A frugal life is an easy life!

Our personal information is being gathered at an alarming pace, in everything that we do, everyday.
Protections exist, we are always told, regulations prevent businesses and their third party businesses are there to "Hold business to account," a whole host of small print and exclusions, buried in reams of "Terms and conditions" can be read on their websites.

I don't care about any of it, one jot. The only person whom is going to protect my information, is me!

Here are some tips for you, that I use. (Right or wrong, misguided or not):

BOOKFACE:

• Never wish anyone a happy birthday.
  I value all my friends/family's privacy, why would I pass their date of birth on to a private company and it's third party associates?
  My timeline is full of children's birthdays... all being collected by the platform business. Why would I protect my own date of birth, then hand over the date of birth for my children?
  It's a process, so that in the future the platform won't need to go hunting for it, they already have it on file. (Besides which, children are not permitted to have facebook accounts, yet their personal information is being gathered from an early age, via their family's accounts.)
  
• Never reply to a "Do you remember..." post.
  Have you seen the switching website business adverts, that show Skeletor and He-Man dancing, etc?
  They are appealing to a demographic, an age group born at a certain time, falling in an age bracket.
  Same applies with posts.
  I like/comment on them, puts me in a demographic, along with those in my friends list.
• Tagging in photos.
  No thanks. Facial recognition is being used by most businesses nowadays, via their "security" cameras in branches.
  Greggs uses it, yes Greggs!
  I went in with sprog2 to pick up my Mum a doughnut, looked up at the security screen and red squares were around both of our faces. Asked the staff to turn it off, they didn't have a clue, "I just serve at the counter!"
• Profile pictures - No.
  Big NO from me.
• Open a new browser before logging in to any other website.
  As I move from bookface, to another website, many websites track which website you go to. Bookface goes a bit further and I have proof!
  If I open a web browser and look at my timeline on bookface, then click on my address bar and say, visit the twotty website, you'd think that would be it?
  All bookface would see is the website that I've gone to right? Wrong!
  A few times now, I've had my speakers on in the background as I surf the web, I've gone from bookface to twotty, yet whilst browsing twotty, the ping noise (of a new post to my timeline on bookface) has sounded.
  I go back to bookface and there is indeed a new post to my timeline!
  How could this be? I'm not logged in to bookface, I'm not on their webpages, etc.
  Yet whilst browsing their so-called rival, twotty, I still get their new post ping?
  I asked both twotty and bookface why this is the case... guess what?
  None of them will ever reply.
  So now, I always close bookface in the browser and open a new browser window before visiting another website.
  (Frugalways does not track which websites you come from/go to, if you honour us with your time and website visit. I am neither interested nor want to know your choice of browsing)

CONFIRMING DATA PROTECTION:

We've all had it happen to us, "For data protection can you confirm your date of birth?"
Unless it's a government department (ie. tax office) or a NHS department, not a single business has a right to ask my date of birth, hold my date of birth on file, etc.

When asked where the business obtained my date of birth from, not one single business can provide me with a straight and open answer as to why they have it on file.
It is none of their business!

SMART TECHNOLOGY:

Have a smart TV?
NEVER connect it to your internet. It can collect as much information about my household as it wants, but I will never let it publish that information, via my own i.p. address, back to the business/manufacturer.
There's a reason that none smart TVs will not play certain file types via their almost useless USB sockets. So you buy a smart TV!
The smart TV then claims you can view tubeyou, filxnet, etc, via your equipment, as well as playing basic MP4 files (for music, TV and videos) via the USB sockets.
Smart TVs also collect your data.
They can listen in on conversations, using algorythms, then target advertisements (so they say) to your needs (how considerate of them).
What data are they sending back to businesses/manufacturers?
Numerous examples of smart TVs having their "reporting back" function being turned off, only to discover (via their internet connection scans) that it continues to send back information, therefore deceiving the user into believing that they have control over the smart TV, when in fact, they do not.
Many of the "web browser" features listed with TVs are not actually full browsers at all.
I tested a sony blueray player's claims and found that the browser on the blueray play returns different (and fewer) results on internet searches, than my borwser on my PC.

There's a reason why business/manufacturers don't like people using PCs and prefer people to buy smart devices... PCs can be scanned to check for things, most smart devices cannot. (Not just for the obvious profits from selling and updating smart devices either!)
Exactly the same applies to smartphones, smart meters, smart appliances, etc.

CASH MACHINES and CREDIT/DEBIT CARDS:

It has become almost unavoidable (even by a saddo like me) to avoid all use of supermarkets.

These businesses are perhaps the biggest users of our personal data out of all of them.
One such supermarket, runs an "income tracker" and quotes the findings of it to the industry (and which other businesses I wonder?).
I have asked this supermarket a few times, where exactly do they obtain the data for their "income tracker" to report each month?
They have yet to provide a single answer to any of my questions.

• Do supermarkets have some access to our bank accounts when a customer pays by debit card?
• Are supermarkets collecting our data when we use their cash machines to withdraw money? (Even more apparent lately, with the news reports of many cash machines to close down)
• Are supermarkets collaborating with credit card companies to obtain our data?
• Or are supermarkets using algorthyms that are wildly off and simply guessing/pigeon holing most of our data, then selling it on for profit? (Read misleading).

Whatever the methods used, whenever I'm forced to use a supermarket, I pay by cash. I refuse to contribute to supermarket's gaining any information, as regards which company I bank with, account details, etc.
I even mix up the times I visit, sometimes early doors, sometimes late at night, sometimes not for weeks at a time.

I will be adding to this post as I come across more instances of big data collection, etc.
Are there any instances of big data collection that you've come across that I have not mentioned?