Which services have you stopped using because of their data collection and privacy practices?
Today, I came across an article reporting a rise in DuckDuckGo usage as more people boycott Google services.
Sometimes, while working in tech support, I also come across people who buy de-Googled phones because they want nothing to do with this giant anymore.
There are several companies today that feel more like monopolies for collecting user data.
How do you personally view these kinds of services and the way they massively collect and use information about users? In the EU, especially, this has become quite a big topic.
Which services have you decided to stop using, or replace with more privacy-friendly alternatives?
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minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@unheardace13 I do not know about this at all. I just know that Apple is a big monopoly with their products :D but @surabhi_minocha could say something about that.
@unheardace13 @busmark_w_nika Honestly, both ecosystems have problems, they just fail differently.
Apple tends to optimise for consistency and controlled UX. Android optimises for flexibility and customisation. Which one feels 'better' usually depends on what annoys you more 😄
Apple markets privacy better. Android gives you more control.
Those are very different things. If you stay inside Apple’s ecosystem, you usually get stronger default privacy protections with less effort. But Android, especially de-Googled or heavily customised Android, can actually give power users far more transparency and control over what’s running, tracking, and communicating. The tradeoff is convenience. Most people want 'private enough' without having to think about it, which is why Apple’s approach resonates.
Realistically though, in 2026 almost nobody is fully private. The conversation is more about reducing unnecessary data exposure and choosing which companies you trust with it.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@surabhi_minocha So, which team are you? Android or iOS? :D
@busmark_w_nika I use Apple daily, but the engineer in me respects Android more 😄
One optimises for simplicity and consistency, the other for control and transparency. The older I get, the more i realise every tech choice is just picking your preferred headache :p
I'm pretty sure that everyone is collecting data as much as they can without really announcing it, so I'm not even trying to pretend that I'm not aware of that, therefore I'm just using the products that I like the most from the functionality/UX perspective without explicitly caring about privacy/data collection
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sk_uxpin but were you anytime bothered with the data collection at least at one company?
@busmark_w_nika definitely, I am bothered by them all - I guess by now my digital profile compiled from all the apps that are collecting my data would identify me pretty much uniquely across the whole planet. It's just that I cannot do much about it - and while I know that it's possible to give up using iOS and MacOS (for instance) and replace them with GrapheneOS devices (or even Google-free Android) and pure Linux, I still don't want to do this, because, well, it might just be as well the lesser of two evils, and no proper solution would exist at all. I mean, there is a "proper" one - stop using devices connected to the Internet, but then... :)
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sk_uxpin Sometimes it feels like the best decision would be throw out the smarpthone the window and go for a walk. To simply unplug :D
@busmark_w_nika indeed - doesn't seem possible to me though :( :D
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@olivier_jury Difficult to say but I gave to giants so many of my details and they resell it (lets' take advertismenet), that would have to stop using everything (IG, FB, LI, Gmail) :D
Switched from Google Analytics to Plausible a couple years ago and it felt like breathing fresh air. The interesting shift I'm noticing now is in B2B — buyers are starting to ask vendors about data sourcing before signing, not just ticking a compliance box. It's becoming a real differentiator. We built PeakAI on India's government DIN registry — legally mandated public disclosures — specifically because the alternative is the 'we scraped LinkedIn and hope no one notices' model most B2B data providers run on. Regulatory pressure is going to force a lot more of this transparency.
The B2B data world is a total blind spot in these conversations. Consumer apps get all the attention, but tools like Apollo, Zoominfo, and Lusha are scraping and selling professional contact data at massive scale — often without meaningful consent from the people being "enriched."
I stopped using Apollo for this reason. The data is stale (80-85% accuracy), and it's scraped from sources that never opted in. We're building PeakAI specifically to use verified government registry data for Indian business contacts instead — because the DIN registry is public, structured, and legally declared. Feels fundamentally cleaner than shadow-scraping LinkedIn.
The EU's GDPR made B2B data practices a real conversation. India's DPDP Act is starting to do the same. Curious if anyone else has thought about the ethics of B2B enrichment tools specifically.
User data is worth a lot of money especially for advertising. Back one year ago I would have said companies collecting so much user data are the bad guys, but now that I've used a bit Meta ads I have a different point of view. When I create my ad I'm happy to be able to only display it to the relevant people, and on the end user side they are happy to see ads that correspond to them instead of random ones.
Still I think it's wrong that companies like Google/Meta/Microsoft... own so much user data that they could technically run worldwide intelligence services probably better than government agencies themselves
From my point of view of EU citizen: GDPR is forcing companies to copy-paste some text in their privacy policy and/or add a few buttons in their UI (delete my account, download my data...). It's good but doesn't really drives a change in my opinion. I sent a few mails in the past asking to delete my data, some replied, but most didn't. And I bet when you click "delete my account", your data is still somewhere in database, just not available anymore for end users
I'm using GrapheseOS on my phone, Qubes OS on my laptop and i'm in the EU so i'm pretty extremist regarding my own privacy! I'm using open source alternatives everywhere possible, but it comes with some drawbacks. Mostly some apps or features not working properly without google mobile services
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@thomas_gdpt I got you, I really like my privacy but I am a marketer too and know how it is helpful with creating audiences, or how users think so we can prevent churns too.
One criterion I’d use: can I explain what the tool learns from me and where that learning lives? Privacy problems get harder to evaluate when “personalization” is a black box.
For SaaS, I’m much more comfortable when a product separates raw data, derived preferences, and public/aggregate usage clearly — plus gives a real delete/export path. If I can’t tell whether my inputs are being stored as source material, training signal, or just logs, that’s usually where trust starts to break.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jim_jeffers I think many people are complaining when some company collects data but most of them use the service anyway (social media) :)
I run marketing so I'm kind of on the other side of this. the amount of user data you can buy from B2B providers without any real consent is honestly uncomfortable. we stopped using a couple of enrichment tools not because they were bad but because we couldn't explain to our own users how we got their info without it sounding creepy