Interesting theory and I’ve definitely made posts and comments critical of Israel. I’ve switched ISPs since creating that Proton account and I wonder if they’d restrict me again (not going to try though).

I suppose you worked at every Amazon location a decade ago? I think I’ll trust my girlfriend on this over some rando on here.

My girlfriend worked for Amazon doing finance stuff around a decade ago. They treated their software engineers like royalty and everyone else like robots. She said they had open bars and chefs preparing gourmet meals on demand that only the tech staff could use, while she was brown bagging her lunch every day. Maybe that’s common in that industry, I don’t know, but hearing that made me laugh because it sounds so Amazon.

That happened to me. I wasn’t even on a VPN when I created my first and only Proton account, and within minutes they restricted it so I couldn’t send any mail. They said I would have to upgrade to a paid account if I wanted to send mail.

I would never trust Proton after that. I’m just glad they immediately restricted my account instead of waiting until I’d switched everything over.

You would hate living in my apartment – there are at least seven doorbell cameras on my floor, and more cameras in the elevators and parking garage.

I understand your privacy concerns but I don’t do anything to conceal myself around doorbell cameras. I know I’m recorded by dozens of cameras and other devices every time I leave home. Trying to conceal my face would make me stand out more and might look suspicious to my neighbors. So it’s better to be boring and not give the neighbors anything interesting to look at. Those cameras are here to stay and soon almost every home will have them.

+1 for addy.io!

I use it with a domain I bought just for emails. So for example I’ll use icelandair@mydomain.com for my Icelandair account and addy.io forwards all the emails addressed to my aliases to my Posteo email address. Nobody ever sees my Posteo address (great for security) and thanks to addy.io I can switch email providers in minutes. If addy.io ever stops working then I own the domain where all my emails are headed, so I can change a few settings to keep receiving them.

Privacy while shopping in person is literally impossible these days, so I don’t even try there.

I know I’m recorded dozens if not hundreds of times by cameras and other devices every time I leave home. Apartment building security cams, neighbors’ doorbell cams, public transit cams, police surveillance cams, dashcams, retail cams. There are thousands of automated license plate readers in my state. My car has four cams and sends all sorts of data back to the manufacturer. My apartment front door is electronic and it logs all locks & unlocks. My building’s parking garage logs every time I enter and exit. Virtually every intersection has surveillance cams (not just red light cams). Hell even when hiking you’ll end up on trail cams.

Last month police in my metro used outdoor surveillance cams to falsely accuse a woman of package theft and the cop that visited her home told her, “You know we have cameras in that town. You can’t get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing."

Your best bet for privacy while shopping is if you walk everywhere, pay with cash and wear a mask. And even if you do all that, gait-recognition technology will be widespread in the very near future and you’ll be identifiable in public even while wearing a mask.