My thoughts in these recent weeks have rolled into the crescendo of a scorched Internet policy!

While my first 15 years on the Internet created some 150-200 login accounts, I've reduced and maintained that amount to the 30-40 range since 2011.

Today, I am down to 18, with 11 essential logins, things related to paying bills and such, leaving 7 accounts as discretionary those things we choose to join.

What did I axe? What services did not make the cut?

FitBit

Great resource IF you're part of a thriving community of real life friends. Just a Big Data suck with an aging app if you're part of a Me Party.

Steam Game Platform

While an easy cut to make, it took all day with tech support to delete. While I liked my Civ V purchase, that title has nicotine tendencies. There were times when I didn't even begin to touch because I knew I'd be on it for a long time.

Spotify

As you might have guessed from the prior blog, this one was on the chopping block, despite my near decade of involvement. Of course, with its demise, I'm breaking in The 14th Expedition schema of my blog titles. It's only a shame because I was rolling out some interesting synthwave covers of popular music that I was excited to feature.

Last.FM

Again, its dismissal is the product of a recent post. Without Spotify, this one was a no-brainer.

DNA sites: 23andMe, Ancestry, and Promothease

While on Ancestry yesterday, it occurred to me that not only did I pay for the test and spent hours building my family tree, I also have to pay to use the service or they'll hold my family lineage hostage. "Want to know more about your grandmother? Pay us $35 a month or no grandma!"

And honestly, what value is it to me to know about the basic demographics of Nth great-grandparents? While I loved to read about August Hermann Francke, if I actually discover all lines up to my 15th great-grandparents (as I did with one line), my TOTAL amount of great-grandparents would fill up the Liberty Bowl to capacity!

And for those of you counting at home, yes, that number is SIGNIFICANTLY beyond Dunbar's 150.

As far as DNA research regarding health, if I don't maintain awareness, predestination kicks in. The interpretation of DNA right now really does come off too much like reading tea leaves with tendencies instead of foresight.

Various Vendors

I let some go because there's value in releasing things that don't bring us joy. Others like my tea and soybean providers were more of an acknowledgment that I've changed and moved on.

The Matrix

Now, this is the one I'm most proud of and indeed, it is the most work to leave. GOOGLE. I could talk at length about this and have written in the past, but, you can Google Google and its initial motto of "Don't Be Evil" and basically hit my reflections about this corporation. Consequently, I moved to ProtonMail and ponied up $48 for a year of its paid service for my custom domain. I love ProtonMail's recent post, How Apple uses anti-competitive practices to extort developers and support authoritarian regimes.

Now, I cannot live entirely from Google's influence as I have my Android OS phone and I do like how it has crawled across the Internet. However, I have no interest in the merging my life with Google. And I'm sure they'll maintain a shadow copy of me on a server farm somewhere, but, I'm learning to release the things I have no control over.