Day Three: Selecting Alternatives

** NOTE! This is a very big task. Many people get stuck on it. Don't get stuck. Just make a list of a few accounts if you need to. Move on if you find yourself getting stuck. You can always come back to this one. It is okay to skip to Day Four. Before doing so, at least scroll down to the Tactics, which will help you select the different systems you'd like to use. 

Today's plan is this: you are going to start making a list of your online accounts. At least, the top ten of them.

I encourage you, some other time, to make a longer and more comprehensive list of places where your data is living all over the internet. But please note, that will be a long list. Because you will undoubtedly wake up at 2am remembering, "What was the name of that one shop where I bought Hannukah-themed socks for uncle Roger eight years ago?"

At least if you get started now, you'll have a place to write that down in the middle of the night.

What you're going to do with this top ten, though, is identify how you are going to select specific alternatives, and make a plan to change.

A Roadmap to the Roadmap 

Lay your list out as follows, with these columns (or download the template here):

• Write the name of the service in the first column.
• Then write a short description of what it's for (Mail/Music/Calendars/Search/Contacts/Shopping/Social/Work etc.)
• Add space for five checkboxes.
• Then space for notes
• Then a checkbox called DONE.

A great way to start is actually using your password manager, as it has a pretty good list of any online accounts with passwords that are autofilled. If you've just migrated successfully to Firefox (in Day Two) you can find those logins here: if you use LastPass or another external password manager, log in and look for the list.

Consider, too, that if you have an account with a Platform (like Google or Amazon),  chances are you use it for many things at a time. You may buy supplies on Amazon.com, stream music on Amazon Music, and listen to books on Kindle or Audible (an Amazon company, it says so in the splash header). You probably use Google Calendar, Classroom, Maps, Mail, Search, Contacts, and much more (Wave and G+ anyone? anyone?).

In your list, break these different services out into separate line items, because you will deal with each of those elements separately.

Your password manager isn't everything. I'm betting if you're not like me (which is basically, I freely admit it, everyone else on the planet) you have probably used some form of Single Sign On to purchase something in the past.

This is that system where instead of creating a unique login for a service, you click "login with Google" or "login with Facebook" or Apple or Github or Microsoft. You've seen this before.

Please do not make this list on Google sheets because you are about to migrate away from Google products, or at least be more selective in how you use them. But you can make your list on a piece of paper (or several, like how about a small booklet?)  

If you must use software here is a version of the list available for Spreadsheet software. And I recommend you download LibreOffice, the open source version of Word-Excel-Powerpoint, which you can use to open this file and you don't have to pay for it. It has all the same functionality as the Office 365 suite, looks fairly similar, and is straightforward for everyday use.

The Master of your Accounts

The purpose of this list is three-fold. First, it's going to give you a sense of where your personal data currently is. Even if there are a lot of places, grounding this will feel much less overwhelming than just waving your hands in the air and not knowing where to start.

The second purpose of this map is that it is going to give you a road map for what you want to do with that data. You will make this roadmap yourself, based on your own choices. You will start to be intentional about your choices, not just signing up for whatever because your friend sent you a link.

You will leave the services that don't serve you. After all, some of those services you probably don't need anymore (unless you need an annual dose of Hannukah-themed socks). You can choose to close those accounts down and wipe as much of your data as you can.

Some services are things you still need, but you need to deal with them in a more data-conscious way. And others still, you are not in charge of. We will discuss how to deal with these below.

The third purpose of this map, however, is that it is a checklist. Because you will list these services and logins, decide what to do with them, then do it. Yes, you will! That's why you need the roadmap. To help navigate these three weeks.

On your list, label the five checkboxes and mark them based on these categories:

