The cost of login

A post that’s slightly off the usual general topic of this blog, but in today’s digital world - where our personal info is connected to tons of apps and online services for work and personal life - it’s more important than ever to understand what personal information really means.

Have you ever wondered how your life turned into a never-ending “Sign in to continue”? Every new app promises freedom, convenience, and maybe even enlightenment… but the reality is something we prefer to ignore. “Hey! I’m not stupid, I know what I’m doing, and it’s my choice!”. The dumb stuff I post here isn’t meant to judge your choices, but it’s okay (and healthy) to question them. Sometimes we just need a little nudge to get that started, because what began as a careful, well-thought-out first decision can slowly turn into a habit. After that, we may keep making the same choices without really rethinking them, just assuming the original reasons still apply.

It may be too much drama

Some people worry about sharing personal data (even a simple email, name, or phone number) because it’s valuable, and once it’s given away, you lose control over how it’s used, stored, or abused. But is it a real big deal?

Privacy Concerns

Personal info can say way more about you than you’d think: your identity, habits, location, even who you’re connected to. Even if you don’t really care, it’s still a good habit to be a bit suspicious when a service asks for details it doesn’t actually need. For example, a phone number can be used to link accounts, enable SIM-swap attacks, or even give away your rough location.
It’s never an issue until you’re concerned ;) Does robocalls, fake financial notifications, targeted ads, fake online account, bank account attack… ring a bell?

Spam, unwanted marketing, profiling

Many services sell or share emails with advertisers. One signup can lead to years of inbox clutter. Some companies use your email or phone to build behavioral profiles for ads or analytics. If you value anonymity, you may want to avoid this.

Data breach anxiety

If a service is hacked, personal info can be leaked, sold, or misused. The more data you share the bigger the impact. Names, emails, and phone numbers can also help attackers impersonate someone, attempt phishing, or access other accounts. So if you don’t do it for you, try to be mindful to others :)

The open-source approach

Reclaiming your privacy

Nowadays, we spread little pieces of personal information across different platforms when using our home devices, vehicles, watches, computers… You may even have an account to your toothbrush app. Seriously an app for your toothbrush? I said no judgement but seriously… A lot of proprietary platforms make money through targeted ads, analytics, or selling user behavior data, which all means tracking who you are. Open-source doesn’t need that to work. Many FOSS tools try to stay as lightweight as possible, so if a service only needs a username and password (or even just a token), that’s all it’ll ask for.

That said, open-source can feel intimidating to a lot of people. Not because it’s inherently harder, but because of a mix of culture, design choices, and expectations. Open-source interfaces often favor flexibility and power over polish or ease of use. To a typical user, menus, terminology, or settings can feel dense or unfamiliar. Switching to FOSS is a conscious choice, while commercial tools are usually the default, which means users have to put in a bit of effort to adjust to something new. And like most things, the unfamiliar tends to spark fear or misconceptions.

On top of that, open-source ecosystems often come with lots of forks, versions, plugins, and different ways to configure things. That variety is great for experienced users, but it can be confusing for newcomers and sometimes discourages them from diving in.

Finally, people trust what they know. Proprietary software often comes with strong branding, reputation, guarantees, and customer support channels. Open-source tools rely on community trust, which might feel unreliable or unfamiliar to some. With entire countries adopting open-source solutions and supporting the open-source community , there is hope to see them being more broadly adopted. If countries and government agencies have privacy concerns with the tools they used by default for so long, maybe that’s a sign that individuals should reconsider their habits as well.

No brainer FOSS online services

Self-hosting may be the best option to preserve what remains of your identity, but this requires far too much effort for most people. Luckily, the FOSS community offers plenty of options, and there are some damn good, seriously user-friendly alternatives to almost everything. The main barrier to wider adoption of these tools is often the simple fact that you can’t break people’s habits.
Anyway, if you just want to take a look at a few services without scrolling through long lists posted online or hopping from website to website, you might be interested in visiting Disroot . Hopefully, this will pique your interest and give you the motivation to take a first step into the FOSS world. We’re warmly waiting for you.

Using temporary emails

If you need to provide personal information for account creation and open-source (including email services) is not an option, there may still be alternatives.
There are plenty of temporary email services that will let you use a random email address just for the time of your account creation, so it’s not linked to any of your devices or other personal information like your name, phone number… While companies work hard to not allow the use of these random emails, there is always one service that will do the trick. Companies need your personal data to use/sell them, so they will just bug you enough so you give up after 3 minutes and end up using your real email address.

The only drawback of this approach is that you’ll not be able to recover your login info if you lose them. Eh, these info are important so you should be serious about their storage and never need to recover them. Problem solved :)

Conclusion

In a world more and more dominated by proprietary platforms and data grabbing, choosing FOSS isn’t just a technical decision, it’s a statement. It’s about picking tools that respect your privacy, support the way you work, and line up with the idea of a more open and transparent digital future.

For years, we’ve traded control for convenience, often without really noticing, by clicking “agree” on long Terms of Service no one reads. Proprietary software, online services, and subscription models often come with hidden costs: our data, our habits, and a bit of our autonomy.