I am not concerned for me. I am concerned for a recovering drug addict who views the website with chrome, then applies to work at target using the same chrome browser.

You’ve said you work at large companies that do strict hiring checks. Do you work in HR? I am not referring to a background check. No offense, but you’re just wrong on this. When a company uses a data broker check and then rejects a candidate, a resume gets thrown in the trash and the candidate is not told why. You are greatly underestimating the privacy risk for someone naive who thinks they are attending something “anonymous.”

https://workology.com/shadow-employee-profiles-how-third-party-data-brokers-impact-workplace-privacy/

"In the data-driven world of today, privacy in the workplace is not confined to what is seen on security cameras or tracked by email monitoring systems. A more subtle and sophisticated threat is developing: shadow employee profiles created with data secretly obtained by external actors. Without employees even knowing they exist, these profiles can impact hiring, promotion, and even termination. What is a Shadow Employee?

A shadow employee profile is a digital file produced without direct permission or knowledge of the employee. It covers data not only from internal systems but also from outside sources such as credit records, online shopping, public databases, and social media activity.

Often working in legally murky areas, third-party data brokers gather, compile, and market this data to companies or background screening companies."

https://time.com/archive/6595428/data-mining-how-companies-now-know-everything-about-you/

from the article from 2010:

" Google’s Ads Preferences believes I’m a guy interested in politics, Asian food, perfume, celebrity gossip, animated movies and crime but who doesn’t care about “books & literature” or “people & society.” (So not true.) Yahoo! has me down as a 36-to-45-year-old male who uses a Mac computer and likes hockey, rap, rock, parenting, recipes, clothes and beauty products; it also thinks I live in New York, even though I moved to Los Angeles more than six years ago. Alliance Data, an enormous data-marketing firm in Texas, knows that I’m a 39-year-old college-educated Jewish male who takes in at least $125,000 a year, makes most of his purchases online and spends an average of only $25 per item. Specifically, it knows that on Jan. 24, 2004, I spent $46 on “low-ticket gifts and merchandise” and that on Oct. 10, 2010, I spent $180 on intimate apparel. It knows about more than 100 purchases in between. Alliance also knows I owe $854,000 on a house built in 1939 that — get this — it thinks has stucco walls. They’re mostly wood siding with a little stucco on the bottom! Idiots."

I’m sorry. There’s really no way to undo this. Grieving and and moving on is the only option, and I am not being sarcastic. If my privacy was violated like that by google, I would be very upset and would grieve. Even if you complain, they won’t remove it from AI training or whatever they intend to do, even if they lie and say they will. Librem 5’s have no google in them if you want to switch to something else. FuriLabs also make a Debian smartphone.

There are phosh based phones and over time more people will hopefully switch to them, use them, and work on making them better. Phosh-based phones are currently are not as usable as something like GOS, but with Google challenging itself to become more and more enshitified in the interest in marginal tiny profit gains (even if it destroys their brand over the long term) nerds needs to band together prepare for an alternative. Part of this is going to be advocating for Apps that work in Linux mobile Phosh environments and just refusing to use containerized apks and part of it is going to be people doing what they can to support native linux phone apps that work well in Phosh.