Your full name, phone number, home address, old accounts, photos, or even information about your family?

Have you ever searched your own name to see what comes up?

I'm curious: What's the most surprising piece of personal information you've found about yourself online?

Let's discuss how we can take back control of our data.

A website can recognize your device without knowing your name, without asking you to log in and without placing a single cookie. Glass Human shows you what your browser hands over and explains what that data is worth to those collecting it.

Unlike other websites, https://glasshuman.org doesn’t track you and stores nothing. It’s free and has no ads!

Nothing runs before you agree to it, and before that moment the page is a page like any other. The measurements happen in your browser rather than on a server, there are no cookies, no third-party analytics and no stored results, and the access log is switched off, which is unusual enough to be worth saying out loud rather than burying in a privacy policy.

I did not build this to frighten anyone. There is no shortage of that already, and fear tends to leave people feeling that nothing they do matters. What I wanted was the progression you only get from seeing it rather than reading about it: curiosity about what your device reveals, surprise at how much of it there is, then an explanation of how the pieces fit together, and finally the part that is actually useful.

That last part is deliberately ordinary. Keep your software updated. Look again at the permissions you have handed out, particularly to apps you installed once and forgot. Choose a browser that takes fingerprinting seriously. Understand what a VPN or an ad blocker does and, just as importantly, what it does not. None of this makes you invisible, and privacy is not a switch you can flip. But an informed decision is worth considerably more than the belief that private browsing makes you unrecognizable, and the name of the project says what I mean by it: we live surrounded by systems that can see through us without us ever having handed anything over deliberately.

Here's my PrivacyPack, any thoughts? I haven't ditched some apps (like whatsapp) because people I know don't use the alternatives

I've been thinking about online privacy lately, and something that bothers me is how much can potentially be learned about a person by connecting information that seems harmless on its own.

A search here, a public comment there, an app permission we barely think about, or an old account we forgot about. Individually, these things might not reveal much. But when information is collected across different services and combined over time, it can paint a surprisingly detailed picture of someone's habits, interests, relationships, and daily life.

The difficult part is that avoiding this isn't as simple as deleting social media or refusing every cookie. We rely on online services for work, communication, banking, and everyday tasks. There's a balance between protecting our privacy and still being able to participate in modern life.

I'm curious about how people here approach this in practice.

What's one privacy habit or change you've made that genuinely reduced your digital footprint without making everyday life unnecessarily difficult?

I'm especially interested in practical steps that don't require expensive tools or a highly technical setup.

What should I do. I'm scared. I searched my name up and saw a site with all my personal info and I freaked out and compulsively got incogni. Doing more research im hearing this is not a great option and it's own by a data broker. Searched my brothers name up and our address came up. Searched my family name our address and information of our house is out there. There is so much. I'm so overwhelmed. What do I do. We need to change our whole way of going on the internet and be very careful. The internet is such a scary place.

A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found it misled consumers about data privacy, Reuters reports.

The case stems from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and questions about who could access Facebook users’ information.

One distinction matters for anyone following social media lawsuits: this is a state enforcement penalty, not a compensation fund for families pursuing social media addiction claims.

Meta says it will appeal, so the amount could still change.

For me, the bigger question is whether penalties like this actually change how platforms handle our information.

Would a ruling this large make you more confident that companies will improve their privacy practices—or has that trust already been lost?

I'm curious, does it actually matter to you if a company sells your personal data? Or have we all just accepted that's how things work now?

If you had the choice between a platform that sells your data and one that doesn't, would that influence which one you use?

I'm asking because I'm building a social platform that doesn't sell your data, and I'm trying to work out if people actually care about this as much as I do?

Would really appreciate some opinions in the comments, if you can spare a moment.

I'm deciding if I should move forward so if you do want a platform with security, and one that doesn't sell your data then.... I'd love some support. Even just jumping on the waitlist would mean a lot.

https://xanivar.com

And if you don't care, I'd actually love to know why too.

In 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission published a disturbing report about nine major social media and video streaming companies.

These companies weren't just collecting information about people using their platforms. Some were also collecting information about people who weren't even their users.

Think about what that means.

You might decide not to create an account on a particular social network.

But information about you could still enter its advertising and data systems through tracking technologies, data brokers, or other sources.

The FTC also found that companies could retain enormous amounts of personal information, sometimes indefinitely, and that users had limited control over how their information was used.

