Break the Big Tech Free Habit
For long term privacy success, establish one or more keystone habits
Welcome to another issue of Secrets of Privacy where we discuss personal privacy related topics and provide practical tips to enhance your personal privacy.
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Habits are a powerful force. Properly used habits are like super powers, allowing you to be more productive, efficient and prosperous. Bad habits can destroy lives. Think of the compulsive eater or gambler.
Big Tech and Big Data understand the power of habits and have weaponized an assortment of them against you. They spend millions (billions?) on the marketing and engineering of products and services designed to exploit your habit forming nature. Among other things, this lets them harvest your data for their profit.
One of Big Tech’s most powerful tools is the habit of free.
The biggest offenders - think Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. - generally don’t charge for their products and services. There’s no up front or recurring charge. The barrier to use is low, and then they make the products and services highly addictive, ensuring you keep coming back. Of course these products and services aren’t really “free” - see our prior post The Free Trap for more discussion on that.
Consequences of Free
A habit of relying on free digital products and services that harvest your data poses several consequences to personal privacy, including:
Free products and services are addictive and lead us to use other free stuff designed to harvest our data, reinforcing our addiction.
Reducing the likelihood you’ll try a privacy-friendly product or service that you may have to pay for.
Privacy friendly competitors and new entrants have a harder time gaining market share, entrenching the anti-privacy incumbents.
More targeted advertising as Big Business develops more sophisticated consumer profiles due to data harvesting
The Solution to the Free Trap
Fighting Big Tech’s habit forming efforts may seem like a lost cause, but it’s not. There is a proven strategy to fight back: establishing new Keystone Habits. This strategy is taken from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which we referenced in our Five Quick Privacy Wins post. With a little bit of effort, you are capable of implementing one or more keystone habits to regain control of your data and strengthen your privacy.
Before implementing a significant (but beneficial) disrupting habit, we recommend starting with smaller steps. See our Five Quick Privacy Wins article for suggestions. Once you have some quick wins under your belt, you’re ready to embark on establishing new keystone habits to take your privacy to a new level.
Establishing New Keystone Habits
Keystone habits are so powerful and impactful that they trigger a wide range of benefits. Exercise is a typical keystone habit. Regularly exercising can improve habits in other important areas - sleep, health and eating. As a result, your quality of life can drastically improve by identifying that one important habit.
What’s an appropriate keystone habit to implement for reducing our reliance on “free” Big Tech stuff?
In our Five Quick Privacy Wins article, we recommended opening up a new email account with a privacy focused email provider. We use ProtonMail, but there are other great options noted in the prior post. If you’ve done that, the next step is to completely switch over to that email provider. Ditch your Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account and go all in your new account.
This is a great keystone habit because email is the cornerstone of our interaction on the internet. Email is arguably the Big Tech product we expect to be free more than any other. It’s been that way since the internet began. Paying for email seems ridiculous, until you realize you’re paying with your personal information, which Big Tech turns into massive profits. While many privacy friendly email providers have free levels of service, prepare yourself to ultimately pay a fee to get decent functionality (such as sufficient storage).
Changing that one habit sets off positive, downstream ripple effects, helping you reclaim control of your privacy. Here are some of the benefits of making an email provider switch your keystone habit change :
It reduces Big Tech touch points. If you’re not using Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail any longer, you’re also less likely to use their other products and services.
Greater Privacy. Less usage of Big Tech products and services means less opportunities for them to harvest your data. It also reduces their ability to snoop on your private communications.
Your tech options increase. There are a lot of great tech products and services out there. Using only “free” or Big Brand options unnecessarily limits your options.
You’ll start using other privacy friendly products and services. Once you ditch Big Tech email, and especially if you start paying for email, you’re more likely to use other privacy focused products and services, such as an office suite, VPN, messenger or to-do list.
Supporting innovators and creators. Expecting free information, advice and news on the internet is arguably more of an ingrained habit than free email. We’ll let others determine the right order there. But kicking the free email habit will get you more accustomed to paying for content and services. Even if it’s the occasional tip or small dollar subscription, every bit helps undermine the monetization of personal information.
Changing email providers is not the only keystone habit to try. Some others are:
Avoiding or eliminating Google products and services
Using a VPN regularly
Ditching data hungry social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram
Each of these habits can cause beneficial ripple effects throughout your life. If one of those works better for you, give it a try and let us know your experience.
Conclusion
Habits can be forces for good or destruction. Big Tech creates habits for us, to our detriment and their financial gain. Once you develop a Privacy First Mindset, you’re aware of this arrangement and seek to implement appropriate habit changes. Quick wins and keystone habits are proven tools for doing that.
Note that tracking your wins and progress is a great way to increase your odds of success. We are a big fan of checklists and similar tools to support and enhance accountability. We personally use Todoist to track our progress, but you can use other programs like Evernote, Notion or Obsidian - or even self host for cloud access using a NAS like Synology (more on that in a future post).
Keep us posted on your progress and let us know of any other keystone habits you used to kick your reliance on data harvesting Big Tech products and services.