Recent revelations about Cambridge Analytica and how data from Facebook has been shared and used, and how other social media services and search engines treat your data means that people are tightening up their settings. But if you want to go further, there are services that respect your privacy.
Many users are deleting Facebook's app from their mobile phones and changing their privacy settings. An alternative is Diaspora which decentralises social networks by letting people set up their own servers to host content. Users retain ownership of their data and aren't required to use their real name.
Google stores your entire search history and uses it to make website and video suggestions, profile you and sell adverts. Search engine DuckDuckGo doesn't store any information, so they are not tailored to your particular interests. You'll get a wider spread of results from a search.
Twitter uses information it knows about you to sell ads - things like your gender, age and location. Mastadon offers similar features to Twitter but is decentralised, meaning that anyone can set up a Mastadon server that is independently owned. Users on one server act as a single community, but can also communicate with people on other servers.
Gmail used to make money by scanning your inbox for keywords, then showing you adverts based on your interests. In 2017, Google announced it would no longer sell adverts this way - but emails are still scanned to power flight reminders, calendar updates and other Google features. An alternative is Protonmail, which encrypts all of its users' emails, meaning it has no access to your inbox. A basic account is free, while extra features like folders require a subscription. The service is so secure that Cambridge Analytica reportedly used it!!
Source: Article Stop being the product by Jacob Aron in New Scientist, 7th April 2018
