'Free' is a powerful word - there's a lot of incentive for companies to tout 'free' and for users to feel like they're getting a good deal - when in reality there's a whole lot of other stuff happening behind the scenes.

My take is that consumers need to be aware of what 'free' really means for each service that advertises it. What are the real implications - not just something hidden in doublespeak in a ToS or privacy policy.

Everything spelled out in the GDPR is a great thing for users and should have been there from the very beginning - being able to erase all their data, see all their data, export their data, and get notified when data is accessed.