Extremely Important

In addition to that I explained I do not use Taptalk and in reply #1 I indicated that you (meaning the reader) has to do some searching

Well OP I don't particularly understand raising OMG issues about Tapatalk which don't go beyond location tracking which can be denied by the user at install or in settings afterwards per my earlier post, and which doesn't require a separate paid app to so.

Well OP I don't particularly understand raising OMG issues about Tapatalk which don't go beyond location tracking which can be denied by the user at install or in settings afterwards per my earlier post, and which doesn't require a separate paid app to so.

exactly. when installing on at least an android (I don't own an apple phone), it typically asks you what permissions you want to allow the app to have. that doesn't necessarily mean it'll always use/access said locations/permissions, just that there might be functionality within the app that requires such things.

If you totally believe that then I am sorry for taking your time.

That's kind of a bad attitude, don't you think? It's not like he is making that stuff up. Outlook.com email, Yahoo email, Gmail, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and many other online services are provided free of charge. What do you think pays the bills for those services? It is advertisement revenues. They are for-profit companies, not charities. Your voter registration is also a matter of public record. Heck, go one of these websites and do a search on yourself:

https://www.intelius.com/
https://www.spokeo.com/
https://www.whitepages.com

Anybody else can. Personally, I want to see ads in which I am interested rather than ones I don't.

The answer if you care is to limit that possibility , which really isn't that hard, rather than throw up your hands.

Sometimes people think they have no alternative than to throw up their hands. Pity, as fixes are often fairly simple and easy to implement. It's not a matter of fatally flawed vs perfect, but of screwed up vs much improved.

tunneling traffic through VPNs, using anonymous email addresses, etc., etc..

Actually, a good VPN is a great idea for those using WiFi connections.

Interesting, when I started this thread it was my opinion that it may help someone but instead it turned into a circus.

You broached the topic of privacy and people responded. Obviously, you made some interesting points in well written post. IMHO, it is not a circus at all. Hopefully, the information in this thread will be of some use to the participants and whoever runs across it in the future.