When Yahoo’s email service was hacked, data from 3 billion Yahoo users was leaked. The company only admitted this three years later. No one knows exactly when the breach happened.
It all started with a simple phishing email. When news of the incident first surfaced, it was believed that a few million accounts were affected. Then the number rose to 500 million, and later, during acquisition talks with Verizon, the company admitted that all 3 billion accounts had been compromised.
The hackers gained access to emails, names, recovery data, and phone numbers. They were able to read every Yahoo user’s emails for three years.
Is your data safe?
These kinds of situations happen more often than you might think. Even the largest big tech companies often fail to follow proper data security practices, which leads to breaches.
And that’s not even touching on the massive data broker industry, which is projected to reach $441.4 billion by 2032. This industry has two sides — the gray and the black.
On the gray side, while users click “agree” on long, confusing terms of service, corporations gain access to vast amounts of information: location data, behavioral patterns, voice commands, biometrics. All of this gets fed into opaque algorithms, whose goals are often far removed from simply “improving user experience.”
Many companies don’t just use your data for ad targeting. They use it to build risk profiles that can influence credit decisions, insurance rates — and sometimes even employment opportunities. The user may never realize that a seemingly harmless banner click or a like on a video has been recorded into a permanent profile that they will never see.
To make matters worse, many platforms collect as much data as possible — “just in case.” This has led to the creation of data warehouses holding billions of records, often without proper encryption, frequently shared with third parties, and — even worse — resold on the “black” side of the data broker market.
All of this is presented under the guise of service, customization, and “personalized” experience. In reality, it’s an unprecedented power imbalance — where the user gives up everything, and in return gets a colorful icon and slightly more accurate weather in a widget.
The black side? That’s the illegal underground market where user data is sold under the table. That’s how scammers get your phone number.
What to Use Instead of the Big Platforms
If all these examples have you worried about the safety of your data, it might be time to look away from giant corporations — and instead turn your attention to small startups. These companies tend to operate from a user-first mindset, because they’re not massive machines, but small businesses that stay close to their users.
For startups, your problems come first. They’re loyal to their users and naturally take your side.
In this selection, we’ll highlight two services that offer alternatives to two widely used product types — email and AI.
1. Atomic Mail
Unlike big tech email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo, Atomic Mail prioritizes your privacy. As a secure email provider, it offers end-to-end encryption, zero access encryption, and allows you to create a free email without phone verification, giving you complete control over your communications from the start.
Atomic Mail’s Hide-my-email feature — similar to the one Apple device users already know — lets you set up session-based aliases and hide your real email, should you want to stay hidden.
Advantages of Atomic Mail:
- A powerful spam filter.
- End-to-end encryption (E2EE) — nobody but the sender and recipient can read your email. Even if a third party intercepts it, they’ll see jibberish.
- Your private keys are never stored on servers — decryption happens only on your device.
- You can restore an account using just your seed phrase.
- Atomic Mail is fully GDPR-compliant.
And best of all — it’s free.
2. Overchat AI
In March 2023, OpenAI reported a data leak — when some ChatGPT users started chats, instead of replying to their message the chatbot sent them personal data of other users — names, emails, and, worst of all, payment information of Plus subscribers. Ouch.
Incidents like this happen because OpenAI (and other big tech AI providers) use private chats to fine-tune their AI models. This means that what you type into ChatGPT or Claude isn’t actually private — AI trainers can read these messages, and they’ll be used for training unless you opt-out. Which, as usual, we don’t know if opting out works.
Unlike big platforms where users have little to no transparency about how their data is used or who has access to it, Overchat AI is built around the principle of digital hygiene. This means that the data you share while using the service won’t be fed into someone’s ad algorithm or behavioral analytics engine.
The platform acts as a unified gateway to multiple AI models — GPT-4.5, Claude 3, Gemini, DeepSeek, and others. This approach minimizes the risk of data leaks since you don’t need to create separate accounts with each provider. Instead, you interact through a single, secure layer.
Advantages of Overchat AI:
- All user data is encrypted using AES-256 standards
- No session logs or user activity tracking
- Fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations
Trust but Verify
In 2024 alone, the U.S. recorded 3,158 data breaches, over 1.35 billion people were affected. That’s one in six people on the planet — in just one year, and in just one country. Modern digital infrastructure is built in such a way that you’re sharing data the moment you open an app. While all big tech companies ramp up data collection, most are also busy monetizing it. It’s time to rethink the tools you use every day — and ask yourself: Are they working for you, or against you?
