Taking back my Privacy

A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing the internet and stumbled upon a conversation about privacy focused companies. Companies that value privacy and ownership of individual’s information and respect it enough to not misuse it for personal gain. This rung true to the values I hold and my complete disdain of the greed of humanity.

I was in the majority that thought that in this day and age, privacy is something that is not important. Ownership of information that I once held as my own, that anything that I have is an open book and can be shared by anyone. I lacked respect of the few things I do control.

I know you’ve had this happen before, You have a conversation about a certain problem or even a product that you have not owned before. Then the moment you open a service that serves advertisements, you see a product related to that conversation urging you to purchase.

I’ve had more awareness now when I am being tracked online. The ads I see, the things I search, and the sites I visit. Ad networks use it to condition me to like certain things, to buy certain things, and to bias me against certain perspectives. It feels that what I am now, is a conditioned being from the media I consume.

I’ve since had a change of heart and are now doing a strategic cleansing of the information I have online both public and private. I’ve also started to change the way I interact with the internet. Here are the things I’ve done so far:

1. Be on a VPN – There are a lot of VPNs available out there and they virtually offer the same thing. I’ve chosen a paid version ExpressVPN myself and my family as it is faster in Asia and the UX is definitely better than others. I’m also planning to give pi-hole a try.
2. Safer Search Engine – I’ve gone with DuckDuckGo for the past 2 months and rarely had the urge to go back to Google search. Duck also gives shortcuts whenever I do need to go back to Google.
3. More Private Browser – I’ve settled down with Firefox yet again as they clearly have been taking the privacy route very seriously along with tracker blocking baked in. Very important to take note that even if you have everything blocked, Chrome CAN still keep track of what you do and where you go. I only go back to Chrome for work.
4. Delete Facebook – I’ve deleted my Facebook account and I think you should too! Social networks are a source of psychological damage and unsolicited influence and you dont need it. Facebook has a great tool for exporting your data out into Google Drive and downloadable files. I still keep the account for Messenger purposes. Here is how you can get out of Facebook.
5. Take Control of Passwords/Cards – I’ve started migrating my passwords from Chrome to Bitwarden. This gives me the flexibility to not get locked in with using Chrome as my primary password manager. You can also use Bitwarden to generate strong passwords for you and keep it automatically.
6. Use 2 Factor Authentication everywhere – I use Authy to make sure that every account I have has a secondary layer of authorization that only I have. I suggest that if you haven’t started this practice, do it right now!
7. Audit Permissions on Services – DuckDuckGo has a terrific newsletter that reminds you how to disable and get away from the big ad networks here, here, and here. You’ll be surprised with how much data these networks have of you, even when you aren’t using them!
8. Audit Permissions on Devices – This is more of a preference and hygiene. You can check your permission and privacy screens on your Android or iOS devices and see which apps have access to what. If you’re not careful, it could be an attack vector for a malicious actor.

You might notice that mail is something I haven’t touched on while actually being the most impactful of them all.

Personally, I see emails as a dead medium. It’s misuse have paved way for actors to enact malicious intent, and at the same time, be the least useful user experience for people who use it.

I recently stumbled into hey.com from the guys at basecamp that are trying to revolutionize and fix the email user experience. When it releases, I’d love to give it a try.

Another reason is that the idea of encrypted email works if both parties practice the same security policies. As my perspective of using email is of unimportance, I will continue to use the inboxes I have from gmail for signing up for accounts and non confidential conversations.

I keep WhatsApp at the moment as it is the most famous messenger in south east asia. I am still optimistic on how WhatsApp implements their end to end encryption.

I’ve been slowly weaning myself out of my Instagram addiction lately, but I still intend to keep it for those small special moments. I just wont scroll endlessly at night looking at highlights of other people.

---

The biggest hurdle that I, and others are facing now is to get more people to see the value of taking back the control of their information. I hope that in the future, more individuals and organizations change to promote this behaviour so the widespread misuse and conditioning can stop.

Stay safe and stay indoors!