Tips for Reducing Digital Collection on Yourself

Stop Bringing Your Phone Everywhere!

The sheer amount of sensor data modern smartphones collect is staggering. They continuously log your precise GPS location—even when apps aren’t actively open—while simultaneously scanning for Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth devices to triangulate your whereabouts. In addition, microphones and cameras can be activated (sometimes without explicit user awareness) by apps that demand excessive permissions.

Smartwatches add another layer of surveillance through constant biometric tracking—monitoring your heart rate, sleep patterns, and physical activity. This granular data is frequently shared with manufacturers and third-party developers under broad “analytics” or “performance” justifications.

Carrying these devices everywhere means giving companies near-constant insight into your daily routines and habits: when you leave your house, where you work or study, what times you exercise, and even what stores you visit in between. If you’d like to reduce the amount of continuous tracking in your life, one simple yet effective step is to leave your phone (and smartwatch) behind more often. While it might feel inconvenient at first, doing so cuts off the most ubiquitous data collection pipeline at its source. Not having your phone or smartwatch constantly on you makes it considerably harder for data brokers, advertisers, and other entities to piece together every aspect of your daily routine.

Stop enabling 2fa with your personal phone number. Once you give your phone number to a company they can cross-reference it with other places that have used your phone number to build a complete picture of your activities. Additionally, using 2fa through your phone forces you to always have your phone on you to log into your accounts. Try to authenticate through an email or an app instead.

Use Open Source Software Over Proprietary Software

Unlike proprietary alternatives, open-source code can be freely examined, audited, and modified by anyone with the technical expertise to do so. This transparency creates an environment where privacy-compromising features are quickly identified by the community. When a company claims its proprietary software respects privacy, there’s simply no way to verify these assertions if its code remains hidden behind closed doors.

With open-source software, suspicious data collection mechanisms can be detected and, if necessary, removed or modified. Even if you lack the technical skills to audit code yourself, you benefit from a global community of people who routinely scrutinize popular open-source projects. This collective oversight provides a level of accountability that proprietary software companies, regardless of their public statements or policies, fundamentally cannot match.

Before installing any proprietary software, it is worth it to do a quick search and see if there are any workable FOSS alternatives. WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Messenger can be replaced with Signal and Matrix. Chrome can be replaced by Chromium. Microsoft Outlook can be replaced with Thunderbird. I’ll talk about some of these alternatives further in this article.

Compartmentalize Your Online Identities

In signing up for web services, we constantly encounter prompts to “log in with Facebook” or “sign in with Google.” While these single-sign-on (SSO) options save time, they significantly expand major tech companies’ ability to track your activities across multiple sites. Each time you use that convenient “Sign In with Google” button, you extend Google’s reach to collect and correlate your data. Similarly, linking Twitter, Instagram, or other accounts centralizes your online footprint, creating a comprehensive profile that platforms can easily track.

Instead, create separate accounts for different services whenever possible—and avoid reusing email addresses (use hide my email through Proton Mail, Apple Mail, or Firefox relay to accomplish this) and passwords. Though more time-consuming initially, compartmentalizing your digital identities prevents third parties from aggregating your data into a single, marketable package. When possible when signing up for new services, use aliases) rather than your real identity—most services don’t actually require your legal name despite what their terms of service might claim. The less identifiable information there is about you across platforms, the harder it becomes for companies and malicious actors to map your digital life.

Use Alternative Productivity Tools

Cloud-based services like Google Docs, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Microsoft Office Online offer convenience for real-time collaboration and cross-device access. However, this convenience grants these companies near-complete access to your documents Both Google and Microsoft employ sophisticated machine learning to analyze content stored or shared via their platforms, further refining their data profiles on users and feeding their AI models. Even seemingly mundane documents—grocery lists or school assignments are fed into AI models and mined for insights into your interests, habits, and location.

Consider using alternatives such as LibreOffice as a Microsoft 365 replacement and CryptPad and Etherpad for online collaboration of documents. Though these platforms may require workflow adjustments, using these alternative tools shields your data from corporations whose business models depend on collecting and analyzing user information.

