If going “off the grid” doesn’t seem to be a reasonable option in the 21st century, what can a private citizen do to combat the personal data collection of tech giants such as Google and Facebook?

Technical consultant and Web developer Dylan Curran demonstrated in a series of tweets this week how much information Google and Facebook are storing about individuals, the Gateway Pundit reported.

Commenting on Facebook’s spying, he observed to the popular blog: “When you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”

In a video, he explained how to to opt out of data collection:

He shows users how to modify their Google privacy settings.

Curran said users must first think about what information they are willing to exchange for the benefit of Google’s and Facebook’s services.

The taking of information by the tech companies isn’t necessarily bad, he said, the issue is “the extent” of the information they take.

In his tweet