Locked up and secure (as can be)

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

- Epicurus -

---

---

In this world where we've "never been more connected," [which I call bullshit on because I think we've never been more emotionally disconnected], and where almost everything we do and much of our information is tracked, linked, auto-filled and generally accessible to just about anyone with a computer, I think it's important to put some thought into the security of one's personal information and cyber-security in general.

With that in mind, I ask the question...Out of ten, with ten being strong and one being ineffectual, where does your cyber-security integrity rate?

Obfuscate

I recently read a post by @smithlabs about encrypted emails, tracking and data-mining and general personal cyber-security issues that we all face which you can find here. If you're at all interested in maintaining a level of security it's worth a read. It's not long, but may spark some action on your part, or just open up the thought process and that may lead to action.

Toby mentions an encrypted email provider, one I also use, called Proton Mail. I'll not go into it here as you can do your own investigations.

He also mentions his desire to obfuscate his data, which simply means to make the data appear confused, jumbled or unclear to anyone who looks...This serves, hopefully, to discombobulate those searching with the intention to gather intelligence from it for whatever, usually nefarious, reason. I don't mean your neighbour here, I'm talking about Google and Meta and other such corporations who profit from your information; governments too. Email services like Proton Mail seek to assist a person to obfuscate their information and, that seems a good idea to me. It's worth doing some research on the matter.

Toby has removed apps from his phone also which is something I've not delved into that deeply myself, but I'm getting there. I know that cyber-security is an issue though and only recently a friend was viciously cyber-attacked, the result of which was the loss of virtually all digital information and the pain of a lot of personal real-world heartache that still endures. Is it unavoidable? Probably not, but the risk of it can be mitigated.

So no, I'm not at no-apps-on-phone ninja-level like Toby but I certainly put some effort into maintaining an increased level of electronic security; and also personal security as well of course.

Threema communication

With this in mind, a couple years ago, I began to use a messaging app called Threema which I've found to be very good. I haven't linked to it, but again, you can do your own research and see for yourself. It's not free, but that's ok, sometimes a few dollars to secure one's privacy is worth it. Right?

It's basically an end-to-end encrypted messaging service and does video and phone calls also. The cool thing is that a user doesn't need to disclose their phone number or email to get it, although that's an option for verification which I have taken up. To link up with other users no phone numbers or emails are required at all though. This means I could put my Threema ID code here in this post and people could request to be added to my contact list and converse with me like any other messaging app all without knowing where I am, my phone number or email address, or even my real name; also, I'd not know theirs either. It's pretty secure. There's many other benefits too.

The Threema ID looks like this: NNPY4RCC, although that's not actually my own ID of course. Connection can also be done by QR code.

Anyway, I'm not here to sell Threema to you. If you're keen, find the website and take a look or download it to your phone from the Play Store or App Store and go from there. Just remember, it's about $8AUD to get and that means so many people will not want to jump on board so you might find yourself short of friends unless you have switched on and security-conscious friends. I guess some people feel their personal data and security is worth less than eight bucks...which confounds me.

---

There are so many apps available, most of which probably have some alternate purpose like data-gathering and tracking, but there's a few around that can be extremely useful and I think Threema is one such app, as is the Proton Mail option that Toby and I use.

Do you know of any that are particularly useful, well designed and have functional-integrity but are also secure and actively protect your data? Feel free to tell me about it below as I'm interested, and I'd say others may be also.