Access Social Media Through Browsers, Not Apps

Ideally, you might convince your social circle to abandon data-harvesting platforms altogether. Realistically, these sites are often embedded in our personal and professional lives—making complete avoidance impractical. The next best approach is to access social media through web browsers rather than dedicated apps. Mobile social-media applications routinely request excessive permissions (e.g. microphone, camera roll, location, contacts) that enable extensive data collection.

Browsers, by contrast, can be equipped with privacy-focused extensions like content blockers and anti-tracking tools that restrict data collection. They lack many of the background processes that apps run continuously, reducing passive data harvesting. You can even use browser containers or multiple profiles to keep different accounts isolated. While not a perfect solution, using web versions of platforms is a simple yet effective step to substantially reduce your data exposure.

Choose a Privacy Respecting Browser

While mainstream browsers like Chrome and Edge are commonly known to mine data on their users, even browsers that are generally perceived as privacy-friendly still mine data on their users. For instance, Apple Safari is often promoted as a privacy-oriented browser due to Apple’s strong stance on user privacy. However, Safari still collects data on its users—such as usage statistics and crash reports (the browser may be collecting, storing, and sending more information. Safari is not open source so can’t be fully inspected.). Although Apple asserts that this data is primarily used internally and not sold or directly provided to third parties, it nonetheless contributes to a broader collection of user behavior. Just because a browser says that it’s “privacy-respecting” does not mean that it is privacy-respecting.

Brave, Librewolf, and Ungoogled Chromium are all open-source browsers that can be inspected to see if they are doing data mining on you (they are not). These browsers emphasize transparency, minimal data collection, and have built-in protections like tracker and ad-blocking features providing a more secure and private browsing experience.

Use Ad Blocker Extensions

Ad blockers do more than eliminate visual clutter and distractions; they prevent trackers and malicious scripts from monitoring your browsing habits. Tools like uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger block trackers that follow you across multiple sites, limiting the comprehensive profiles that advertisers and data brokers can construct.

Network-Level Protection

Choose a DNS provider that blocks known surveillance IP ranges and domains. Or self-host a Pi Hole to use as your own personal DNS firewall for your network. Firewalls specific to your device can also be installed (I use Little Snitch)

ISP’s collect a lot of data about you, so it’s a good idea to use a VPN . Keep in mind, however, that a VPN does not protect you fully: your VPN provider has the same ability to mine user data that your ISP provider does. What discourages VPN providers from doing the same data mining is that when they are caught doing data mining they lose most of their users. Use a VPN, but keep in mind who your VPN provider is and any news that comes up about them.

Some people, not trusting a traditional VPN, will try to route all of their internet traffic through the tor network (a community-maintained layered vpn). For most people this is not a good alternative as websites often block tor ip address by default and it’s really slow.

Operating System Hardening

Regularly audit what permissions your applications have and revoke unnecessary ones. Most operating systems have built-in data collection that should be disabled or limited. In Windows, disable diagnostics, feedback, and advertising ID. In macOS, disable personalized ads, diagnostic reporting, and “Apple Intelligence”. In mobile operating systems, review and limit app permissions

Note: macOS, Windows, and ios are not open-source and so can’t be fully inspected. These operating systems could be collecting and sending data even when you tell them not to.

For Windows, use a debloater script to disable most of the telemetry that comes in default. Try to use the Enterprise version of the Windows over the Home, Pro, and Education versions. Enterprise version of Windows has much less telemetry and random crap built into it by default.

For maximum privacy, consider switching to an open-source Linux or BSD distribution.

Final Thoughts

Data privacy is a spectrum, not an absolute state. Just about everyone (including myself!) is not able to implement all of the suggestions mentioned in this article. Many workplaces require that you use a certain operating system with certain software (e.g. Windows with Microsoft Office). Sometimes privacy respecting alternatives to software gets in the way of productivity (e.g. Gimp is not a replacement for Photoshop). However, by understanding how digital platforms operate and making a few changes to how you engage with them, you can still significantly reduce your digital footprint. While it might seem like a chore at first, these steps can help reclaim some control over your personal data in an increasingly data-hungry world.