Namely, a course of conduct in self protection needs to have an understanding of what the potential harm is from a given threat.
As I see it, the big danger is not from these corporate data vacuums like Facebook, directly.
The biggest threat is the use of this aggregated data by bad actors.
I have yet to hear of a major tech company undertaking actions to directly harm the users of their products. In fact, they are highly incentivized to minimize harms to users.
I don’t see targeted advertising as a bad thing. If I’m going to see adds, I prefer they reflect my interests. I actually find out interesting things from such adds.
Because the overall system has become so complex and monolithic, I think taking steps to thoughtfully minimize personal information leakage is prudent.
But inconveniencing oneself to no discernible benefit is counter productive, and can easily backfire.
For example, if you move your email service to one provided by your shared website host, you open yourself to many potential woes.
Emails from private domains are more likely to get lost in spam filters. I’ve had unfortunately breakdowns in relationships because people who needed to reach me thought I was blowing them off.
Last time I had an email address a private domain, the spam filtering was so bad, it rendered it almost useless.
You’re also hosting your mail on god knows what server, controlled by a company with a lot less security resources than Google.
So there is a substantial cost in avoiding the free email services like Gmail, for nebulous benefit.
I am very concerned about the issue of personal information security. But everything comes at a cost.
The question of whether allowing law enforcement back door access to private communications is worth it is not so straightforward as many commenters seem to imply.