Whether it's people assembled at my Opt Out Workshops, or someone I just met at a coffee shop, everyone has questions about opting out and starting on their journey. Sure, some are further down the path than others (which VPN's? which encryption mechanisms for self-hosting? how does Browser fingerprinting work?). But in general, here are the top ten questions I always get about opting out, and my go-to answers as well.

1. Where do I start?

Start small! I typically recommend people start with just simple change to your browser, or if you're already off Chrome, Edge or Safari, then move your passwords to an independent password manager. These baby steps take as little as 3 minutes — and they are remarkably easy to do. Plus, you’ll experience the incredible rush of sudden independence and agency that comes with making your own decisions about technology.

In my experience, people who start here ultimately want more. That's why Browsers are the first activity in the Cyber-Cleanse. Start there, and in 21 days you'll have expunged much of Big Tech from your life and will be experiencing freedom on the internet.

2. How do I get off Google? Or Instagram?

Slowly, by making a plan.

Recognize that you are in a co-dependent relationship with the company, and they will be highly manipulative if it looks like you’re leaving. They'll pull out all the emotional stops to make sure you second guess yourself.

Follow my “break up” plan to make sure you don’t go back to your default relationship but actually leave effectively, without looking back. That means taking your time to lay down new patterns, play the field with other companies, and figure out what will work for you so that you don't fall back into the same patterns or experience the regret of going Cold Turkey.

3. How do I get my data back from Big Tech Companies?

I recommend you start by downloading all your data, then delete your data before deleting your account.

This may be overkill. However, we don't really know what Big Tech companies do with our data after an account is deleted. They don't have an incentive to lose any data at all, and even if they do comply they no doubt have backup systems that keep archival copies. Personally, I take the time to delete everything (manually if necessary) in order to be sure the account has nothing in it. Then, after about a year has gone by (enough time for those backups to be overwritten), I will delete the account or just let it lie fallow.

If you're trying to figure out where to start, use a service like DuckDuckGo's subscription service to identify websites that have your data, and scrub it clean.

4. Is it even possible to evade surveillance capitalism?

Yes, but I say so with caveats. You can't go dark entirely.  It is less a question of how you can go about without being surveilled at all, and more about how you can take back some agency about what you give to Big Tech and what you do not, how you can avoid giving them a full picture.

In particular, my techniques like Data Balkanization and Render to Caesar, as well as swapping loyalty cards or bus passes, really gum up the works. These are ways to obfuscate your trail, or make sure you only give them partial data.

If your digital trail is scattered, mixed up, and messy, this makes it much harder for them to assemble a clear picture of you from the pieces. So while you can't evade being surveilled everywhere, you can throw monkey wrenches into the gears along the way.

5. Is WhatsApp safe?

I'm gonna go with NO on this one. Yes, WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol, so messages are encrypted. But it is owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta. That means that Meta can do what they want with the data, including whom you are connected to and whom you are sending messages to (even if they can't see the content of the message).

Signal, however, is a Foundation (so is Mozilla, at least half). That's important. It’s beholden not to shareholders, but to a mission statement and to a board of experts to ensure they stick to their mission and to their financial requirement not to accrue profits. This means everything they do has to uphold the mission statement and cannot accrue profit. So the product is not as liable to enshittification or to having its contents sold for surveillance.

How do you know if the product you're using is liable to enshittify, or sell off your data? One way is to look at tools like Crunchbase or Pitchbook. Look up a company and you can see its investors, where it's at in its funding cycle, and how it's generally doing. If it's in Series B with poor investment and not a lot of prospects, they'll probably sell off their assets, including your data. Since most tech nowadays isn't about technology at all but is about growing investment capital, you'll want to keep your eye on this ball.

6. What is the best tool to use?

There is a suite of tools you can try out, but there is no one size fits all solution. That's because there is no killer app for opting out.

That said, there are a lot of opinions out there, and very strong ones too. People take strong stances about their technology choices! This can lead newcomers to feel confused and retreat to Big Tech where things appear more certain. Best to do your homework online, pay attention to what matters to you, and stay flexible. Technology -- like the political situation -- changes rapidly, and your ability to move flexibly will be a more powerful response than doubling down on one system.

And remember, some tools are not tools at all. They are a mix of technical and social options. They trapped us through social and economic mechanisms, after all, not just technical ones. So don't hestitate to get flexible socially as well: ask your mom to look up things on Facebook for you so you don't have to, check your local record store for fliers from upcoming bands.

My tactics rely on you rolling out what is right for you, to allow you maximum flexibility for the systems you are required to use, and control over what you decide yourself.

