Is There Nothing We Can Do To Protect Our Data?

 Source:  NPR.

Your data, mine included, are all over the Internet and in databases at data centers all over the world.  And now, our genetic makeup are up for grabs. Countries, who are competitors at best and enemies at worst, are angling to get more.  

Case in point here:  a genetics company with backing from the Chinese government and military have been collecting the DNA of tens of Americans.  And this same company has made inroads into other countries like Australia.

Perhaps it's for profit but with the Chinese Communist Party involved and their desire to create their own hegemony, you 

The bottomline here is money and greed.  And moreover, it is the failure of the government to cultivate homegrown industries that can do the same thing these foreign companies at a competitive price.  

Of course, this is an on-going subject of concern to all of us. It's obvious that the federal government is not doing enough and companies are constantly pushing the limits of what they can get away with. And when caught, companies such as this either have a government mouthpiece in Beijing protesting them as lies by Western media.  And in situations like Facebook, they pay an in consequential fine and hope their other transgressions never see the light of day.  

What can we do about it?  Is there anything we can do?  Or is there nothing we can do at this point?  I don't think we are at the point where we collectively throw up our hands and say "it's too late.  They know everything about me already".  Apple is a company that has pushing privacy as a right and a feature but it is a company that is trying to maximize profit.  You still cannot trust that Apple truly has its customers' best interests at heart.

We are looking to buy a scale for ourselves.  It would be nice to have something that connected to an app on our phone.  I did some rudimentary research on this.  I knew that some companies would be collecting the heath data that are generated by connected scales.  And it was pretty bleak.  At the end of the day, I will likely end up with a good old fashion scale and record my readings on a spreadsheet.

Between hostile governments, our own inept government, and companies that are sucking up as much data as they can in order to monetize us, we really have our work cut out for us to keep as much of our data private.