De-Googled Phones

You may have noticed from several weekend posts that in addition to being a cord cutter, I'm a fan of Internet privacy. I firmly believe your Internet experience, to include your streaming content, should be private.

I'm not suggesting that I promote viewing questionable content. Rather, I'm wanting a return to the privacy that was the default when I first started watching TV. And when that privacy was something we didn't have to think about.

In those days, everything was received via an antenna. You pointed the antenna toward the TV towers and watched what you wanted on your TV. Nobody knew what you watched. On Sunday nights in 1965, nobody knew if you watched Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, or Ed Sullivan, unless you told them. You chose with whom you shared your viewing habits.

Today, if you stream TV, they all have that information. They can use it to figure out if you likely have kids, are a fan of science fiction, or enjoy listening to music, without you telling them. They gather this data, sell it to others, making money of off you, and then you get bombarded with advertising that matches your profile.

As bad as TVs and streaming devices are about that, smart phones are worse. And I don't like how Apple and Google get all that data about their customers. But what can you do about it? More than you realize:

[YouTube]

My Streaming Life is exactly that: mine. And I want to keep it that way.