> I know the "best" way to stop this kind of privacy violation is good consumer protection and privacy laws I agree such laws are necessary, but I'm not sure t

> I know the "best" way to stop this kind of privacy violation is good consumer protection and privacy laws I agree such laws are necessary, but I'm not sure they're the best of the various solutions. Technical measures might be more robust, such as fine-grain permissions in mobile operating systems. I'd rather it not be possible to collect my data in the first place, than trust that some developer (in whichever jurisdiction) isn't breaking the law. An advantage of the web is that hostile code is more easily tamed than in native apps, but in itself this observation doesn't do the user much good. Apps are pushed in part because of their superior capabilities for user-hostile functionality. Similarly, Free and Open Source software is rarely this user-hostile, as few people have the nerve to publish their user-hostile code for all to see. Again though there's a sort of collective-action problem: if only the abstemious few like Stallman insist on not using proprietary software, things don't improve.