security
- Switch to Mozilla’s Firefox for browsing. It’s fast and supports many of the same or similar extensions that Google’s app does, but doesn’t contain all of the invasive stuff that the browser from the Big G shoehorns into Chrome.
- Use an ad-blocker and tracker blocker in combination, no matter how much some sites complain. I’d suggest uBlock Origin and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Privacy Badger.
- Stop using Google. Period. Their old slogan, “Don’t Be Evil,” died off a long time ago and their singular focus is now on dominating the internet with revenue-generating free services where they pump ads at you while selling your data to anyone with money.
- If you need an email service, check out ProtonMail or Tutanota. These privacy-oriented services offer webmail and apps for iOS and Android. Tutanota is the more reasonable at only $13.41 a year for Premium (it’s a German company, so their rates are in Euros), but some people prefer ProtonMail (which is a Swiss company).
- If those seem too nerdy for you, use Microsoft’s Outlook.com service through Office 365. A personal account costs just $7 a month and includes the complete office suite for Windows AND MacOS and a ton of other features. Yes, I know a lot of people complain about Microsoft “spying” on everyone, but CEO Satya Nadella has been on a crusade to change the entire culture of the largest operating system maker in the world, including a deep embrace of FOSS technologies and an ethic that will challenge the status quo over privacy in the coming years. I’ve been using the service for years now and not once have I ever seen private communications used to push ads at me. NOTE: The free version does display ads, but you can turn off personalization.
- Stop using stupid passwords. Get LastPass or KeePass and use it to not only store your credentials, but also generate unique ones for each service you use. Sure, LastPass is a division of LogMeIn, but it’s inexpensive (at $24 a year) and has a good track record for security. KeePass, on the other hand, is FOSS and requires some additional nerding, but is well worth it, if you’re technically minded.
- Stop using SMS. It’s stupid old, is slow, has loads of limitations, and some carriers still charge per message. For chat with your friends and family, use Telegram or Riot.im. Telegram is fully integrated on all common platforms and supports a wide range of features, many of which WhatsApp copies (and not very well, I might add). Riot.im is what’s called a federated networking system that connects privately run servers in a loose network to form a large-scale social chat system. It’s a touch more fiddly than Telegram, but it has a lot of fantastic features you can’t find anywhere else.
- Learn about the world of FOSS. It’s a diverse, engaging, and surprisingly complete world where millions of people live and work and play without being subjected to the whims of irresponsible corporations who are only driven by profit at any cost. Check out sites like It’s FOSS or, if you are a programmer for Windows or Mac and would like to dig into FOSS, check out GitHub’s OpenSource.Guide.
- Stop selling yourself. You’re worth more than $12 a year, which is what companies like Facebook and Google make off each user through ad views. It’s critical to their bottom line that they hook as many eyes as possible to make as much money as possible, and values aren’t really a consideration. You are priceless, and you need to use tools and services that don’t treat you like a piece of meat that pulls in a few pennies a day. You. Are. Priceless. Treat yourself that way.
How open source software can save you from the horrors of Social Media
Facebook. WhatsApp. Instagram. Adult Friend Finder. Yahoo. Marriot. Anthem Health. eBay. JP Morgan Chase. Target. Equifax. Adobe. RSA Security. The US Office of Personnel Management. [SOURCE]
This is a partial list of organizations that have been hacked and lost control of millions of user accounts since 2011. In the case of Yahoo, it was 3 billion.
That’s billion, with a capital “B”.
Photo by Matthew Henry on UnsplashThat’s a lot of people’s personal and, as in the case with Anthem Health, very confidential, data. In some cases it was just email addresses and passwords, some of which weren’t even encrypted. In others, complete packages of personally identifying data was taken. Many of these people are now targeted by scammers to steal from them or hold their data for ransom.
I found this to be an unacceptable relationship, but I already had an out. I’ve been a proponent of Free and Open Source Software (often notated as FOSS) for a few decades now. Back when we had a converted garage office in New Mexico, I taught myself how to build out early versions of Caldera Linux into a workable desktop and used that for my writing work for two full years.
But then, I’m a nerd.
A few years ago, my wife Rima and I were chatting in Facebook Messenger about something we were interested in purchasing. Neither of us had searched for it or mentioned the product in any social networking service. Regardless, ads for the product started showing up on Facebook and various sites on the web. I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience, and out experience embittered me towards Messenger. I felt that there had to be something better from people who were acting for the benefit of human beings, not the bottom line.
It was then that I started looking into alternatives that would offer my family the peace of mind that we had always desired, and I found Telegram. After some prodding, I got both my wife and daughter, as well as a handful of close friends, to open accounts, and we’ve been using it ever since. While my wife retained her Facebook account because of her sizable following, I closed my account, and haven’t found any interest in returning since.
The number of data breaches in all sectors has been on the rise, almost since the inception of the public internet, and this will continue to be a real issue that will affect real people and cause real damage as long as capitalism is the sole player on the internet at large.
What you can do that’s not all that difficult
First, you can stop using Facebook and their related services, WhatsApp and Instagram and develop a strong sense of skepticism when you are offered something for free. After being burned by Facebook, I did just that. I went out and leveraged my tools to track down services that would allow my family to communicate securely, and carefully vetted them for the values I was seeking. I had even considered WhatsApp back then, not aware that Facebook had already, or was about to, acquire them.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on UnsplashAfter an exhaustive amount of research, I signed up for an account on Telegram, and now I doubt I’d be able to get my wife and daughter to give it up, either. But, don’t take my word for it. Do your own research. Find out for yourself what circumstances would lead someone like Pavel Durov, the Co-Founder of Telegram, to say something like this.
Every one of us is going to die eventually, but we as a species will stick around for a while. That’s why I think accumulating money, fame or power is irrelevant. Serving humanity is the only thing that really matters in the long run. -Pavel Durov, Co-Founder of Telegram, 2019 [ SOURCE]
There are a number of other things you can do to give yourself the best possible chance in this increasingly difficult world:
Why should I pay for something I can get free?
The simple answer is to shift the balance of power back to the consumer. Right now, you give away your personal data, where you go, what you search for, what you buy, what you write and delete, which sites you go to, how you relate to other people, and much, much more in exchange for seeing advertisements.
Photo by Samantha Sophia on UnsplashYour data earns companies like Facebook money, as does the ad revenue. All of this free data people willingly give up dis-incentivizes them from offering real customer value and support, from fixing security flaws, and generally being good corporate citizens. The same applies to Google and others. Since Facebook has a few BILLION users, they don’t really give a damn about how it hurts anyone or risks the privacy and security of individuals. It’s not, after all, their problem.
The best way to fight this is to remove from these companies the source of their revenues, i.e., leaving their services and paying moderate fees and making donations to projects that do NOT sell your data and that do NOT earn revenue from advertising*. This generally means switching to some kind of open source-based projects, like the newly created project from Purism called Librem.one.
*some advertising isn’t bad, such as advertising on a news site, but it shouldn’t be targeted and it shouldn’t rely on spying on you to figure out what you want. A good advertiser will do the hard work to reach out to their target markets.
Librem.one is a set of services, using a range of open source projects, that are designed to replace things like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Gmail, and Google Drive, among many more which are planned. We pay for this service in lieu of having our data scraped and ads blasted at us. The more of us who speak with our money and our choices, the more these services can develop into better, more accessible tools that help us through our daily lives.
All I ask if that you reevaluate what it is that you get from the internet and how those choices are affecting you and those around you, and choose to take a different approach that might actually benefit everyone instead of just people like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or the Google machine.