We should ALL care more about digital privacy

So, in light of the ever expanding mass surveillance project known as the ‘online safety act’ in the UK, alongside Donald Trump’s plans to check the social media accounts of people (and their families) travelling to America, I have been thinking more and more about online privacy, and the importance of it.

For people who aren’t that bothered about online privacy, I would ask why are you not so relaxed about physical privacy? If you use google, bing safari etc, use smart features on gmail, don’t use a vpn, join public wifi networks and accept cookies then why not leave your house unlocked? Why not never close your curtains? Why not just walk around naked shouting all your personal information in the street? They may sound like crazy comparisons, but why do we care so much about privacy and security in everything other than the internet?

Similarly, I’m sure you have many passwords saved on websites to make signing in easier, and you don’t think twice about it. However, if you used rightmove to buy your house, how would you feel about the owner of rightmove keeping a key to your house if they promised that they’d only give it to you? You’d never allow that to happen, they’d be out of business in no time and people would be instantly suspicious as to why they want a copy of your key. But when it’s a digital company, no one bats an eye, it’s just another button to click.

So what can you do to maintain some control? We’ll start with the obvious, please get a VPN. If you can afford it, a paid VPN is always better and more reliable than a free one. The only two I can definitely recommend are Proton VPN and Mullvad VPN as these are the most secure and private options. However, while not perfect, Nord and Express are much better than nothing. If you don’t believe you can afford a subscription, Proton VPN offers a very limited free version, which is the only free VPN I would recommend.

Moving onto browsers, stay far away from google, bing, opera, safari, firefox. These browsers are all owned or funded by large corporations, which make their money through selling your information to advertisers. They use trackers, cookies, and telemetry, and they take for granted that you won’t do your research and won’t want the hassle of changing browsers. The only browsers I would recommend are LibreWolf (which I am using to write this post), Mullvad Browser and the TOR browser. These are all free and open source, with greater security than any major alternatives. Unfortunately, these are not available on many mobile devices, so I would recommend Brave for those (far from a perfect browser, but miles better than any google based option). I also recommend using the DuckDuckGo search engine on any and all of these browsers.

Finally, if you want to go all out, I would recommend using a Linux distribution (Operating System), over Windows, ChromeOS or MacOS, however this can be a major change, and can be difficult to set up so it’s not for everyone. Despite that, if you have the money and time, I would highly recommend purchasing a USB drive (preferably at least 16GB, but ideally at least 32GB) and watching a youtube video on how to download and run a Linux distribution through it. For people used to windows, Linux Mint is a good choice, and for those used to Mac Books, PopOS is a good choice, but both can be good for beginners.

While, obviously, there is no one simple trick to ‘beat the system’ in terms of digital security, these are all good and effective ways to protect yourself and your personal data online. However, please do your own research, I’m no expert, I’m just a random guy who likes to waffle about his interests and while I believe everything in this post to be true and accurate, doing your own research is always extremely important in every situation. Stay safe out there and look after yourself in the outside world as well as the internet.