From talking to many of my family and friends, I know that a lot of people are concerned about their privacy on the internet, and about the progress of what has been dubbed "surveillance capitalism." And yet, most people I know are too dependent on, or addicted to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp (all Facebook-owned and operated), Google, Amazon and other internet "services" to take the steps of unplugging from these corporate behemoths. In the meantime, a number of internet pioneers, including some who have become billionaires, are expressing concerns about where the internet has gotten and is going, and some are taking steps to make corrections.
In the meantime, I have become social network isolated - by not being on Facebook and/or Instagram I am not in the loop with many family members and friends. I still post to this blog and other on-line places, but I know that few people see these things because there are no links to them on Facebook.
I read a lot about the internet, and I do not expect other people to do the same. If interested, there are thousands of articles and books available about the evils of the internet giants. Here is a short blog post about privacy by the Protonmail folks that is worth the time to read as a good summary of concerns.
What will it take for masses of people to leave the surveillance-based internet giants? Social change theory tells us that if influential people make the move, others will follow. Well, I'm not one of the influencers, but I am making the moves.
Here are my latest actions:
email: I am sending a message to my gmail contacts that I am switching my personal email to Protonmail. I will leave my business email at gmail for the foreseeable future.
text messages: I have switched to Signal. Messaging between me and other Signal users is end-to-end encrypted and very secure. signal also has internet-based voice and video calling that I use for calls overseas.
internet browsing: I use the Duck-Duck-Go extension on Apple Safari for my laptop (Macbook) and tablet (iPad), and Duck-Duck-Go is the default browser on my Android phone. (One nice feature on the DDG Android app is that it shows me the trackers it is blocking when I am on the internet; and this is eye-opening: see the images, below, when I browsed to the Portland Tribune).
socializing: I've looked around to find an alternative to the Facebook/Instagram paradigm. There are some out there. I've signed up on MeWe, a service that intentionally does not collect user data, track users, etc. One person in my hundreds of contacts is also on MeWe. I've not used it much, but I will be looking at it more closely, see what kinds of groups exist, and maybe encourage friends and family to check it out. In the meantime, I've started to contact people by text and phone in order to stay in touch. Last year I started a discussion group using the Slack platform. The idea was to have a place where people could have focused discussions about specific topics. Nobody seemed interested.
additional internet privacy: we use a VPN (virtual private network) when on the internet, especially when traveling.
privacy policies and settings: this one is complex and time consuming. Ideally we would read through the privacy policies of every on-line app, software or website we use, and then go through every privacy setting for each of these and set them for maximum privacy. Obviously the vast majority of people don't do this, and simply check "I agree" for everything. We all recently received email messages from many of our provider and app developers that they have new privacy policies; this was a result of new internet rules being in effect for the European Union. I struggle with this issue.
pay for privacy and ad-free use: Some companies and apps offer ad-free service for a fee, instead of using the free version. I choose to pay for certain things, especially if I support the ethics and standards of the company (Protonmail is an example).
Despite all of these efforts, the bottom line is that there is no such thing as complete privacy on the internet, as far as I know, if I want to continue using internet services. And so the question is begged, why do I continue reading about it, trying to find ways to be more private, switching apps and providers? The answer is, it's who I am. I don't like what cyberspace has become, the extent to which it has become commercialized and intrusive, the dangers inherent in thousands of companies knowing everything about me and my daily activities. And so, nevertheless, I persist! If you care to join me, fine; if not, fine.
And thanks for reading.
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