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II2IIyesterday at 6:25 PM2 repliesview on HN

> Nobody wants to pay for what they use, so companies extract value in other ways and you can't complain about that if you're not willing to pay what it costs.

I'm likely old school here, but I never liked "paying for what I use" in the online world because it required revealing some personally identifying information (i.e. to make payment). My attitude is almost certainly irrelevant these days, with the scope of online tracking, sharing of data, and the near necessity of disclosing one's identity to sites other than one's ISP, but it was an attitude that was established in my mind nearly 30 years ago.

(I also don't trust the pay for privacy model. First of all, you can never assume that paying for something implies your data won't be sold. That was even true before the public Internet. Then, even with statements about privacy, you cannot assume that will be true in the future. If the company is sold, management changes, or the company decides the need/want additional revenues, that will change. And that assumes they don't use weasel words about what privacy means, or the ultimate "we reserve the right to changes this agreement at any time".)


Replies

r3trohack3ryesterday at 8:02 PM

Kagi support zero knowledge search through a Firefox extension and Mullvad supports zero knowledge VPN by putting cash in an envelope with your account ID written on the outside.

dabbzyesterday at 6:51 PM

I mean, there’s more privacy protection on payment data than there is for email address and browsing habits. Plus most companies just push out payment handling to stripe. So most websites have little idea who actually transacted with them to begin with (email dependent).

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