You Are the Product: Two Decades of Giving Up Data Control

Over the past 20 years, our relationship with technology has changed dramatically. What started as a helpful tool, making communication and information access easier, has become something far more invasive. Platforms like Google and Meta now track and store enormous parts of our daily life, often without us realising just how much we are giving away.

This is not about paranoia or conspiracy theories. It is about understanding how ordinary habits like Googling symptoms, checking the map and replying to an email helps create a profile of you that never goes away.

The Simpler Internet: When Email Did Not Follow You

In the early 2000s, email was simple and surprisingly basic. You got an address with your broadband subscription, often something like name@yourISP.dk. It was not connected to anything else. No central account. No location tracking. No advertising ID. When you changed providers, your mailbox got deleted and a new one was created at your new ISP. That was the end of it.

Today, that same mailbox is tied to your location, your YouTube history, your Google searches, your Chrome bookmarks, your calendar and your cloud storage. What used to be a new and simple way of communicating is now a central hub for your entire digital life.

Your inbox does not just show what you have received. It shows what you did, are doing and will do. It holds flight confirmations, doctor’s appointments, salary negotiations, receipts, and delivery notices. Each message, which you receive dozens of on a given day, is a small piece of your life. Put together, they build a timeline.

You probably do not think of your inbox as anything more than a stack of letters. But for a machine, it is thousands of data points showing who you spoke to, when, where you were, what you bought, and what you were thinking about doing next.

Search: Google Knows When You Are Sick, Stressed or Looking for Work

We have all done it: searched Google for something we would never say out loud. Maybe your stomach’s been acting up, so you type in “stomach pain right side”, then click on a few Mayo Clinic links.

You do not announce your health concerns to anyone, but Google observes. If you keep searching along those lines, it does not take much to figure out what you are dealing with.

Same thing when you are thinking about leaving a job. You start with “CV templates”, then “is it OK to apply for jobs during work hours”, then “job postings in Denmark”. Google tracks every one of those queries and because it is tied to your account, it also ties it to your name.

This is how search turns into a profile. It is not just what you have typed, but rather what that typing says about you, your plans, your concerns, and your vulnerabilities.

Maps: A Logbook of Your Daily Life

Google Maps is incredibly useful. But it does not just tell you where to go. It remembers where you have been.

Maybe you use it to find the fastest route to work every morning. Then one day, it notices you are stopping at a pharmacy. A few days later, you are parked near a clinic. Now the system knows something about your health that you have not shared with anyone else. Tied with your “stomach pain“ search, it can guess you are dealing with a health issue and possibly even what it is.

Maybe you have started visiting a co-working space in a different town. Google sees this pattern and could infer that you are starting a side business or thinking about changing jobs. If you visit a church, Google knows your religion. A political rally? Your political leanings. A therapist? Your mental health status. All of this is logged. Not for a day, but potentially indefinitely.

This is not theory. It is how the system works. Location history is on by default, and even if you pause it, parts of it still get recorded (Associated Press).

Ads: Not Just What You Want Now, But Also What You Will Want Next

All this data feeds into Google’s ad system. It does not just show you shoes because you searched for shoes. It shows you shoes before you think to look, because it knows your routines, habits, and preferences. If you have just moved to a new house, Google Ads probably knows it before your friends do.

This is behavioural prediction at scale. It is not just about showing you the right product, it is about nudging you towards certain behaviours.

And it works. In Q4 of 2024, Google made over $72.5 billion in ad revenue (Alphabet). You are not their customer. Advertisers are. You are the product.

Google’s total revenue for Q4 of 2024 was $96.5 billion. When you consider that roughly 75% of that comes from advertising, it puts emphasis on how much your data is worth.

Governments Want That Data Too

It is not just advertisers who value this level of detail. Governments are now major consumers of Big Tech data. And the number of requests is growing fast.

Between 2014 and 2024, Google, Meta and Apple handed over data on 3.16 million user accounts to U.S. authorities (Proton). In 2024 alone, Google and Meta received nearly half a million data requests from U.S. agencies. The vast majority were fulfilled.

Many of these are “reverse warrants”, geo-fence requests or keyword-triggered searches—where authorities ask for information on anyone who was near a location, or searched for a phrase. You do not need to be a suspect. You just need to fit the pattern.

If you searched for “how to protest safely” or “climate rally route New York”, and later walked through the area, your data could be swept up and handed over, without your knowledge.

Why Deleting Your Account Does not Mean Deleting Your Data

GDPR and the CCPA give you the right to delete your data, but enforcement is weak. Google was fined billions in 2024, but paid those fines out of their quarterly profits in under a month (Proton Tech Fines Tracker).

Even when you delete an account, the data may still live in backups or internal logs. And companies can claim “legitimate interest” as a reason to hold on to data indefinitely, without you having any say in it or know if your data is part of that “legitimate interest”.

Once your information is in the system, it is difficult and often impossible to confirm whether it is truly been removed.

“Nothing to Hide” Is the Wrong Argument

The common response to all of this is: “I got nothing to hide.” But privacy is not about hiding, but about context. You would never put your medical journal on Facebook. Not because it is illegal, but because it is personal. You want control over who sees what.

Your data reveals more than you think. It shows what you are planning, what you are worried about, what you have changed your mind on. It does not need to be illegal to cause problems, it just needs to be misinterpreted.

And laws change. What is fine today might not be fine in five years. That tweet you liked, the article you saved, the search you made during a rough time. These can resurface when you least expect it, and suddenly you are in a situation where you have to explain yourself to an employer, a government agency, or even the public.

What You Can Do Without Going Off-Grid

You do not have to quit the internet or throw your phone in a river. But you can stop handing over data so freely. Here are some simple changes that make a big difference:

Email
Switch to a service like ProtonMail. They do not scan your messages, and they are based in countries with stronger privacy laws. Your data is encrypted with a key that is protected by your password, not stored on their servers. This means that even if they wanted to, they could not read your emails.

Search
Try Kagi or DuckDuckGo. Neither ties searches to your identity.

Maps
Use OpenStreetMap or apps that do not track your location history.

Browser and DNS
Use Firefox or Brave. Pair it with a DNS provider like NextDNS, ControlD, or Quad9.

Fun fact: A DNS provider can see every website you visit, so choose one that respects your privacy. By default, your ISP is your DNS provider, which means they can log everything you do online.

Pay for Services When It Makes Sense
If something is free, you are probably the product. Paying for a search engine or email service means the business model is aligned with you and not with third-parties like advertisers.

Support the People Fighting This

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been pushing back against this for over 30 years. They fight mass surveillance, challenge abusive data requests, and defend encryption in court.

If you want to help, consider donating: eff.org/donate. They rely on public support and not corporate sponsors.

Final Thoughts

We did not sign up for this. No one clicked “I agree” thinking they were handing over a detailed psychological and behavioural profile to a trillion-dollar company or a government.

But here we are in 2025. If you want things to change, the first step is to stop giving your data away for free.

The second is to help the organisations that are pushing back. It will not fix everything. But it is a step in the right direction and right now, that matters and all that we can do.