TFA mentions CCPA and GDPR as the "teeth" that make it possible to request personal information removal from these bottom-feeders. The problem is that I don't live in Europe or California. So for me there's no legal requirement for these jackwads to delete my private information from their systems.
I would bet a non-significant number of Krugerrands that when many of them receive these requests they basically just set a bit in your record to indicate that you've requested "removal." The effect of that is that any reports they generate or other outside evidence that they're collecting your information largely go away. But without deep inspection by outside auditors, you really have no idea whether they're continuing to collect your information in a "shadow" profile of sorts. They're certainly incentivized to do just that if they can get away with it. At the very least, I doubt most of them have gone through the trouble of building filters on all their data ingress paths to drop telemetry on the floor if it relates to someone who's "opted-out."
In other words, I absolutely don't trust them to do the right thing, and I also don't trust the government's enforcement to be consistent and universally effective.
So the next-best thing I can do is deny them the telemetry in the first place. I do that by running privacy-oriented software on my computing devices including mobile, paying for everything I can in cash, filing my taxes with minimal involvement from any third parties, and using modes of transportation that don't report my location to anyone.
I would bet a non-significant number of Krugerrands that when many of them receive these requests they basically just set a bit in your record to indicate that you've requested "removal." The effect of that is that any reports they generate or other outside evidence that they're collecting your information largely go away. But without deep inspection by outside auditors, you really have no idea whether they're continuing to collect your information in a "shadow" profile of sorts. They're certainly incentivized to do just that if they can get away with it. At the very least, I doubt most of them have gone through the trouble of building filters on all their data ingress paths to drop telemetry on the floor if it relates to someone who's "opted-out."
In other words, I absolutely don't trust them to do the right thing, and I also don't trust the government's enforcement to be consistent and universally effective.
So the next-best thing I can do is deny them the telemetry in the first place. I do that by running privacy-oriented software on my computing devices including mobile, paying for everything I can in cash, filing my taxes with minimal involvement from any third parties, and using modes of transportation that don't report my location to anyone.