The angry person's guide to online privacy.


Here are 10 ideas to improve (not guarantee) your privacy. You're probably not going to like most of them. And they won't keep your life completely private.  You probably 'know' these things, but you just don't care enough to do any of them.

I think of them as an extended middle finger to tech giants like Google & Amazon (collectively, I call them The Beast), a way to fight back, to slow the bleedout.

Here we go.

1. Use gopherspace as much as possible.  Tell others about gopherspace. Gopherspace is less surveilled, friendlier, a place where you can be heard and make a difference, and there's still a lot of up-to-date, useful and interesting info here.

2. Use a basic privacy based web browser like Firefox Klar or Brave.  Or better yet, just don't use the web.
   2.1 -- if you are using Google's DNS 8.8.8.8, stop it.

3. For crissakes, never EVER use the internet without a freakin' VPN (or Tor). My personal favorite is Mullvad.net. They are worth it! Just pay the man.  And rotate your vpn geography regularly.

4. Go oldschool. There's lots you can do and it can be sort of fun to standout in an oldschool way.  For example: 
-Instead of Google calendar, use a paper calendar or go all retrotech with a Palm pilot.
-Instead of Google maps, go get an old offline Garmin nuvi and update the maps. They still work perfectly.
-Instead of Google Docs, use Libre Office on an airgap machine.
-Instead of Google Keep, use the back of a napkin.
-Instead of Google Drive, backup your own data to your own hard drives
-Instead of Google, carry around a full set of World Book Encyclopedae books. [Just kidding... use DuckDuckGo.com.]

5. If you don't want to be spied on, then don't install spy-tech in your own home!  Dump Alexa, dump Ring, get rid of the 'smart tv' that logs everything you watch. 

6. Delete your social media accounts.  Or at the very least, prune them way back. No more than 100 followers you personally know. Don't post your private photos and thoughts for the entire world to index them.  Start sending REAL birthday cards again.

7. Only switch your phone ON when you need something from it.  Stop being a human nfc/bluetooth beacon.  Turn of GPS.  The less you use your phone, the less you'll need it.  Turning your phone OFF more, especially while driving, could save your life.

8. When you don't need the internet, shut it off!  Become best friends with "Airplane Mode."  Does your device REALLY need to be on 24/7?  >>?? Really ??<<  Shut off your home internet every night, at the router. Just turn it off.  If you have kids living at home, you really should be doing this already. 

9.  Retrain everyone around you to expect slower communication.
This is important. You have to retrain everyone around you from your spouse to your boss to understand that you are no longer instantly available.  Consider that 'connectedness' cheapens your value to others instead of enhancing it.  They treat you like an on-demand commodity that can be consumed at will, that it's ok to demand your attention on a whim.   Tell anyone who complains that you will respond to their emails, phone calls, texts, IM's, etc,  twice a day, then stick to it.  This will make you more productive while also setting the markers for your personal space. 

10.  Don't play along. Stop enabling The Beast.   If you have a website or any kind of influence on your company's web strategy,  pursue a relentless strategy of 'disappearing' the snoops.  Remove the Twitter & Facebook badges from your website. Dump Google analytics.  Remove all of the JS you possibly can from your website. Don't use Google fonts on your website.  Find less invasive ways to how many people are visiting your website. Aggressively challenge your deeply held assumptions about 'why we have to track visitors' and see if they really hold up.  Write the world's best privacy policy for your website and stick to it.   Are you really 'earning' so incredibly much money showing ads on your website, or is it truly just a  buck or two a month?  Try going without Google Ads and Google tracking for a month, see what happens.  If you're truly not consuming these analytics reports every day, just stop it and go with your gut hunch.  

And, there's the added benefit that your unavailability will be seen as sexy. Getting a response from you is now a big deal, because apparently your time is valuable because you are hard to reach. 

     "But what if there's an emergency?"

In my entire life, I have only ever experienced one TRUE emergency.  That was when my 6 year old son was choking on a hotdog.  Nobody called or texted me while he was choking.  Instead they ran frantically around the house screaming.  Luckily, I was near by and able to respond to save him.   If I had not been close by, I would have wanted them to call emergency services before they call me.

Life is filled with trials. Life is constantly happening. If something is a true emergency and if you are the only one who can solve it, the will find you. Someone near you will physically break your cone of privacy -- maybe a neighbor or coworker, maybe a police officer or your clergy person.  Face it -- 99.99% 'emergencies' are just people freaking out about what to eat, being lost, what to wear, hurt feelings, something broke, a customer's mad, your kid skinned his knee in the playground, someone needs a ride somewhere, something is lost,  would you pick up milk on your way home -- most emergencies are just people trying to make their problem into your problem.  Most emergencies are not emergencies.

Doing these ten things will not guarantee your online privacy, but doing nothing guarantees you will have no privacy.  

Remember, the First Rule of Privacy Club is, stfu.