7. What does Palantir know about me and how does it know that?

Years ago when I first started at Princeton, I worked with a graduate student called Sarah Brayne, who is now a professor at Stanford. She was the first to study Palantir in 2011 as it was deployed in the LAPD. So I have been clocking this compnay for a long time.

Palantir works by putting multiple, diverse datasets together to pinpoint individuals. It allows you to put together as disparate datasets as pizza delivery addresses acquired from data brokers, or public datasets like tax revenue by zip code. Thanks to an old proof in statistics, even when you anonymize data, if you put three datasets together you can pinpoint someone easily.

I can't tell you what Palantir knows about you specifically. I can tell you how to make it harder for them to pinpoint, though, or at least what tactics we think will work. It is a game of cat and mouse, which means they change their technology all the time and we need to change our tactics. But thinking about how to make your identity diffuse, fractional, shattered into pieces, can help. Use email aliases. Use credit card aliases. Shop in cash. Spoof your address and phone number.   Realise that automated license plate readers will be watching out for your vehicle. See how hard you can make it to put the puzzle pieces back together to make a single picture of your life, online and off.

8. What do I say to my friends who insist they don’t have anything to hide?

Lately I've been trying to explain that it’s not just about you. The great trick of big tech is they make it seem like it’s all about you, you are targeted for ads that you prefer to see anyway, so it doesn’t waste your time. What you don’t recognize (because you're busy looking at your ads and an internet personalized to you) are the tactics that allows Big Tech to know which ads to show you as a target market, are the same techniques they use to figure out who they think might be an illegal immigrant to send police to their door.

In other words, the very fact that Big Tech has detected I am a white woman in central New Jersey, means the same algorithms know how to determine when someone is a Black teenaged boy in Atlanta. And those same algorithms will make sure that young man never sees an ad for college admissions.

What you do online, then, puts other people at risk for worse life outcomes.

9. How do I stop myself and my friends from walking around like zombies just looking at their phones all the time?

Switching to an alternative smartphone or a dumbphone goes a long way. These systems don’t hack our attention the way that Apple and Android phones do.

I remember when attention hacking was first introduced in human-computer interaction as a question of persuasive design.  Notifications and endless scrolling were invented by classes of students in Stanford's in Symbolic Systems. Graduates went on to found Snapchat and Instagram. Psychology hacks from Las Vegas slot machines were built into smartphone operating systems and apps.

But other smartphones did not go this route. Google-free systems don't allow the companies to profit from your data.  Sailfish, even basic dumbphones -- all of these show how to lead a digitally connected life without being hacked by Big Tech.

And if that is a bridge too far to start, you can turn your display into greyscale or black and white and turn off all notifications from apps. Without the notifications and colors, a lot of the psychological hacks just don't work.

10. My community is at risk — how do I connect my friends and family from harm?

If you are actually at risk, then moving off the mainstream apps is essential and should be done immediately// Aléjate de las aplicaciones convencionales de inmediato. Estos pasos son esenciales:

1. Move all your contacts from WhatsApp to Signal // Mueve todos sus contactos de WhatsApp a Signal.
2. If you have an Android smartphone, put GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, or LineageOS on it so that Google cannot track you. // Si tiene un smartphone Android, instala GrapheneOS, CalyxOS o LineageOS para que Google no pueda rastrearte.
3. Migrate your mail and calendar and contacts from Google and use a different provider like Tuta, Proton, or Fastmail; these are encrypted // Migra su correo, calendario y contactos de Google y usa un proveedor diferente como Tuta, Proton o Fastmail con cifrado.
4. Change your period tracker to one that stays off the cloud: for instance, drip. // Cambia tu rastreador de período a uno que no esté en la nube (drip.).
5. No Google searches: switch to DuckDuckGo  // No usa Google para buscar; cambia per DuckDuckGo
6. Do not organize anything with your friends on Facebook or via Google. And do not post to mainstream social media. You may choose to use a Mastodon instance and set your timer for posts to expire after 1 day, but note that this is not encrypted. // No organices nada con sus amigos en Facebook ni por Google. Y no publiques en redes sociales convencionales. Podría usar una instancia de Mastodon y configurar que tus publicaciones expiren después de 1 día, pero ten en cuenta que esto no está cifrado.

If you are not at imminent risk, do these things anyway. It will help produce cover for those who actually do need to take care of themselves. And help others while you're at it. If you can build your digital skills away from the Platform Giants, that gives you the tools to help others as well.

Tech Reclaimers and the Opt Out project have alternatives and guides to help migrate to other tools. Check out the Tech Reclaimers Forum for more great ideas and tips.