The 21st century has been shaped by the silent infrastructure of the surveillance economy, which sweeps up every last trace of data our daily lives leave behind. These data points are collected and pieced together to create individual profiles of us. Profiles that can be leased to advertisers hungry for our attention, shared with governments for investigative purposes, and sold on to shady data brokers.

Digital products and services have stopped working for us. Instead, we’re unwittingly working for them. We’re ranked, rated, profiled. Programmed to act in ways we otherwise wouldn’t. And now we tell AI systems what we used to keep to ourselves. The ranking and profiling keeps getting more complete, and more efficient.

Forget having nothing to hide. Our data is used against us either way. To capture our attention, our money, and our votes. To predict what we’ll do next, and to influence our behavior.

If information is power, and we’ve lost control of our information, what are we left with?

The internet once felt wide open. A place for experimentation, not yet beholden to profit.

Today’s internet looks very different. It has been captured by the market forces of the surveillance economy, whose fuel is every detail of our personal lives. Companies say they collect data to improve their services. People shrug it off as the price of convenience and hope the law will take care of the problem.

Yet governments around the world have been slow to regulate. And many have implemented their own mass surveillance programs in the name of national security and public safety: listening in on communications, buying our data from brokers without a warrant, using algorithms in policing and the courts, implementing social credit systems, and rolling out facial recognition programs. In the process, they have turned law-abiding citizens into persons of interest.

The loss of control over our data has been a slippery slope of decline. What we’re losing is our autonomy. Constant monitoring takes away our ability to selectively reveal ourselves to the world. Knowing that our words and actions are being permanently recorded makes us less likely to speak up for what we believe in, or to try new ideas.

For some of us, being watched is already dangerous: minorities and marginalized communities, journalists, activists, lawyers, dissenters, citizens of authoritarian regimes, democracy advocates.

We can’t opt out of the surveillance society we live in.

What we can do is claim our agency. To equip ourselves with tools that give us back a degree of control. To let governments and tech companies know that privacy is not an inevitable sacrifice for progress. Not a trade-off for national security. And certainly not dead.

Around the world, people and organizations are pushing back. To assert their rights, and to speak up for those who can’t. To resist the relentless data economy. To hold accountable those who abuse their power. And to keep fighting for a future free from surveillance.

No privacy tool stops a ticket site from logging who bought a seat, or an AI system from keeping what you tell it. That part comes down to judgment. Think about what you’re protecting, and from whom. Then decide which services to trust with it.

At IVPN, we work on four layers of the problem: network, email, DNS and applications. Together, these tools help you regain a degree of control. Sign up without an email address and pay with cash or Monero, so we never need to know who you are.