You Are No Longer The Customer. You Are The Product.

You Are No Longer The Customer. You Are The Product.

Why Digital Privacy Matters More Than Ever And What You Can Do About It

A friend of mine, Dakota, once texted me something that perfectly sums up how most people think about digital privacy:

“I don’t care if these big companies know everything about me. I love targeted ads. I like being sold something that fits me, not some random stuff.”

On the surface, that sounds reasonable.
Efficient, even.

Why wouldn’t you want ads tailored to you?
Why wouldn’t you want recommendations that actually make sense?

Here’s the problem:

That mindset is based on a completely outdated understanding of how your data is used — and where this is all heading.

Targeted ads are no longer the deal you’re making.
They were just the introduction.

The Shift Nobody Warned You About

For years, the story went like this:

  • Companies collect data
  • They show you ads
  • You buy things

That era quietly ended.

Today, your data is used to:

  • Predict your behavior
  • Infer your limits
  • Score your value
  • Decide what you see, what you pay, and what you qualify for

Artificial intelligence turned observation into automated decision-making at scale.

Ads were the training wheels.
AI is the engine.

From Consumer To Product

This is the shift most people never notice.

In the modern digital economy:

  • You are not the customer
  • You are not the user
  • You are the input

Your behavior is harvested, modeled, and sold to middlemen whose entire job is to answer one question:

How much money can we extract from this specific person over their lifetime?

Not what you want to pay.
What the data says you can be pushed into paying.

You are no longer buying products.
You are being optimized.

Why “I Like Targeted Ads” Is The Wrong Frame

When Dakota says he likes targeted ads, what he’s really saying is:

“I’m okay with being analyzed if it feels convenient.”

Here’s what that logic misses.

You Do Not Control How Your Data Is Used

You might be fine with ads based on your hobbies.

You did not agree to:

  • Personalized pricing
  • Discounts being withheld because you would have paid more
  • Fees adjusted based on how likely you are to complain
  • Being labeled high-risk, low-trust, or high-value

Once your data exists, you do not get to decide how it’s used later.

There is no checkbox for:
“Ads are fine, but don’t use this for pricing or access decisions.”

The Real Goal: Spending 100% Of Your Income

Zoom out far enough and the pattern becomes obvious.

The modern economy is being optimized toward one outcome:

Every dollar you earn should already be spoken for.

Subscriptions.
Leases.
Buy Now Pay Later.
Usage-based pricing.
“Affordable monthly payments.”

Savings are inefficiency.
Ownership is inefficiency.
Idle cash is inefficiency.

Your data is what makes this precise.

Why Renting Everything Is The Endgame

Ownership gives you leverage.

Owners can:

  • Stop paying
  • Wait
  • Opt out
  • Say no

Renters cannot.

When everything is rented:

  • Housing
  • Transportation
  • Software
  • Entertainment
  • Tools
  • Storage

Every month becomes a checkpoint.

Miss one payment and your life degrades.

Living paycheck-to-paycheck is not an accident.
It is the natural outcome of systems optimized for extraction.

Why Digital Privacy Is The Only Real Defense

Privacy is not about hiding.
It is about breaking correlation.

Your goal is not to disappear.
Your goal is to become:

  • Harder to profile
  • Harder to predict
  • Less profitable to optimize

That alone changes how systems treat you.

Step 1: Separate Secure Email From Junk Email

Your email address is the backbone of your digital identity.

Most people use one email for everything.
That makes correlation trivial.

Secure Email (Important Only)

Use Proton Mail for:

  • Banking and financial accounts
  • Medical portals
  • Government services
  • Password managers
  • Anything that would be catastrophic if compromised

This inbox should be:

  • Small
  • Clean
  • Rarely shared

If it is important, it goes here. No exceptions.

Junk / Utility Email (Everything Else)

Use a free third-party email service or your old Gmail for:

  • Shopping
  • Newsletters
  • App signups
  • Trials
  • One-off accounts

This email is disposable by design.

