4 Easy Changes For Taming Your Digital Exhaust
It's no secret: if a product or service is free, then your data is the fee. Every click, every post you view, every place you visit, and every person you interact with creates massive amounts of data that's quickly monetized.
For example, the site StopInsta estimates that Instagram generates about $274 in annual value from the data of a typical user in the United States. Did any of those users see even a penny of that money from all their doom scrolling? Of course not. Yet the profile built from their activity often knows more about them than they know about themselves.
And that's just one platform. When you start adding up how much every app and service earns from each of us, the numbers get overwhelming fast.
Starting down the privacy path begins with simple changes to curtail the amount of data collected. They may feel like small steps, but these four changes yield tremendous results in starting to remove information that's involuntarily collected.
Step 1: Switch Browsers
The browser is probably the most common way to access the internet. Whether you're scrolling social media, catching up on your favorite team, reading the news, shopping, or anything else, a browser is almost always involved, especially on desktop. Many of the "free" options act as direct pipelines, quietly collecting data for advertisers. But there's a free and easy way to step out of that cycle: switch to Brave Browser.
To borrow from our previous post discussing Brave Browser, "Brave isn't just a prettier version of Chrome. While it's built on the same open-source foundation (Chromium), Brave has been heavily customized to rip out the tracking elements and add powerful, privacy-first protections."
Many browsers use the Chromium project as their starting point, but Brave goes further by integrating Brave Shields right out of the box. Shields uses filter lists like EasyList, EasyPrivacy, and elements from uBlock Origin to block ads and trackers at the network level, stopping requests before they load and preventing third-party ad scripts and trackers from running. No extensions required! Thanks to their rewritten Adblock Rust engine, it uses far less memory than traditional blockers.
We recommend the Aggressive mode, which blocks both first- and third-party ads and trackers for the strongest protection available (though it can occasionally break site layouts; easy to toggle per site if needed).
Brave is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS/iPadOS, Android, and even GrapheneOS (via F-Droid), and they make it very easy to switch.
Step 2: Switch Search Engines
Every time you use a search engine, a tremendous amount of information beyond just your query gets collected: search history, approximate location (via IP or GPS), device details (OS, browser type), browsing behavior (clicks, dwell time), and more; all are added to a detailed profile. Many people don't realize their search history can end up as evidence in legal cases! As we wrote in a previous post, "Authorities or attorneys can request your search history via subpoenas or warrants, especially in criminal or civil disputes. Recent transparency reports show millions of such requests made to major tech companies for user data each year; your digital footprint isn’t as private as you might think."
Even more concerning, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on December 16, 2025, in Commonwealth v. Kurtz that users generally have no reasonable expectation of privacy in unprotected Google searches. The court reasoned it's "common knowledge" that providers collect and can share that data (citing the third-party doctrine), upholding police access via a reverse keyword search warrant in a serious crime investigation. You can read more in the ABA Journal overview.
Think about every odd, strange, or silly thing you've ever searched for potentially accessible without stronger safeguards. Who knows how a random query could be twisted in the wrong context?
A privacy-focused search engine goes a long way toward protecting you, not just from targeted ads, but from handing over your curiosities to authorities or anyone else. We love Brave Search because it's built from the ground up with privacy in mind. Unlike proxies tied to Big Tech indexes, Brave uses its own independent index (over 30 billion pages and growing), with no dependency on Google or Bing that could leak data. They don't track queries, build profiles, or sell info to advertisers.
Best part? It's the default in Brave Browser, so switching is seamless and instant.
Step 3: Switch Email Providers
If you're like most people, your inbox is packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of emails holding a wealth of personal details. Here's what's typically piling up:
- Personal emails: Catch-ups with friends/family or event plans.
- Work-related emails: Project discussions, meetings, or tasks from colleagues/clients.
- Travel/event reminders: Dates, locations, bookings.
- Newsletters: Updates on news, hobbies, or groups you follow.
- Promotional emails: Discounts and product offers.
- Transactional emails: Receipts, confirmations, shipping updates.
- Social media notifications: Likes, comments, requests.
- Spam: Unsolicited junk, phishing attempts.
That's a treasure chest of data. Free email services can scan it to train AI, build marketing profiles, or worse, even if you never open the messages.
We suggest setting up a free account with Proton Mail or Tuta (we use both). Both offer strong end-to-end encryption on their free tiers, so the provider can't read your inbox contents. The free levels let you test drive the services before committing to paid upgrades for more storage or features.
Switching takes minutes and suddenly your email stops being a surveillance goldmine.
Step 4: Switch Messengers
Messengers are another source of data leakage. Whether integrated with social media platforms or standalone services, they often collect metadata (who, when, how often), store messages on servers, or scan content for ads/AI training. Even "encrypted" ones can share data under legal pressure.
We recommend switching to a privacy-focused messenger like Signal. It's free, works like other messengers, and is widely regarded as the gold standard for encrypted messages, group chats, calls, and video calls. It requires a phone number (for contact discovery), but data collection is minimal. You can read more at our post Privacy Tool Spotlight: Signal Messenger.
We also shared a few options in "Chatting About Private Messengers" that can better provide you with some ideas of what is available. It's not a complete list of all options but helps in understanding what's out there.
Starting Slowly
We strongly believe that simple changes that are easy to make ensure the highest level of success. These four changes can remove a lot of the data that's collected about your online activities and provide a higher level of privacy. Consider making one or all of them as time allows to see how they work for you. Start small, build momentum, and watch your digital exhaust shrink.
Remember: we may not have anything to hide, but everything to protect.
