Concept of free services today

Nowadays, the concept of free is still very much the same as it was a lot of time ago

Everything we have and use, that didn't cost us money is considered free, but today's world is much more complicated than that, somethings that we take for granted and have no concept of them costing us are costing us, a lot, and it's much more valuable than our money.

Your social media accounts, your E-mail, your Search engine, and your phone or other devices' operating system, all are Collecting enormous amounts of data from you, as their price.

How many people may have no idea what I'm talking about? and what does it mean? Let me explain, when you buy a new phone or install an app, you might see Something named privacy policy, to which we all agree without glancing at them, that privacy policy states all the ways where that app or website can or will collect data from you.

Now, there are two basic reasons why most of us don't read them, 90% of us are just too lazy to read them and manufacturers make sure that we stay that way by making these policies extremely difficult to understand and very very long, another trick they use is to put a website link to their privacy policy page so you have to leave your work in between Just to read their uncomfortably long policies on another platform.

The final nail in the coffin is the second reason, that you can't use the product or the app unless you agree with their privacy policy and usage terms & conditions, so either you give up your data or you don't use the service,

The second thing is adware, the free or cheap programs you use are filled with them, they are harmless but are still very annoying nonetheless, so the cost of service and its maintenance is paid by these ads running on their platform, some of them offer you an ad-free, premium experience for some money, but the majority of us would never pay for something that they can get for free, so that's rarely chosen.

Some might ask, why data collection or ads? why not just put a price tag on everything, but that's exactly what was tried in the beginning but people wouldn't buy online services or Software, at least a heavy majority of them.

Advertisements help developers deliver cheap and premium products, like your new China phones, like, Xiaomi, infinix, Realme, and One plus Phones are cheaper than other phones, and they still provide better Phones, but their software is filled with game ads, so they make up their loss by these ads.

Now we discuss data collection, your simple Social media account like Instagram can collect your phone number, contacts, exact location, photos, and videos and has access to your camera and microphone, then comes E-mail, which is mostly Gmail. Including email, Google provides nearly 72 Services, most of them are default in our usage, not to mention google owns Android and youtube, this means if you are a regular smartphone user, google knows your home, gender, age, location, every Interest, regularly visited places, passwords, contacts Phone usage routine, religion, phone number and has direct access to your photos, videos, camera, microphone, chat and browser history's combine that with world's most advanced AI Processing and google has dangerously accurate and complete knowledge of you, to know how much Google actually knows about you, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iIg7wmEz20 or go to http://www.google.com/settings/ads/.

We are at a point where that isn't even a joke to say that Google knows you better than you know yourself. Google knows, But google isn't alone, nearly every app tries to collect your data, and fake websites use it to do all kinds of illegal stuff like Stealing, Blackmailing, ransom, etc. So you should always make sure you fully trust a service Provider before allowing them access.

Trusted service providers use this data to know you better and throw ads that are most likely to catch your interest. so the advertiser gets his products to the people who are actually interested in his products, this system is so powerful and works so well, that it's sometimes creepy how well informed it is.

In Sweeden, it was reported that a woman was sent advertisements for baby products from Amazon, while she and her family was unaware that she was pregnant, turns out that from her browser searches and online behavior, Amazon's algorithm concluded that she was pregnant without any Solid proof, and that was a correct prediction.

I don't recollect ever mentioning my phone model, just saw some reviews of it, and now I am regularly advertised with its back covers and other accessories, It also advertises you things that you may need in future, but your data is also used by these apps and websites to give you personalized content,

I think you can get a very accurate estimate of someone's interests after seeing their Instagram explore section or youtube's home page you don't have to subscribe or even press like on content that you like for it to be added to your interests on Instagram. Just spending time on it would be enough to inform them that you're interested.

This way, you get the content you Like on these platforms and there is more chance that you spend more time on them so they would show you more ads and earn more from advertisers, one dark side of this feature is that you get for away from generalization, because you are getting what you want and believe In, which may seem great to you but truly, it's very bad for your social health.

One-sided perspective never leads you to the right answer, plus, you get a whole community that has the same views and interests as you, again, it's great but these kinds of communities spread more hate for opposing communities than they do actual good, spending time in this isolated environment can make you feel less safe, and lead to extreme views, also making you think that you are the only one right and know enough which is a destructive thought. that's not always the case but it does happen more often than you think.

Now it may look like you are vulnerable to these product developers, with all of your private data in their hands, but consider this, you are not alone nearly 4 to 5 billion people are using mobile phones for the same purposes as you and some companies are handling their data also, but that's the thing, the sheer number of people using that service is a guarantee that they will not use it for illegal purposes, first of all, it's way too hard, if Private information leaks of a user, they would not stay silent, and technology spreads any news worldwide in a matter of seconds, and this issue is very sensitive so world-wide mistrust of that service provider would be spread, this means people would stop using their service and look for alternatives, causing catastrophic damages to the company, not to mention that company would face multiple lawsuits, and this kind of bad reputation is guaranteed to bankrupt the service Provider.

You may remember the Whatsapp privacy scandal, someone spread a rumor that now that Facebook owns Whatsapp, so Facebook will receive your all data and would do whatever it wants with it, now that's kind of true but facebook still owns more data about you than whatsapp ever could but the way of presenting this information was so harsh that people quickly started to leave Whatsapp, Global mistrust was spread and people started to look for alternatives, many people quit Whatsapp and alternatives like Viber and telegram downloads increased by hundreds of millions, Whatsapp and Facebook received huge damage to their reputation and reported millions of dollars of loss, even though not a single user's data was misused.

Just a rumor was enough to bring them to the edge of destruction. So that's the kind of consequences that a company has to face if a user's privacy is compromised, little companies can't handle it, and huge ones don't like to try anything fishy, the current system is working very well for them, and earning them a lot of revenue, so they don't have to try other ways, but still, you should be careful to get your apps from a trusted Source, like google play and use services with huge user bases.

Just in case.