I use Google Wallet.
That annoys me somewhat, because I’d quite like to stop using Google products. Not because Google is necessarily evil, but because I don’t agree with what they do with my data, whether I knowingly hand it over or not. And so far, I’ve managed pretty well to avoid most of Google’s ecosystem.
That’s why I use Proton for my email and my passwords. I self-host my photos, my documents, on Nextcloud. I replaced Google apps on my phone with more open, more privacy-respecting ones. Honestly? It was kind of fun.
So why is it that, when I go into a shop, and put my phone to the card machine, it’s a little Google logo that turns up and takes my payment?
This got me thinking a lot about what “privacy” actually means to most people, particularly today, when so much of the data companies collect is increasingly being fed into AI systems. I’m not especially interested in perfect privacy, I’m not going to ditch every proprietary app, go live in the woods, and communicate with the world through encrypted pigeons. That’s just ridiculous.
What I am interested in though, is understanding just what’s at stake when I click a cookie banner, or open an app. What am I giving to companies, in exchange for the services they provide me?