before there's no such thing as.
Although public policy and privacy are deeply connected, I am not going to discuss how a meme, which turned into a meme coin, which turned into a certain government department's silly acronym.
Privacy refers to the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by [tech giants, companies, governments] other people.
how about we just don't.
Although public policy and privacy are deeply connected around the world, I am not going to discuss how a meme, which turned into a meme coin, which turned into a certain government department's silly acronym, that's colossally collecting people's data across departments with little to no oversight, among many, many, other institutions that have no regard for people's [inalienable human rights] privacy.
Because as individuals, without sounding too gloomy, for the sake of preserving our mental health, there is very little we can do about that (make sure you call your elected representatives), so our independent efforts would be much better placed elsewhere.
John Oliver has an insightful video on YouTube about data brokers (I recommend you watch it if you're not informed about the topic).
The video is a bit long but it does into good detail about why privacy matters and how easy it is for our data to get into anyone's hands, as long as they can pay for it.
For some time now, I've been really invested in learning about privacy, cyber-hygiene, security, and why open-source software and encryption should be the standard.
Recently, one of my devices attempted to connect to the following domains:
telemetry.gfe.nvidia.com
pagead2.googlesyndication.com
c.amazon-adsystem.com
error-tracking.reddit.com
analytics.google.com
tracking.g2crowd.com
cdn.carbonads.comList of blocked domain queries.
Behind the scenes, your internet connected devices make hundreds of requests a day, most of them necessary to keep services running how you expect them to.
However, the amount of sites we visit or apps we use on a day to day basis gather a lot of information from us, from the most insignificant online purchase to our most sensitive personal, medical or financial information and most people don't really care about privacy until it impacts them.
Below I am sharing just a few resources that help for a quick privacy-conscious setup. This is for the non-experienced user, without sacrificing too much convenience, because it can get really overwhelming and complicated really quick.
search engines
email providers
web browsers
The following browsers are available for most operating systems. Out of the box, the recommended list is plug and play but I always install the uBlock Origin extension whenever possible. Like Signal, uBlock Origin is the gold standard.
Extra points if you disable the browser's telemetry.
On iOS, the mentioned browsers are available but all of them are forced by Apple to use WebKit, which is the underlying engine that powers Safari.
Install the uBlock Origin Lite extension if you use Safari.
virtual private network providers
communication
This is a more tricky one, because your friends and family are most likely not using whatever I can share with you and chances are, you're not going to make them switch to a new app and to me, balance and compromise are key here. Balance is the name of the game.
Signal is the gold standard but good luck finding anyone not into privacy that's using it and since half encrypted isn't a thing, it renders it kinda useless (unless you use it as a note to self app).
Your friends/family most likely use Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs (or whatever variation Meta decides to create down the road), Discord or even plain text SMS messages.
Unless cutting communication with everyone you know is an option for you, I can recommend iMessage for iOS, WhatsApp (which uses the signal protocol by default) and Telegram (you need to enable encryption manually by using secret chats) for Android and iOS.
I know they aren't the perfect choice, but it's a middle ground.
Telegram has an extremely responsive app, beautiful UI/UX, highly customizable and updated often.
passwords managers
This is more tedious and technical to set up, but worth the time and effort.
Now, is any password manager better than no password manager at all? Of course .. well, unless that password manager is LastPass, you might as well keep using sticky notes.
But overall, any manager is better than just storing your passwords as notes on your desk and reusing the same passwords everywhere.
cloud providers
Cryptee is probably the best solution for this list (there aren't many options that meet the criteria without self-hosting, which we want to avoid for this list). It isn't the cheapest or most convenient but John is a master of his craft. When you introduce security and privacy to a cloud service in scale, more technical challenges come into play.
This is also slightly more tedious and technical.
Cryptomator isn't a cloud provider itself but it does connect to your mainstream cloud provider (Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox) and it encrypts your data before uploading it. Probably my favorite solution for cloud storage.
All the tools and services I'm recommending I've tried myself.
This list is a very basic introduction to privacy friendly services. There is a lot more ground to cover, from DNS resolvers, photo management, file sharing, social networks, and even artificial intelligence.
Remember, this list is a starter list with convenience and balance in mind.
Privacy shouldn't be an all-or-nothing type deal but incremental steps towards managing your personal data better.
Cheers.
Your friendly neighborhood immigrant.