Then there's the direct cell phone tracking-
> Investigators who spoke with The New York Times said they had not sent geofence warrants to companies other than Google, and Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches. Google would not provide details on Sensorvault, but Aaron Edens, an intelligence analyst with the sheriff’s office in San Mateo County, Calif., who has examined data from hundreds of phones, said most Android devices and some iPhones he had seen had this data available from Google.
My solution lately has been to feed them junk data until they either give up on me or erroneously perceive my input as non-erroneous (not sure which it is). Takes some time, but to me it’s worth it. If we can get enough people doing this they might have to get rid of it all together. (Vastly unlikely, but a guy can dream, right?)
Through browser fingerprinting that is shared via channels which are undetectable and unlockable via browser scripts.
Through hundreds of many tiny mistakes you make every day and unknowingly let down your guard.
_Oops, damn, I forgot I disabled uBlock when accessing that important page for work._
You cannot opt out.
As long as there's a very popular communications service / social networking service / etc., or even a few of them (none of which dominates the entire market), you can't stop other people from turning in your data (unless you have no connections whatsoever in this world, or you and all your connections live in a cave). And if you use any popular service or visit any popular website yourself, your data will be collected, it's only a matter of the level of details.
Sure any 3rd party app I install can track me to some degree, but it can't compare my usage against my entire email history, my travel history, recordings of my voice...
GGP was talking about data collected involuntarily, and I was responding to that. Google (or any other company) can't have your entire email history, your travel history, and recordings of your voice without your voluntary participation in one of their services or services of a "partner". Those are way beyond drive-by collection.
There is no way to only use a Google service and also disable drive by collection. And because they're so huge and cover so many categories, that drive by info is more meaningful in their hands than just a dozen random unconnected companies. Because of that, drive by collection by other 3rd party doesn't really concern me as much. They can't do nearly as much with it.