So I decided to get serious about my privacy and data after setting up the e-mail on this site I decided to switch my e-mail over to a more private provider. In doing so, I have also decided to go through all my accounts that I have record of and while I am changing the e-mail address I am also going through and deleting accounts I no longer use or need and damn punks, I gotta tell you—it's a lot.
Absolutely mindblowing how many accounts I have signed up for. Shit I don't even remember which e-mail or even username I used and had to guess it. Accounts that apps create. Accounts to sites that don't even exist anymore. Etc. Etc.
Luckily, most of the accounts I signed up with in the last five or so years, I've tracked through BitWarden and the ones that weren't I was careful to import or delete. For those that don't know, this is an app that can safely encrypt and store your account information such as username, e-mail, passwords, 2FA keys, etc. It's open-source, easy to use, and cloud based with free and paid options. You don't have to be a tech wizard to use it and it's available on most platforms (Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Linux, etc). I must have pruned a good half of the accounts I had stored in it today.
In terms of the e-mail, I am using Fastmail which I know will get groans because of "hosted in a Five Eyes country" and such but if you know you could be compromised through legal or other means YOU SHOULD NOT USE E-MAIL FOR SENSITIVE PURPOSES for the very simple reason that E-MAIL EXPOSES YOUR METADATA IN CLEAR TEXT. Even an encrypted e-mail is basically a postcard with the sender and receiver info, dates, time, and subject in the clear with the body encrypted. Metadata is more than enough to give away one's network. For secure communication you should be using Signal, Telegram (using it's secure features), and other applications designed with security and privacy in mind. Not a plain-text messaging system designed in 1971. If you must correspond personally via email, use GPG or other encryption.
But yeah, that was today. It was exhausting. Google was one of the sites I had a problem with. Won't let me delete an account I made because I once typed my email incorrectly. Walmart wanted me to call them and waste half an hour. Data and account retention policies for companies are awful and the games they play when you try to delete your account make me want to bash my retro 80s-style keyboard into the wall: invert the buttons for confirm / cancel, highlight cancel instead of confirm, let's do 2FA a couple more times, hey which one of these grainy pictures are stairs, click the squares with the motorcycles, hey, I don't think you're human, I AM SORRY DAVE. I AM AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT.
It's stuff like this that makes me realize these companies don't respect us. They doesn't respect our time or patience. The workers that had to deal with talking to me and escalating things to their managers because they couldn't do it don't deserve to show up everyday to deal with this bullshit. All these companies scraping and trading all this data to sell us shit but I really have to ask? Is this even about profit at this point is or it something even more nefarious. Why such protection over this when data is so plentiful that its supply ensures its value is worthless... unless the aim is control.
But maybe I am just schizoposting now.