Indeed, I try to have as little apps as possible… because I don’t trust them.

Now that I mostly rely on F-Droid it’s a bit different but my default behavior when I have to use an app is “Oh no… you’re going to siphon all my data in exchange for mediocre service I’ll still have to pay for” whereas I trust my browser a lot more.

Literally posted a suggestion yesterday for a sport project to use https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Accelerometer so I definitely see reasons. It might be better with a permission prompt first but still it’s not without reason.

What makes you think they aren’t?

I participated to W3C workshops and privacy data was definitely part of most if not all discussions.

That being said each browser vendor have their own strategy and opinion based on their business model and culture.

FUD.

That’s positive indeed. After Signal, maybe it’s time we all add PQC to our ssh, HTTPS, etc.

In fact if you are wondering OpenSSL supports PQC since 3.5 the current LTS and Debian stable relies on it https://packages.debian.org/stable/openssl

So… you might already be PQC-ready. In fact if you also run Debian on your server (or its exposed containers) maybe you connected over HTTPS already in a PQC-ready compliant fashion.

A lot of already great advice here, often clarifying that a computer that is not yours… is not yours.

What I would still add though is that you are NOT, and I’m very confident in saying this, the only one there, in your very school, to ask that question. In fact I would argue MOST users have the exact same concerns but they might even be aware that alternatives exist.

So… do not push back, or even just avoid, all this alone. Find others who have similar problems and solve them together.

There might be a Linux User Group already, join them. If there isn’t one, consider making it. It might just be you for few weeks, even month, but at least you will dedicate time and space to improve YOUR situation. Chances are though that others, even if only curious at first, might check what you are up to, if they can replicate that, etc.

Don’t feel isolate, move the needle for yourself first, in your corner, but be welcoming to others who are eager to contribute.

It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge while trying to tackle it with others.

Freedom to be exploited or exploit others even harder for “success”.

Sarcasm aside there are state equivalents, e.g. CCPA.

Worthwhile yet tricky. Companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, etc are full of experts in statistics and they have access to a lot of storage space. If use a service from those companies, say 4hrs per day between 7am and 9pm, at a certain frequency, e.g. 10 requests / hour, then suddenly, when you realize you actually do not trust them with your data, you do 10000 req/hr for 1hr then that’s a suspect pattern. Then might be able to rollback until before that “freak” event automatically. They might still present you as a user your data with the changes but not in their internal databases.

So… I’m not saying it’s not a good idea, nor useful, but I bet doing it properly is hard. It’s probably MUCH harder than do a GDPR (or equivalent) take out request then deletion request AND avoiding all services that might leverage your data from these providers.