[xdude]

Shared prices are high and have a demand coz of share holders. They expect growth and profits. So basically nothing those commercial companies provide for free comes without a price. Like Google scan every mail sent by gmail. they say its because that way they can display personalized advertisements but that just a part of the story. Its not just them. its same for all big companies which providing free mail or any other thing like search functions etc. Easy way to avoid this is using Linux and then use your own mail servers. Because these are the 2 biggest data mines. Then using a search engine like duckduckgo for search instead of Google search. Then has to stay off Social Media, phone apps etc.

personally I don't mind it. they are going to collect my personal preferences and then sell it as a bulk to some other company. These data protection laws are quite decent so there can be very limit harm happen to individual person. So it's become a choice are you willing to give up all of these are go for options like I mentioned before or willing let them use data. Interesting topic but I think we are moving away from the OP.