I doubt that few reading this will have much of a clue what I’m about to talk about, and fewer more may care, but it’s a lot of fun for me. It’s a story about learning, tinkering, and forever evolving. It really all started about 25 years ago when I built a couple web pages back in the early days of the Internet, and has culminated in me more or less having a small farm of servers running in my 676sqft condo. Along the way I’ve learned a LOT of things, and the beauty (or, brutality) of it all is that I have done it all on my own. Self taught. I’ve fallen more than a few times, but with failure comes an opportunity to learn.

It was a completely innocent walk to the post office, most specifically the Shoppers Drug Mart at Queen & Beverly – my local one. I dropped off my mail, took a jaunt over to the LCBO to replenish some stock, noticed they were closed, and turned to head home. As I passed back in front of the post office, there stood a man who appeared to be high, likely on meth as evidenced by his shaking, muttering, and erratic posture. As I got within about a step of him I realized he was brandishing a sharp metal spike in right hand, something I could only see at the last second. Motherfucker has an ice pick.

I immediately open my body to skirt around him outside of arms reach and backed away as quickly as possible. He didn’t explicitly lunge or swing at me, but his erratic body posture put me on alert, and as he took a step towards me, I immediately reacted. I got within a safe distance and then I was faced with a pretty considerable moral and ethical dilemma. What do I do now?

I’ve held this opinion for a long time, but whenever I brought it up I’d be completely dogpiled with hate. Understandable, seeing as a lot of people only are able to scrape by through the tips they collect. By saying it needs to go away, they feel threatened that their primary source of income would dry up, and this is more or less me saying “you don’t deserve to make this money”. I’d be upset if someone was to suggest I get paid less too – but that’s not at all what I’m saying.

We have been conditioned to think this way in North America and it’s one big massive fucking grift by our corporate overlords so they can reap massive benefits we’ll never see as the working class. So, let’s talk about it, and why this needs to stop (but, likely never will).

If you care even a little bit about your digital life, you should probably read this and think about it. What do you have on your computer, your phone, or in “the cloud”? What’s on social media? What’s on some CD you burned 20 years ago? Is it pictures of your wedding, or your child’s first steps? Maybe it’s a copy of your thesis that’s taken you 2 years to write. Or, maybe it’s a picture of your wang, at a moment when the sun was JUST right, and somehow this is the most triumphant and proud you’ve felt in the past decade. Three cheers for toxic masculinity.

What would happen if all of that was permanently deleted, right this moment? No warning, nothing. Gone. Would you be sad? Would it change your life? Would it make life harder? Would your business be in jeopardy? Are your passwords backed up? What about your browser bookmarks that you’ve spent 10 years curating? Poof. I’m going to tell you how to prevent this.

Look, I’m just going to put this out as a blanket statement – you should never give ANY of your personal information out unless it’s absolutely necessary. This goes triple to big corporations. Think about it – if a stranger walked up to you on the street and asked for your home address, place of work, and phone number – would you hand that over without thinking? Not a chance. So, why is it you so freely do so with proven evil corporate giants?

Every “points card”, “loyalty card”, and so-forth is to track you. When the cashier asks for your email address for your receipt, or they want your postal code, tell them you decline. If they insist they need it (they don’t), ask them for their own personal phone number and home address. But giving in is only hurting you and stripping you of more of your privacy – possibly one of the only things you have left that’s actually yours. Think I’m paranoid, or question why it matters? Read on.