"One of the firms behind the Ethereum merge, ConsenSys, said on Thursday that it also collects user data related to its on-chain wallet service MetaMask....The revelation comes days after decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) Uniswap made a similar update to its privacy policy."

Ahhh yes, the good ol' merge. I remember ETHboys using their "but Bitcoin" defense at every revelation that post-merge, things actually got more centralized and a handful of parties gained the top staking spots. Wonder how they will "but Bitcoin" this one.

But wait, there's more. You thought it would end at mere online or blockchain addresses?

A quick "what now?" instructional: "when you use Infura as your default remote procedure call (RPC) provider in MetaMask, it will collect your IP address and your Ethereum wallet address whenever you make a transaction. However, if you’re using your own Ethereum node or a third-party RPC provider with MetaMask, ConsenSys says that “neither Infura nor MetaMask will collect your IP address or Ethereum wallet address.”

But this is most likely just a temporary solution as in the long run others will follow, oh yes things will get worse just as they did after the first signs of ETH DApp meddling. So ultimately the best thing is to learn how to run your own node. I admit I'm not doing it myself either, but that's because my laptop specs just aren't up for the job. Well, the optimal performance aka recommended specs anyway. Technically you can also do it on the 8 GB version of the Raspberry 4, so I guess in all honesty I was just being lazy, but it's seriously time to act now. So a new 1 TB SSD and RAM upgrade for me it is!