-=> Aaron Thomas wrote to Dr. What <=-

 AT> With that being said, does that solve the mystery? They either enjoy
 AT> all the begging, or they're on a collective mission to monitor all of
 AT> our communications (probably both.)

The market will ultimately decide.  And with Trump in office, the market has a
better chance of winning out.

For me, I long ago went to Tutanota for my email.  It's encrypted at rest (so
even if someone raids Tutanota's servers, they still can't read my messages)
and encrypted in transit - with more than just TLS (which ISPs can do "main in
the middle" attacks on).

I use Brave as my browser - which routes traffic through a VPN, making it
harder (but not impossible) for someone to track my browsing.

Not perfect, but steps nonetheless.

I've already had problems with a couple companies.

Adafruit, for example, refused to sell me anything because of my tutanota.com
address.  So I simply stopped doing business with them.

One of my credit card companies refused to allow me to pay my bill via the web
because Brave uses a VPN.  When I asked them about it via phone, they basically
said I needed to use an insecure browser.  I told them what I thought about
that, paid my bill via check and mail - and then cancelled the card.

I don't have to put up with their BS.  If enough people won't, the market will
adjust.

It will be interesting when an ISP gets hacked and all the person data that
they collected on people (which they said that they wouldn't collect) is
stolen.  I can see the huge lawsuits coming out of that.

Sadly, it takes time and some work on the consumer's part.  But that's how
capitalism works.


... "640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, 1981)
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