Re: Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy – Robert Epstein – Medium
This is Internet 101 for us oldies. Good practices all around. On 4/16/2018 10:56 AM, Traci Duncan wrote: Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy – Robert Epstein – Medium Interesting article. What are your thoughts? BTW, is Firefox accessible on the Mac? Hope you enjoy, Traci https://medium.com/@re_53711/seven-simple-steps-toward-online-privacy-20dcbb9fa82 Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy Robert Epstein <https://medium.com/@re_53711?source=post_header_lockup>Mar 16, 2017 I haven’t received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone for more than two years now. If you care about your privacy — or even if you’re just sick of being bombarded by ads for diet pills seconds after you send an email to a friend complaining that your pants are too tight — here are seven simple steps you can take to make your online presence more private: 1) /Junk Gmail/. All Gmail emails, both incoming and outgoing — even the angry draft emails you decided not to send — are analyzed and stored permanently by Google, Inc., with every snippet of information the company can extract from your emails added to the massive profile it has compiled about you. I recommend using http://ProtonMail.com <http://protonmail.com/> instead of Gmail. It’s based in Switzerland and subject to strict Swiss privacy laws. It takes only a few seconds to sign up, because the company doesn’t ask /anything/ about you (imagine that!). The basic service is free, and the paid version is cheap. ProtonMail is incredibly easy to use, and it also uses end-to-end encryption for maximum privacy. Unfortunately, you might be using Gmail and not even know it. To save money, thousands of businesses and universities use Gmail under their own brands — even news services such as /The Guardian, U.S. News & World Report/, /Salon/, and /The Hill/. To find out whether you have been unknowingly corresponding with someone through Google servers, open that person’s email and then find and click on the “view full header” option in your email software. If you find “google.com <http://google.com>” anywhere in the expanded header, Google has been monitoring all of your communications with that sender. Even if you switch to ProtonMail, you will still have no privacy when corresponding with someone using Gmail or hidden Google servers. I tell such people that if they want to communicate with me, they will need to use a different email service, and they usually do. 2) /Switch Search Engines/. Google’s search engine is the best because it indexes far more web pages than anyone else — at least 45 billion. But Google (the search engine) is also the most aggressive spying tool ever invented — funded from the outset by the NSA and the CIA <https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e> to identify people who are a threat to national security. Google records every search you conduct, and your Google profile contains a complete history of every search you /ever/ conducted — even those sketchy ones! Worse still, my research <http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full.pdf?with-ds=yes> has shown in recent years that Google’s search engine is also the most powerful mind control device <https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts> ever devised; it shifts the opinions of millions of people around the world every day without them knowing it. Instead of using Google.com <http://Google.com>, use http://StartPage.com. If you use the Firebox browser, you can even make StartPage your default search engine. Why StartPage? Because it doesn’t track you, and because it gives you full access to Google’s amazing index. In other words, it gives you great search results while also preserving your privacy. StartPage also doesn’t give you any search suggestions, which Google uses systematically to direct your searches <http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_2017-The_Search_Suggestion_Effect-SSE-ICPS_Vienna-March_2017.pdf> as they please. 3) /Kill Chrome. /Google developed the Chrome browser because the massive amount of information they were collecting about you from their search engine wasn’t enough for them. With Chrome, they can see which web pages you visit — /and/ what you do on those pages — even if you go to those pages directly rather than going through their search engine. If you value your privacy, /never/ use Chrome, even in the bogus “incognito” mode. Instead, use http://Firefox.com, which is maintained by a nonprofit organization. As I reveal in “The New Censorship <http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated>,” Google can still//get information about you when you’re using Firefox or Safari, but nowhere near as much as they get when you’re using Chrome. 4) /Axe Android/. As I explain in “Google’s Gotcha <htt
Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy – Robert Epstein – Medium
Interesting article. What are your thoughts? BTW, is Firefox accessible on the Mac? Hope you enjoy, Traci https://medium.com/@re_53711/seven-simple-steps-toward-online-privacy-20dcbb9fa82 Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy Robert EpsteinMar 16, 2017 I haven’t received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone for more than two years now. If you care about your privacy — or even if you’re just sick of being bombarded by ads for diet pills seconds after you send an email to a friend complaining that your pants are too tight — here are seven simple steps you can take to make your online presence more private: 1) Junk Gmail. All Gmail emails, both incoming and outgoing — even the angry draft emails you decided not to send — are analyzed and stored permanently by Google, Inc., with every snippet of information the company can extract from your emails added to the massive profile it has compiled about you. I recommend using http://ProtonMail.com instead of Gmail. It’s based in Switzerland and subject to strict Swiss privacy laws. It takes only a few seconds to sign up, because the company doesn’t ask anything about you (imagine that!). The basic service is free, and the paid version is cheap. ProtonMail is incredibly easy to use, and it also uses end-to-end encryption for maximum privacy. Unfortunately, you might be using Gmail and not even know it. To save money, thousands of businesses and universities use Gmail under their own brands — even news services such as The Guardian, U.S. News & World Report, Salon, and The Hill. To find out whether you have been unknowingly corresponding with someone through Google servers, open that person’s email and then find and click on the “view full header” option in your email software. If you find “google.com” anywhere in the expanded header, Google has been monitoring all of your communications with that sender. Even if you switch to ProtonMail, you will still have no privacy when corresponding with someone using Gmail or hidden Google servers. I tell such people that if they want to communicate with me, they will need to use a different email service, and they usually do. 2) Switch Search Engines. Google’s search engine is the best because it indexes far more web pages than anyone else — at least 45 billion. But Google (the search engine) is also the most aggressive spying tool ever invented — funded from the outset by the NSA and the CIA to identify people who are a threat to national security. Google records every search you conduct, and your Google profile contains a complete history of every search you ever conducted — even those sketchy ones! Worse still, my research has shown in recent years that Google’s search engine is also the most powerful mind control device ever devised; it shifts the opinions of millions of people around the world every day without them knowing it. Instead of using Google.com, use http://StartPage.com. If you use the Firebox browser, you can even make StartPage your default search engine. Why StartPage? Because it doesn’t track you, and because it gives you full access to Google’s amazing index. In other words, it gives you great search results while also preserving your privacy. StartPage also doesn’t give you any search suggestions, which Google uses systematically to direct your searches as they please. 3) Kill Chrome. Google developed the Chrome browser because the massive amount of information they were collecting about you from their search engine wasn’t enough for them. With Chrome, they can see which web pages you visit — and what you do on those pages — even if you go to those pages directly rather than going through their search engine. If you value your privacy, never use Chrome, even in the bogus “incognito” mode. Instead, use http://Firefox.com, which is maintained by a nonprofit organization. As I reveal in “The New Censorship,” Google can still get information about you when you’re using Firefox or Safari, but nowhere near as much as they get when you’re using Chrome. 4) Axe Android. As I explain in “Google’s Gotcha,” even Chrome didn’t give Google enough information about you, so the company developed Android, an operating system for phones and other mobile devices — the equivalent of the Windows operating system that’s on most desktop computers. Chrome gives Google information about you only when you’re online, but because Android controls all your phone’s functions, it can track you — the phone numbers you dial or the music files you access , for example—even when you’re offline. If you value your privacy, donate your Android phone to a charity (such as http://CellPhonesForSoldiers.com), and buy a phone from a company that doesn’t use Google’s deceptive business model. Companies like Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry make most of their money by selling products, whereas Google makes almost all of its money by suckering you with free services it uses to
