i am not very tech-literate. but i'm not the least tech-literate person out there, and i have enough sense to know that "i have nothing to hide" is not a good reason to handwave away the owning class' incessant campaign of of spying on normal people. stealing your labor isn't enough. stealing your wages isn't enough. the tech CEOs felt the need to construct infrastructure for spying far more sophisticated than you or i will ever know. for sale to data brokers, and for lucrative contracts with police departments (yeah, your tax dollars are bankrolling this shit). there is little to no oversight with regards to how this data is used or sold. literally none of this is to the benefit of normal people like you or me. and to be honest, this all really freaks me out. i had to ask myself:
"how can i, just some idiot, minimize the extent to which i am spied on??"
i mean, the answer to that is to do away with capitalism, but the point of this blogpost isn't to preach about how you should get organized (although you should!!!)i'm gonna talk about easy, actionable things that even an idiot like me can do to personally avoid being tracked and spied on. this isn't an all-encompassing guide to going off the grid, i'm just talking about measures i personally have taken to mitigate my own digital footprint. this is stuff that comes at only a slight cost of convenience, and doesn't even take much tech-literacy to do.
note: i am not an expert on this. please do your own research. i also can't guarantee that everything here will remain accurate forever. who knows, maybe fucking mullvad will get sold to private equity and sell out all of its users to the CIA :vvvv
how it all feels ^
1.) escape the google ecosystem entirely. do not use a single google product.
this is kind of a band-aid that needs to be ripped off, so i put it first. your ass knows WHY this has to be done. they're literally the company that used to have "don't be evil" as their motto, but changed it. google uses their far-reaching influence on the web to collect an insane amount of data on you, which is then used to target you with ads from their extremely pervasive ad server. they also use this data to train ai models, to sell to other companies, and who really knows how else they use it. there's no oversight.google has become a vertically-integrated highly-efficient inescapable leviathan of privacy invasion. don't invite that into your life.
click to expand for a section on ways to replace google products you might use: ↓
(click again to collapse) ^
>google drive
consider using syncthing to sync files across your devices instead. there are also other cloud storage and file hosting services like proton drive, catbox, etc. do your research when it comes to who your trust your files with, though. after all, these are still tech companies we're talking about. google is probably far from the only one scraping users' files for data that can be sold or used to train ai models.you could, alternatively, spin up your own server to host files on, but that's beyond the scope of this post.
>docs/sheets/slides
libreoffice and other free/open source office software suites exist. they're probably better than what google has anyway, the google office programs are weirdly lacking in features?? if you're using docs for any kind of creative project, you are literally giving google free reign to train its ai on your work.>gmail
EMAIL IS BUILT ON INHERENTLY INSECURE PROTOCOLS: ANY EMAIL SERVICES THAT MARKET THEMSELVES AS HIGHLY SECURE ARE BULLSHIT
BUT, google in particular scrapes the contents of emails for marketing data, AI training data, etc. switch to something like proton mail or tutanota mail. they do the whole security/privacy song and dance as part of their marketing, and while that can only be so true due to the nature of email, they're better, more trustworthy email providers than google (an insanely low bar to clear).also worth saying: for things that needlessly ask for an email address (ordering a pizza, connecting to public wifi etc) just so they can send you spam later, consider using a disposable email service.
DO NOT SEND ANYTHING OVER EMAIL THAT COULD INCRIMINATE YOU: AGAIN, EMAIL IS INHERENTLY NOT SECURE
>google search
fuck, dude, all search engines suck ass. duckduckgo is like, your best bet, i guess? they claim not to track their users and their searches, but iirc DDG's search results are pooled from bing and yahoo, and you can really tell by the search results: THEY FUCKING SUCK!!!!!! but, your alternative is google, which doesn't have great results either and is the literal antichrist, so like....???>youtube
let me admit: i use youtube. it's the one google product that seems to lack a non-shitty alternative. it's unfortunate, since the site has gotten so much worse. so, if you're an idiot plebian media consoomer like me who might die if you eat a single meal without youtube blaring in front of your face, at least you can lessen the amount of data and ad revenue collected from you if you keep reading>chrome
if you haven't, switch to firefox or a fork of it RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!!!!! (do not use brave, it's a crypto/ai scam and i can't believe so many people shill that shit). personally, i use librewolf with some of the more intrusive privacy settings dialed back for convenience.>de-google your android phone
delete all of the google-relatived apps and services that your phone likely came bundled with, ideally replacing them with free or open source alternatives. there are a lot of data and telemetry options you might not know about that need to be disabled in your phone's settings. un-link your google account from your phone. fdroid and aurora store are good alternatives to the play store. fdroid primarily hosts FOSS software, and aurora store is an anonymous alternative to the play store for whatever proprietary apps you might need.ideally you'd also want to install a custom android rom like grapheneOS but that's not something i've done personally, so i can't speak on how easy it is.
2.) use a more private browser (or configure your existing one to suck less)
like i said above about google chrome: if you use chrome, switch to firefox or a fork of it (like librewolf). use an adblocker. not only will this lessen the data that's able to be collected on your significantly, you'll also have a much more pleasant browsing experience without a million porn ads and shit everywhere.3.) use a (PAID!!!!) VPN
just get mullvad. your account is totally anonymous, not even requiring an email address, and they take anonymous payment methods. AND you can use several devices on one account. free VPNs like nordVPN, expressVPN, surfshark, etc (basically any shit you see advertised in youtuber ad reads) are all scams that collect and sell your data, overcharge you for what they provide, or try to upcharge you for "bonus" features that you don't need. a VPN is the one thing i'll ever earnestly suggest that you pay for.you know what i don't suggest you pay for?
4. PIRATE (BASICALLY) EVERYTHING
in regards to media and software, large publishers own everything. and you, the lowly consoomer, are either subject to rent-seeking subscription models or increasingly draconian license agreements that state in no uncertain terms that you own nothing of what you paid for. usually bundled into these subscriptions and licenses are terms that force you into accepting intrusive telemetry collection and DRM. these rent-seeking idiots who didn't even make what you're paying them for don't deserve your money: don't give it to them. keep a local music library instead of paying for streaming. torrent that anime. download that cracked software.the cost of additional data storage will pay for itself over time with what you save on cutting out subscription bullshit. and you keep full control over your own files. be sure not to torrent without a VPN though ;DDDDD your ISP *will* get pissy if you don't.
5.) consider switching to linux
similar to cutting out google, this is another thing that may be come with some friction for some people. you may have genuine reasons you can't switch from windows (HOWEVER, if the reason is due to certain software only running on windows, you should definitely research whether or not there are ways for it to run in linux, or if there's a suitable FOSS replacement). there are ways to configure windows 11 to disable the spooky telemetry collection, disable the ai integration, make the user experience not as shitty, and generally make it more secure. BUT, if you're doing all that, you should just throw the whole thing away, imo. even after doing all of that, i wouldn't trust that it isn't still sending usage data back to microsoft. after all, why would they not do something just because you asked the OS nicely?admittedly, i still use windows on my desktop (sometime in the near-ish future i'd like to dual boot and only use windows for things that strictly require it). however, on my laptop, which sees near-daily use, i run manjaro linux.