• LOSE. What can you live happily without? You will eventually log in to each of these and delete your account information so you can move on. (Not today. Today you're writing this list.)
• SSO. Which are Single Sign On (SSO) or linked through Google, Facebook, or Apple? The ones you want to keep, you'll go through and create separate logins in a few days' time, once we have sorted out your email, email masking, and shopping habits. 
• STUCK: These are systems you can't leave, because you have no control over the fact that you have to use them. Think, like, not legally allowed to leave, not just stuff like you're stuck on TikTok because you like it. Maybe these systems belong to your work, or a work-issued laptop, or your church or temple, or your doctor's office. You didn't make the choice of what system to use in these cases. 
• MIGRATE: Necessary, beloved, or core services that you rely on and have some control over: that is, you once had a choice to join or not, (even if now it feels like you have no choice). Think LinkedIn or Google. However, you're concerned about how they use your data. In the coming weeks you will address these services in turn. You'll download or migrate your data somewhere more trustworthy. Or you'll find alternative systems that do the same job in a more privacy-oriented way. Or you'll trim and slim down your contact list. Or you'll adjust your login emails and profile names so they aren't easily attached to your do-it-all-gmail.  There are many approaches here. In "notes" we'll indicate how you choose to manage and migrate.
• STAY: Systems that respect your privacy or help you achieve your privacy goals. You'll return to some of these to ensure that your logins are safe.

For everything that isn't LOSE or STAY, you're going to choose a tactic to stay with them. 

Remember that most privacy controls are not actually private!  It's not enough to toggle through menus and options to feel like you have your system under control. You have to stop them feeding off your data, internally, and withdraw your data from their purview. Or at least, enough of your data that they can't do very much with what is left. 

Here are your options. They're split into different blog posts so that you can get a better sense of what works for you. Read up on each tactic, and then consider how you'll use your choice of systems to your advantage, not theirs.

• Data Balkanization: Splinter your online identity and data trails across hostile systems so they can't piece a single identify back together without a whole lot of work.
• Render to Caesar: Earmark one system for one thing only, and rigidly keep it that way. A great way to manage the "but I have to use it for work/health/birdwatching" problem that keeps us all giving our data to the platforms.
• Canaries in the Data Mines: Give out different email addresses and creatively written mailing addresses to different companies, this time so that YOU can trace where your data migrates behind your back.
• Digital Homesteading: Keep all your data on your own servers, in your home, or in a country that you trust. An Advanced Move, but perhaps easier than you think.

These aretechniques for mainstream services that I innovated over a decade ago. I have used them since 2012 to thwart the advertising machinery, the algorithms, and even AI. They may not work forever, and they dont work for everything, but they are pretty effective at producing some form of obfuscation overall. If the threat model you have is one of piecing everything together, these are fairly effective strategies.  And they help you escape the All-Or-Nothing problem that plagues Opt Out acolytes.

The Bottom Line is ... It's Not A Hard Line

With your data roadmap, go back to the elements you checked STUCK SSO, or MIGRATE, and consider to which ones you will apply a private service data Balkanization, or Render to Caesar or some other tactic going forward. You don't have to decide just yet, but at least have these options in mind, and write any choices you make into your list in the notes section.

Anything you have accessed through SSO, you will Balkanize. You want to sever those ties to Google or Facebook or whatever that the single login establishes.

Anything you have listed STUCK or MIGRATE, think of these choices. You might be able to choose an alternative or keep some data at home. For those that are more limiting, rendering some data to Caesar or spreading your traces thin, all may help create some layer of obfuscation.

You also have to make it difficult for them to piece a single picture of you back together. Everyone only gets one piece of the puzzle, a sliver at that. They'll have to go knocking on a lot of doors to assemble all the pieces.

All this is to say, you don't have to give up these systems entirely. You just have to not give them the entirety of your life.

Note that this is not the same as complete invisibility online. It's also not disappearing from the Web entirely. It is making it harder to assemble your data for pinpointing purposes and is thwarting the data economy instead of feeding it with your traces as you live online.

Now, you may ask yourself, isn't this crazy? How do you live with all this rendering and balkanizing? Don't you have like fifteen email addresses? (I have an uncountable number of email addresses.)

Actually, I love living like this. I find it so, so much easier to live like this, I can't believe it. If all my emails were actually going to just one email address, I'd be swamped. I'd have so much stuff in one spot I'd be drowning.

With the different parts of my life separated, with their own space for each element, I am far freer. I can choose when I log in, what I check, which notifications I'm subject to. I don't have to rely so heavily on spam filters. I can also do better at balancing between work and life, because I can stop checking work stuff when I get home, and stop checking life stuff while I'm at work, if and when I choose. It is liberating.

Because someone else didn't balkanize your data -- you did. You sorted it out. You put it away. You know exactly where it is and why.

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Tomorrow, we'll tackle your email, which will make all of this more possible. For today, though, we need your roadmap. You likely have a long list to make. Go ahead, I'll wait.