DontBlameMe

Becoming private online

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tagsblog, privacy, tips

8 min read

Privacy? What Is This?

Privacy is a general concept. It means that you care about what is public
or available about you. This includes things Google or TikTok knows
about you.

But Why Care About Privacy? I Have Nothing to Hide?

This is a common sentence. Nearly everybody confronted with Privacy says that.

This is a good video explaining why you should care.

TLDR: You have something to hide. And even if you think you are doing
nothing which someone else could understand wrong, the rules might
change. And then you will maybe regret publishing your resource number X.

Okay. So Should I Delete Everything and Move in the Woods?

Yes. You can do this. But really. Who would want this? There are some basic
and easy things everybody could implement.

You will never achieve 100% Privacy though.

First Steps

Glad you want to read the first steps you could take to achieve some level
of Privacy.

Changing Your Search Engine

WHHAAAT??? Yes I know this is what you will think. But honestly: Google can
see everything you search for. Collect it.
Use it against you
or
here
(If you don’t trust these sources, search it on your own. There are tons of
cases).

Okay so I should maybe care about what Google knows about me. But…

Aren’t all the other search engines bad and dated?

No. They are not. I will now provide you with a small list of search engines you
could use. But remember: What is “the best” constantly changes. If you are
reading this in 3 months, it maybe changed completely. You can check out
this Website, but be aware: They
accept sponsors and sometimes get paid. They also had some scandals. You can
also use this Website to find alternatives to your
current things.

Here are some good search engines:

Becoming Aware

This may be one of the most important steps at all. You need to understand
why Privacy is important. You need to care about it. If you simply follow
these steps and use Instagram Threads next week and post your entire life,
sorry, but you missed the point.

Of course you can do this. It is your life. What I want you to understand is
the concept why privacy matters. If you want to use Instagram Threads
and you are fine with what you are exposing, go ahead.

Using Available Settings

Please go inside every application you have and check their Privacy settings.

Maybe you can disable some data collection in there. This is at least a little
step in the right direction! (This includes your Windows settings and apps!)

Deleting Old Accounts

This is something you should always do. If you don’t need the Account anymore,
delete it.

But why? Because every Account you leave open is a security risk. Someone
could hack it using your password (you possibly reuse everywhere).

Don’t Reuse Passwords

Yes this is maybe not fitting. But I want to mention it. Please for god’s sake
don’t reuse your passwords! Use a password manager. Don’t use a system you
thought of. Simply use a password manager!

Good Password managers include:

Be Careful with VPNs

Yes I know what they say in their advertisements: Now it also blocks malware,
trackers, and your old girlfriend from contacting you! Ah yes, and we
definitely don’t collect any data ;).

Seriously: Do you believe that pile of sh*t? This is complete nonsense. Yeah,
maybe it blocks you from downloading some stuff by analyzing your traffic on
their servers. Oh wow, really private, isn’t is?

And yes, most of them collect data. Just search up “X VPN, Scandal”. So please
be careful.

An exception is Mullvad. They allow you to pay with cash, don’t even
need an E-mail to register and got
raided by police (they got nothing)

Don’t Share Your Identity

This should be common sense, but I’ll still write it down. You should never
share Personal information online. Not your real name, not your age and
especially not your Phone number!

Second Steps

Now it is becoming a little bit more advanced. But this is still really simple.

Use Two-Factor Authentication

Please just enable this everywhere you can. The Password Managers I mentioned
have a direct integration with 2FA.

But please don’t use your Smartphone (SMS) as 2FA! This exposes your Phone
number to this company (which they can use to track you). And SMS is really
insecure.

Ah, and: You don’t need to use Google Authenticator! There are many great
open source apps which can do the same. Google just uses it to track you even
more.

Switching… Your Browser

Oh, no. This is too much. But I love my chrome!!… Okay. I can understand that.

And you can keep your chrome.

But why should you switch at all?

Ad Blocking. Maybe you have an Ad Blocker already, maybe not. This is something
you will miss if you have used it once though.

Privacy. Great reason isn’t it? No seriously. Google Chrome sends every piece
of information it can find straight home to Google. This is something I
wouldn’t like to use

Freedom. Google tries (at least at the moment) to push some seriously concerning
stuff. They are currently trying to implement a global Website DRM.

You can: Switch to Brave. This is a Browser based on
Chromium. TLDR It is nearly the same to your chrome. Differences: It looks
somewhat different and is Privacy respecting.

Okay maybe you don’t want to use a Browser which has
Cryptocurrency baked in? (You can mostly disable
it, but I can understand why you wouldn’t want to use such things)

You can also: Use Mullvad Browser. This is
a Browser created by Tor and
Mullvad. Both are well known for their upmost
security and privacy standards.

You can also use plain Firefox.

But you need to change a lot of things to make it somewhat private. So I
would much rather use the other solutions.

Or maybe you want to use Tor directly?

Another option would be LibreWolf. This is a good
privacy focused Browser too.

Finding Alternatives

If you can and want, you can find alternatives for
your current applications (which are Open-Source and privacy respecting).

Third Steps

This is now becoming more advanced. In here are some things which may are too
much for you.

Using Pseudonyms and Aliases

Wait. But I want that all my friends know me everywhere as xXCoolGamer420Xx!!

Okay. Thanks for letting me know. But you should seriously use different names
on different platforms.

But why? Because if you do this it is harder for someone trying to
dox you to link those accounts.
Also, it provides another shield of protection. Why?

Because someone trying out your password on every site does need to know the
username too.

Using Different (Throwaway) E-Mails

This sounds difficult. No you should not create 20 new Gmail Accounts!

You can use a service like AnonAddy or
Simplelogin to achieve this.

This also provides another advantage over the point above: When some company
gets hacked and your E-Mail gets exposed, you can just delete it. You receive
spam? Just delete the E-mail!

Don’t Create an Account on Every Website

Sounds hard, doesn’t it? Before creating an Account on website X think about it.

Do I need this account?

Can I achieve it without an account?

Is it really needed right now?

And if you really need it, go ahead. Create it.

Read the Privacy Policy

Waiiiiit… WHAT???

Yeah, I know. That sounds stupid. Who reads that sh*t?

No I don’t want you to read the entire thing twice and take notes.

I want you to look at the essential points: Which data do they collect? For
which reason? What do they do with it?

This is basically it. But why?? So you know what happens with your data.

What will they do? Will they sell it? This is important to know, at least in my
opinion.

Switching to as Much Open-Source Stuff as You Can

Yeah, this maybe sounds hard. But really: For nearly everything there is a good
open source alternative (Exception: Gaming).

Compartmentalize

You can try to split your life in parts. No, not that way.

You can use virtual machines to achieve that too. Or maybe

QubesOS. I personally love QubesOS, but due to me
also loving to play games, I am sadly unable to use it.

You can also use different profiles on your Phone for that too.

Most Important Step

Educate your friends, Family (and strangers? Maybe? I don’t know?).

No seriously. This is the best thing you can do. Convince more people on this
world why privacy matters. Destroy their dream of “every piece of cooperation is
so nice and provides me their services for free :)”.

Remember: If it is free, you are the product. (Most of the time)

Also, be sure to educate your family. Especially older people are a “great”
attack vector. If you have great security / privacy, why not attack your
mother / grandmother who doesn’t care at all?