Hey hubski. I'm curious about your opinions. I'm a rather tech savvy individual. I love gadgets. I do automation programming/engineering for a living and have dabbled in web development and application development a little. I've always been cautious online, and somewhat privacy and security focused, but I have to admit that I've gone -years ago- whole hog into the Google dome. I'd also have to admit that I do rather like how easy a lot of things are with the "personal assistant" aspect of the ecosystem being able to provide a lot of good detailed information at the appropriate times.

There are certainly some aspects that would be nice to easily filter out on occasion. For example when I've searched for our purchased a risque item on Amazon and then all of the sudden I'm getting more suggestions for similar risque items. Kind of nice I suppose, other than they could show up at an inopportune time when you're showing something to someone else and they see that you have recommendations for some sex toy in your recommended items. (I swear I was just looking for a gag gift!)

So anyhow. I've dabbled with tor and I use VPN for work which is typical. But I'm curious what other folks think about it. You see people like Snowden that recommend everyone being far more cautious and only using secure and encrypted technologies at all times and never giving any of your detailed information away for free like we do with all these services, where WE have become the product.

So what do you think about it? How far do you generally go to protect yourself from prying eyes? Do you encrypt your devices and computers? Do you use things like tor or a VPN for personal stuff? Do you avoid Google or Amazon?