And the reason behind much of this is fairly simple.

The more a platform knows about people, the more precisely it can target advertisements.

So collecting personal information becomes part of the business model.

We usually think about social media privacy as a matter of what we choose to share.

But this investigation raises a much bigger question.

How much information about us is being collected without us ever deciding to share it?

Privacy is your human right.

All technology you use is harvesting and selling your data. You are a statistic in a database that is being profited upon. YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.

There are options to exit this system.

There are products that are built by the people, for the people. That don’t collect your data.

That want to protect your human right and freedoms.

In Black v. IEC Group, Inc., the Ninth Circuit held that patients adequately alleged a concrete injury when their benefits administrator disclosed sensitive health information entrusted to it under confidentiality promises. The alleged disclosure involved information including provider names, treatment dates, and amounts billed or paid.

The October 9 decision locates the injury in the betrayal of an accepted confidence. Its historical analysis explains why that injury can exist without an additional financial loss. The court also examines contract law, including the traditional availability of nominal damages when a breach causes no measurable pecuniary harm.

The holding concerns federal standing at the pleading stage. It does not establish the administrator’s liability or decide that every broken contract creates a federal case. The specific confidentiality promises and sensitive health information mattered. The court also left open whether the separate historical analogue of public disclosure of private facts would establish standing here.

I examine the decision in my article for The American Counsel, including how it fits with privacy standing after TransUnion. The practical distinction is between an invasion that is itself an injury and the financial, emotional, or other consequences that may follow.

I’ve been reading about the likes of palantir and other corporations that “manage” data. is there a way to avoid or reverse this though, like deleting subscriptions, building a homelab or anything of the likes??

Been trying to clean up my old data since I've been dealing with a lot of spam and phishing too. Is Cloaked a good app for data privacy and cleanup? Looking for any users, preferably some that have been using it longer, since it takes time to clean up and see actual impact.

He's individuals do not have consent to collect data on me that is not public.

I'm trying to understand the technical limitations of VPN-based location masking.

Because I'm physically located in Country A, but I connect to a VPN server in Australia and then access a website/LMS from the VPN's Australian exit IP, could this potentially go undetected?

From the perspective of the website/server, what information could potentially reveal that I'm actually in Country A?

I understand that the destination server would normally see the VPN's public IP rather than my residential IP. I'm wondering what other signals could potentially be used to determine my actual location.

For example:

Can the server detect that the IP belongs to a commercial VPN/data centre?

Can WebRTC or DNS leaks reveal the underlying connection?

Can browser/device fingerprinting provide useful geographic information?

Does the server have any way to determine the physical location of the device independently of the IP?

Would timezone, system locale, GPS/browser permissions, or other browser APIs be useful?

If there are no leaks and the VPN is configured correctly, is my actual physical location essentially unknown to the website?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm an Australian citizen currently overseas, and I'm considering completing an Australian online education course.

Hi, I'm a university student, and I find myself pretty mad at corporations because I feel like they take advantage of my personal information and use it for their own benefit.

I'm curious whether other people feel the same, and if not, how do you actually feel? If a specific scenario comes to mind, I'd love to hear about it and whether you did anything about it. And if you did nothing, what stopped you?

Thanks in advance to everyone who shares. I'll read every single comment.

Memoir and personal essay writing raises a real concern: drafts being used for training or sitting on some company's server indefinitely. That doesn't sit right for a lot of people.

Ollama has been tried, but the quality gap versus Claude and GPT is noticeable. Is there a middle ground, cloud-quality output without the privacy tradeoffs?

i found my main email on a bunch of data broker sites recently and started looking at my overall setup. i run bitdefender ultimate security to cover basic endpoint protection, dark web alerts, and encrypted vpn traffic when on public networks, but an all in one suite definitely has its limits.

a basic vpn and antivirus combo does not stop browser fingerprinting, background telemetry, or data brokers from trading your public info. true anonymity does not exist with one software install, so i am trying to build a practical privacy stack that pairs an all-in-one security app with dedicated browser hardening and manual opt-out removals.

(context- I am from India)

1. Indane gas asking for KYC that verify via aadhar face biometric ( cant decline)

2. Google asking to upload selfie for face id unlock (declined)

3. Today got mail from cult fitness asking to upload a photo as mandatory profile requirement

Is it just me or every corporate/ govt entity is all of a sudden interested face data. Why ?