I am evolving my views on personal privacy. I am, like many people, trying to passively defend myself. However, the environment today is more akin to people coming up and punching you than it is to just avoiding door to door sales people. We are being actively attacked, and real harm is being caused. People are loosing their entire livelihoods, or worse, to attacks on their privacy like this. At the moment all I see out there is sit there and take it. Nothing I do will keep my life private in a meaningful way. The best I can hope for is that companies wont tell me too loudly that they know when I go to the bathroom and how heavy I am, they will just show me targeted ads that prove they know those things and sell my data so corrupt agencies can decide how best to abuse it, legally. So, what options are left if the only tool you are given is sit there and take it but nobody is actually defending you?
You're right, individually, we don't have the power to protect ourselves, especially passively. Call your lawmakers. Call any lawmaker who will listen. You probably have a primary election coming up soon. Ask the candidates what their stance is on this & make an informed vote. If they aren't sure, explain the situation to them. Do the same in November.
https://adnauseam.io/
Im not sure I understand your point. You can still work to protect your privacy and it will get better slowly over time IMHO.
There are services out their that help you with the data that is already out there on you.
We're at a place where browser fingerprinting is what you have to defeat in order to not be tracked online, it goes a lot further than signing up for DeleteMe.
All DeleteMe does is save you the time of manually making takedown requests, which is not that onerous in the first place. I've done plenty of my own. But that doesn't prevent online advertising databases from profiling me or you. And it's been happening for years - this isn't new at all.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ad...
You think privacy is getting better over time? Honestly? Is there any credible source that is documenting privacy in the US getting better?
No its getting worse, but the more active you are about protecting your privacy the better off you are IMHO.