[General Questions and Answers] TheMystic:
The single most important, most debated subject of being online - privacy and security.

While security is undisputed, privacy aspect is.

So what exactly is the concern? As normal people in normal professions (which is easily more than 90% of the population), is there a need for worry?

For a long time since I started using smartphones, I had a natural inclination towards remaining anonymous and private online. I would always use incognito browsing for everything I do online, never create an account with a service as much as possible (e.g. I would watch YouTube videos without signing in), etc.

With time, I began realizing that I am actually missing out on so many interesting things that matter to me, and much of the content that would interest me would be made available to me without much effort using machine learning and artificial intelligence, an area where huge investments are being made.

So slowly I started accessing content and using services with my Google account. Over time, everything from Google feed to YouTube videos were showing me content that I am interested in, and sometimes they were so intelligent that I have been amazed with the whole technology that is at works. Surely, you cannot expect a doctor to give you the right prescription without giving him complete details about your problems. You can't talk privacy there. So unless the system learns what you like and what you don't, there is no way it will present stuff (including ads) that will be interesting to you.

With that said, why are are we overemphasizing this aspect of our lives? Is the privacy lobby inflating the privacy problem more than is necessary? Especially since much of what Google learns (according to them) about you is private, and only you can access/ control it, and also because the open-source alternatives are overrated. I say overrated because there are no audit reports (from trustworthy audit entities) available. Their codes may be available for audit, but is there a trustworthy source that is actually auditing them? Are the platforms where they are available being audited? So the issue of privacy and security applies to these platforms too, and more so because they aren't scrutinized as heavily as Google products and services.

As far as more personal info is concerned, like location, age, gender, searches I perform, accounts, mobile number, etc - Google already has all those because I provided them with much of that info when I created my account. Sure, one can always provide fake info for some of them. But if you use 'Find my Device', you are pretty much giving away your location to Google REAL-TIME. While this can potentially be misused, how else is Google supposed to help you if you were to lose your device? Mobile numbers and email addresses are necessarily required to be correct because they are needed when you are locked out of your account. They are the only means to get your account back.

While I am a strong proponent of privacy, I also feel that too much is made out about a lot of stuff that aren't really something to worry about. Those stuff are essential to get the service we expect in return, in other words, putting technology to use.

That said, it is still important not to give anyone a free hand over data, and there has to be several layers of checks and balances, and accountability for safeguarding and using them.

All that said, my current position is this. Make best use of the technology at hand, because if you don't provide the necessary inputs, there cannot be a proper output.

As with some things that we do online which we might want to keep completely private, use a non-google browser (like Firefox Focus or Duck Duck Go) in incognito mode with Duck Duck Go search engine.

For everything else, use GOOGLE (assuming there is accountability and severe penalties for violations).