If it gets breached or sold, it does not matter.

Passwords, Passkeys, And Two-Factor Authentication

This is where privacy and security overlap.

Using strong authentication:

  • Limits account takeovers
  • Reduces damage from data breaches
  • Prevents cascading failures

A modern password manager should support:

  • Unique passwords for every site
  • Passkeys where available
  • Two-Factor Authentication

Passkeys matter because:

  • They cannot be phished the same way passwords can
  • They remove password reuse risk
  • They are tied to your device and identity

Two-Factor Authentication adds a second barrier when passwords fail.

This is not paranoia.
This is basic damage control.

Stop Using Chrome

Google Chrome is the wrong default if you care about privacy.

Not because it is “evil,” but because it is built by an advertising company.

A better option is Firefox.

Why Firefox is better:

  • Independent from ad-driven incentives
  • Strong user control
  • Better support for privacy extensions

Mandatory Extension: uBlock Origin

Install uBlock Origin.

This:

  • Blocks ads
  • Blocks trackers
  • Speeds up browsing
  • Reduces data leakage

Firefox plus uBlock Origin is one of the highest-impact privacy upgrades you can make.

Smartphones And Privacy: Apple vs Google

Your phone is your largest data exhaust source.

iPhone And Privacy

Apple does not sell your personal data.

Apple makes money from:

  • Hardware
  • App Store purchases
  • Subscriptions
  • Services

Because Apple is paid upfront, it is less incentivized to resell your data.

Apple still collects data and uses it internally, but it does not operate an advertising data brokerage business.

iCloud Private Relay helps mask your IP in Safari, but it is not a full VPN replacement.

iPhone privacy is not perfect — but it is meaningfully better than ad-driven platforms.

Android And Privacy

Android exists as a free operating system because Google’s core business is advertising.

Google makes money from:

  • Advertising
  • Behavioral profiling
  • Data-driven services
  • Search monetization

Stock Android is deeply integrated with Google services and telemetry.

However, Android can become the best option if you remove Google.

If your device supports GrapheneOS or LineageOS, this is currently the gold standard for mobile privacy.

A deeper dive on this will come in a future post.

VPNs And Network Privacy

A trustworthy VPN:

  • Encrypts traffic between your device and the VPN provider
  • Reduces ISP-level profiling
  • Limits IP-based tracking

I personally use Proton because it offers:

  • VPN
  • Encrypted email
  • Password manager
  • Two-Factor Authentication
  • Encrypted cloud storage

Reducing the number of companies you trust is itself a privacy upgrade.

For comparisons, this public spreadsheet is a useful reference:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CRtEQzSVE59jj5ROKZlttkRtUpJfcc4mgMT7Wn1aBcA/pubhtml

Data Brokers: Cleaning Up What Already Exists

Even if you do everything right going forward, your data is already out there.

Data brokers collect and resell:

  • Addresses
  • Phone numbers
  • Family connections
  • Purchase history

I have used Cloaked, and it is effective at:

  • Finding exposed personal data
  • Submitting removal requests
  • Masking emails and phone numbers

This is boring work.
It still matters.

The Big Picture

This is not about fear.

It is about leverage.

Artificial intelligence is being used to:

  • Predict your behavior
  • Optimize your spending
  • Ensure every dollar is extracted

Privacy slows that machine down.

You do not need to disappear.
You need to stop being easy to exploit.

TL;DR: A Simple Path Forward

  1. Use Proton Mail for important accounts only
  2. Use a junk email for shopping and signups
  3. Use a password manager with passkeys and Two-Factor Authentication
  4. Switch from Chrome to Firefox plus uBlock Origin
  5. Use DuckDuckGo for search
  6. Prefer iPhone for default privacy, or Android with GrapheneOS if supported
  7. Use a trustworthy VPN (Proton VPN)
  8. Remove your data from brokers like Cloaked

The people who take these steps now will still have options later — when everyone else wonders how they ended up renting everything and living paycheck-to-paycheck.