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Our Sneaky Phones

John Stossel on

"You don't." She replies, "You have an iPhone. You have Apple Maps ... Apple is better when it comes to privacy ... Apple at least tries to anonymize your data."

Instead of Gmail, she recommends more private alternatives, like Proton Mail or Tuta.

"There are many others." She points out, "The difference between them is that every email going into your inbox for Gmail is being analyzed, scanned, it's being added to a profile about you."

But I don't care. Nothing beats Google's convenience. It remembers my credit cards and passwords. It fills things in automatically. I tried Brave browser but, after a week, switched back to Google. I like that Google knows me.

Brockwell says that I could import my credit cards and passwords to Brave and autofill there, too.

"I do understand the trade-off," she adds. "But email is so personal. It's private correspondence about everything in your life. I think we should use companies that don't read our emails. Using those services is also a vote for privacy, giving a market signal that we think privacy is important. That's the only way we're going to get more privacy."

 

She also warns that even apps like WhatsApp, which I thought were private, aren't as private as we think.

"WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted and better than standard SMS. But it collects a lot of data about you and shares it with its parent company, Facebook. It's nowhere near as private as an app like Signal."

She notices my Shell app and suggests I delete it.

Opening the app's "privacy nutrition label," something I never bother reading, she points out that I give Shell "your purchase history, your contact information, physical address, email address, your name, phone number, your product interaction, purchase history, search history, user id, product interaction, crash data, performance data, precise location, course location ... "

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