One day, when you’re finally free,
Go audit your apps permissions, start with the keys:
Contacts, accounts, the skeleton keys.
Count how many doors you’ve left open,
How many silent strangers you’ve let in.
Ask yourself: Who did I invite to feast on my life?
When you share your number, you seal it with trust
Guard this, you whisper, this piece of me.
You expect safekeeping, a sacred pact.
So why do you hand them your mother, your lover,
Your best friend from third grade, your therapist’s direct line?
Why do you gift-wrap everyone’s names, numbers,
Home addresses, midnight emails,
And offer them up like free samples?
This is the truth we pretend not to know:
Protecting your privacy is protecting theirs.
It’s not just your ghost in the machine
It’s everyone you love, everyone you’ve lost,
Everyone who never signed up for this exposure.
Your indifference is not innocent;
It’s a broadcast of betrayal.
They say, “They already know everything anyway.”
As if surrender is a virtue.
As if the graveyard of data they’ve built
Should be fed fresh flowers daily.
But must they know tomorrow?
And the day after that?
And the day your dead friend would have had a birthday
the one whose name is still in your contacts,
whose silence you still protect?
Have you lost a friend?
Did you know everything they were carrying?
Do you know what they’d be going through today
What trauma, what triumph, what quiet war?
Their name is still in your phone,
And you’re still serving them up
To algorithms that harvest the dead.
So recognize the beneficial and the harmful.
Observe the wave you make when you click Allow
It doesn’t stop at your shore.
It breaks on your sister’s inbox,
Your mentor’s voicemail,
Your daughter’s future.
Discern truthfully: Who profits from my convenience?
Then do what’s right.
Do what’s right then teach it.
Teach it like a spell, like a rebellion,
Like the first law of being human:
My people are not my product.
My network is not my net worth.
And the dead deserve their rest.