will knowingly give information for “convenience”. We all need to do our part in writing history. Vote with our attention, wallets .

Also in ops position, google, apple and all these products are gathering data for advertising, if your not seeing the adverts from your previous habits then that information is somewhat worthless so yes be privacy focused, using adblocker count towards you privacy. Good luck in your journey op

You should care, but it’s maybe more of a question about how much and about what specific things. There are some easy-to-do things, and then there’s others that get exhausting

Some of this depends on why you care about privacy and where you live. It’s a lot of work, and in some places, like the US, there’s a lot of data being sold anyway (credit/debit cards, tvs, streaming services, and stores can almost all sell some of your data and it can be difficult to stop them). Keeping Bluetooth on also enables you to be tracked going in and out of stores and other various locations.

It can be a lot of work, but some things are more worthwhile than others. There are likely some things you’re just going to have to live with.

Of course. Very few people here would have been privacy conscious when they first started using the internet. There will inevitably be some amount of data available about all of us. The key thing to realise about privacy is that it is generally more about damage limitation/mitigation rather than outright prevention.

Yes. the you that is most valuable to others, is you, as you are today, so right now is a perfectly fine time to embrace privacy focused practices!

Thanks to the CPRA (recent legislation, it only took effect at the start of this year), most companies must delete everything they know about you when asked to do so.

There are now companies that will automatically submit those requests on your behalf.

So.

When you’re ready to stop the flow, check out services like Incogni. They’ll submit requests to data brokers on your behalf automatically.

You’ll want to keep it up for awhile, because one of the things that gets deleted (by law) is the record that you requested your data be deleted. (They have to delete everything with your info in it) So any new data with your name on it is fair game.

But if you slow the flow of traceable data, then sign up with a data removal service, you stand a solid chance of getting yourself off the advertiser’s radars.

AI needs constant data to stay up to date, so i think it’s still worth it.

Personally I’ve found a happy medium between total privacy and convenience.

If you were sitting on a hot iron, would you not jump off just because you’d already sustained third-degree burns?

That data may have been harvested, but that’s no reason to continue the trend.

no time like the present

I can think of a couple decent reasons I think yes:

1. Assuming you still have a life, you are still generating new data. Think about how someone who knew you 5 years ago but hasn’t seen you since would probably not know much about you today, specifically regarding the day-to-day stuff companies use for ads.
2. If you think what data companies are doing is wrong, then you could start caring about privacy just to send a message.
3. If you live in the EU you could use GDPR to request that they delete your data. I don’t know if Apple and Google have been known to comply with GDPR but it could be worth a shot.