Like having a pebble in my shoe, I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable—which did not happen overnight but has been building up like grit—having ads in my email inbox. I don’t feel like I have the right to be full-on uncomfortable because I am using the service for free, but I am disturbed about how ads are creeping into my inbox. And I don’t just see them in my Google emails only but ads also found their way in my Microsoft Outlook accounts.
During the pandemic, when I felt like I had a lot of time to experiment, I decided to create alternative emails using Outlook to move away from Gmail, but five years later, there’s nothing much of a difference between them anymore. Perhaps using free services would always mean you get served with ads because there’s always a catch with free services, right? Remember all the annoying banner ads that we barely pay attention to? But now that we have targeted ads, I just feel tired of being followed by ads everywhere: from social media to email.
Backstory
I don’t have just one email account because I learned about the need for multiple accounts for various purposes: school, work, and social media. Doing so helped me secure my other emails when one had been compromised. I knew about it after I received a sextortion email in 2020. When I tried to identify which of my emails have been compromised, I discovered that one of my email was associated with four data breaches between 2018-2020.
You can check if your email address is in a data breach here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
The only thing I did in response was change my password, but I feel like I could have done more.
In 2022, I used DuckDuckGo email aliases, hoping to protect my emails, and it has delivered since.
Ad fatigue
I didn’t know “ad fatigue” was the term for what I am experiencing until I started writing this blog post. Using ad blockers was definitely a sign.
Since I used SigmaOS to streamline my online workflow and life (with less memory usage), I’ve been actively using adblockers to escape the overwhelm that’s been building up inside me. I feel like I’ve finally reached the point of having enough, and I don’t want any more ads I did not give my permission to. But then again, that’s the catch of using free services, right? Ads, ads, ads, and more ads.
Hello Proton
When I first read about Proton from an independent journalist I subscribed to, the email alternative piqued my interest. Further reading encouraged me to switch, but considering how most of my online life revolved around Google services, I didn’t have the time to really work on it.
Until I finally had the time to do it.
Took me a day to migrate most of my online accounts from Google to Proton and I’d like to think that my use of email aliases three years ago also prepared me for this switch because Proton has a feature where you can create email aliases for free and within its email system.
Recommended Read:
How (and why) to deGoogle your life and protect your privacy
Goodbye email ads
It’s been two days since I’m no longer bombarded with email ads. Mornings have been amazing without them, especially since I have built a habit of checking emails in the morning.
Because of the switch, I finally reduced the number of my email accounts and retained the ones that remain relevant to me today. In a way, I was able to declutter my online presence, which made me realize how much digital footprint I’ve left behind since I started using the internet.
jessa 