A multi-year tally of how much time and money basic data privacy protections have cost me.
| Activity | Time spent (in minutes) | Notes | Running total: Time (hours) | $ | Notes | Running total: $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turning off individual ad brokers’ lists access to target me; requires 6 clicks per service, no bulk opt-out option | 200 | Rough estimate, I have to re-do this from time to time | 31.05 | 0 | 235 | |
| Looking up masked email services | 25 | 0 | ||||
| Setting up AnonAddy | 10 | 10 | Now paying license fee per year | |||
| Encryption service for cloud provider, settled on Cryptomator for now | 10 | 0 | Web app is free | |||
| Encrypted text editor service and storage | 45 | 49 | per year; back to free license after realizing I didn’t use advanced features | |||
| DMAchoice opt out | 20 | 2 | for 10 years | |||
| Optoutprescreen.org | 5 | 0 | ||||
| YourAdChoices opt out | 5 | 0 | ||||
| YourAdChoices opt out on mobile | 5 | 0 | ||||
| Gmail alternative configuration (Tutanota) | 223 | 10 | per year; quit in favor of better calendar options on Proton Mail | |||
| Gmail alternative take 2 configuration (Proton Mail) | 120 | 40 | per year | |||
| More individual site opt outs | 20 | 0 | ||||
| Finding a good, multipurpose VPN with German IP addresses option (Mullvad) | 45 | 5 | per month; subscription not constant | |||
| Affixing VPN to each device | 30 | |||||
| Stingle photos as google photos alternative | 50 | 30 | per year; Dropped after a year, easier to just store in personal encrypted storage with documents | |||
| Setting up AdGuard home | 300 | Including resetting inherited router, creation of new rules | ||||
| Switching to LineageOS for Android | 500 | Samsung tablet took ages, Pixel 4a took an hour | 89 | cost of new LineageOS compatible phone | ||
| Tracker Control deployment | 50 | Couldn’t make up my mind about AdGuard on Android | ||||
| Configuring, reviewing Google “request to remove your PII” from search results | 20 | Maybe 2-3 minutes every now and then when a new result comes up | ||||
| Actual formal removal of data from data brokers, including Acxion, Experian, Epsilon, and Oracle | 180 | Approximate, much leg work on each request and follow up https://databrokerswatch.org/top-ten |