3.5muser accounts Google, Meta and Apple have handed to US authorities since 2014. They now hand over nearly 9 times as many as they did then. Whatever they collect on you, the government can ask for.

Source: Proton, analysis of company transparency reports (2026)

Your searches, your location, your contacts and the apps you open are worth money. Meta and Google are forecast to earn about US$483 billion from advertising in 2026, and that ad machine runs on knowing who you are. But a profile built to sell ads doesn’t stay with the advertisers. What they collect for advertisers, governments can collect too.

How it works

None of this needs a hack. The ACCC found Australian data firms often trade data on people they have no relationship with. Its deputy chair said “consumers may be unable to exercise choice or meaningful control” over how their data is shared.

Their own records show it

• Google kept collecting after people said stop. In September 2025 a US jury ordered Google to pay US$425.7 million to about 98 million users. They had switched off Web & App Activity, and Google kept collecting data from third-party apps anyway. Google says the data was anonymised and used only for analytics, and plans to appeal.
• Location brokers follow a billion phones a day. The US Federal Trade Commission says broker Gravy Analytics drew location data from around a billion mobile devices daily, tracked people to clinics, churches and military bases, and sold it for commercial and government uses.
• The handovers are in Big Tech’s own transparency reports. Adding them up, Proton found Google, Meta and Apple disclosed data on more than 3.5 million accounts to US authorities between late 2014 and early 2025, about 6.7 million once secret national-security (FISA) requests are counted. Proton sells private alternatives, but the numbers are the companies’ own.
• Australians feel it. The privacy regulator’s survey found only 32% of Australians feel in control of their data privacy, and 1/2 believe they have no choice but to accept what a service does with their data.

The requests keep climbing, here too

In the US, the number of accounts handed over every 6 months is up 770% since the companies started reporting: nearly 9 times as many. In the first half of 2025 alone it was 282,000 accounts. Apple, the company that sells itself on privacy, rose fastest. These are legal demands, not hacks, and that’s the point: whatever a company stores on you can be compelled.

Australia doesn’t need to ask Silicon Valley. Phone and internet companies here must keep your metadata, who you contacted, when, and where your device was, for at least 2 years. In 2023–24, agencies made 359,921 authorisations to access it, up 28,182 in a year. An officer inside the agency signs off, not a judge.

The fix: stop feeding the profile

You can’t delete what has already been collected. You can stop handing over more. Four switches cover most of it: email that isn’t scanned to sell ads, a VPN so your internet provider can’t see where you go and sites can’t see your address, a browser that blocks the trackers following you between sites, and a phone that doesn’t run on a Google or Apple account.

For your email and connection

Proton Mail and Proton VPN

Your inbox is a record of every account, purchase and bill you have. Proton Mail is Swiss, end-to-end encrypted between Proton users and stores the rest so Proton can’t read it, with hide-my-email aliases so brokers can’t match your sign-ups to you. Proton still gets legal orders: it complied with 8,313 Swiss orders in 2025. But it says it has “no means to decrypt” your emails and files, so there’s far less to hand over.

Proton VPN scrambles your traffic, so your internet provider and Wi-Fi see only that you’re connected, and its no-logs policy has passed independent audits five years running. Switch on Always-on VPN and Kill switch. Try Proton free for 14 days & get US$20 in credits.

Get Proton →

Do this today

• 1. Move your email to Proton Mail and turn on Proton VPN. Use a separate alias for every new sign-up, and set the VPN to Always-on with Kill switch on your phone and laptop.
• 2. When you next replace your phone, go GrapheneOS. Buy a Pixel 8 or newer outright, not on a carrier contract, and install GrapheneOS before you sign in to anything.
• 3. Switch to Firefox and add uBlock Origin. Then go through your phone’s app permissions and turn off location for every app that doesn’t need it.

For what happens to encrypted data once it’s collected, read why spy agencies are stockpiling it for a quantum computer.

Go deeper

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. The Harvard professor who named the business model, on how it works.
• Means of Control by Byron Tau. How governments buy the data brokers’ files instead of getting a warrant.

What to make of it

Every profile built to sell you something is also a file someone else can ask for. The companies say it’s anonymous, the settings say you’re in control, and their own reports and court records say otherwise. You can’t opt out of the whole system. You can stop being the easiest person in it to profile. Start with your email today.

Sources

1. Proton (2026): A 770% surge in government requests to Big Tech is reshaping parenting
2. Marketing Dive (2026): Meta to surpass Google in digital ad revenue for first time, eMarketer
3. ACCC (2024): Consumers lack visibility and choice over data collection practices
4. Thompson Coburn (2025): Federal jury awards $425.7 million in Google privacy case
5. US Federal Trade Commission (2024): FTC takes action against Gravy Analytics, Venntel for unlawfully selling location data
6. OAIC (2023): Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey 2023
7. OAIC: Telecommunications service providers’ obligations under Part 5-1A of the TIA Act (data retention)
8. Department of Home Affairs (2025): Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 annual report 2023–24
9. Proton: Proton Mail security features and infrastructure
10. Proton (2026): Transparency report
11. Proton VPN: No-logs audit
12. Mozilla Add-ons: uBlock Origin
13. Purism: Librem 5
14. Purism shop: Librem 5 (US$799; US$358.89 shipping to Sydney quoted in cart, October 2026)
15. GrapheneOS: Frequently asked questions
16. GrapheneOS: Web installer
17. Google Store Australia: Pixel 9a (October 2026)
18. Purism: Shipping and fulfillment
19. Australian Border Force: Cost of importing goods

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This article is general information and analysis. Follow the sources to form your own view.