My biggest lifestyle change in 2021

After the community made a shift in her appearance and vibe, I was not sure about where I fit in with what I usually write about (and I'm not sure even now) but what I want to talk about in this post fits perfectly. Today's post is about the biggest lifestyle change I've made in 2021. That is --

Ensuring Internet Privacy

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Big data corporations are selling our data to private and govt corporations to sell more products with targeted ads and keep us under surveillance respectively--that is no secret. I'm sure you have seen it yourself. Search any product on google and you'll find it advertised on your Facebook feed within a few hours. You don't have to actively search for it actually, just talk about it with a friend when your phone is around. And you will see the ads pretty soon. Your microphone is always recording what you're saying. Your camera is always recording. There are already allegations of using big data to manipulate elections. Zuckerberg has already faced trial. And Snowden revealed mass surveillance program conducted by US govt almost a decade ago now. This is not science fiction or mere paranoia, it is happening now.

Moreover, sociologists are warning us about possible future techno dictators, who would control the big data they've amassed to dictate fates of the individuals and states. This part may be still in the future but it's likely to happen soon enough. So as I see it, it is essential that we control our data and privacy online. You might say, you have nothing to hide. That is probably true, but it's not just you. Your data can and will be used to target someone close to you. Perhaps, they have something to hide. Also, as Snowden remarked in his book Permanent Record--saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.

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Right now there are two major companies that are large enough to pull data shenanigans on you, Facebook and Google.
The problem for me was that, I've had a long presence on Facebook and I cannot abandon it--I maintain a few art related groups and also my business page there. And trying to ditch google, I've realized how intimately, closely it has invaded our lives. My best option was to isolate these monsters (so they can only see my activities on their services) and keep everything else separate--and slowly try to replace these services with open source ones.

This is easy enough on a desktop. You can use a browser for everything google and facebook and use everything else on another browser. Still you can be identified via browser fingerprinting. Fingerprinting, in this case, does not mean your biological print, rather information your browser sends to the bots and websites. Fortunately there are browsers that can be used to send misinformation which is good, like brave browser and tor.

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However, on a phone, maintaining privacy can be tricky. You CANNOT do anything to ensure your privacy on an iPhone. So forget about that. But there's hope for android users. For facebook it's easy, you just uninstall the app, messenger, whatsapp and instagram and use them from a browser if you really need to. These are the motherload of evil and if you've read the updates about their privacy policy, they are now accessing your sensors without asking you. However, isolating google can be a challenge since android itself is developed by google. You've probably noticed you cannot uninstall google play store, play services etc normally. They come as system apps. But this can be done.
I should say this beforehand, getting rid of google completely won't be possible, your physical microphone and camera can still be taken over but you can limit the amount of data leak if you use custom Roms. What are those, you ask?

While manufacturer provided android OS comes with google propriety softwares such as play store, chrome, youtube etc. the source of android is open source. You can use AOSP (android open source project) based ROM which won't have any google app or services. Some propriety features of google like "wifi triangulation" (which can identify your location far accurately than GPS can) won't also be there. This is good news.
However, to ensure total safety it is safer to use a linux phone with hardware kill switches. You switch off power from camera physically, not via software. Sweet eh?
Since I don't have such a phone, I've installed Lineage OS (which is an AOSP based ROM) on my android phone.

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However, the biggest problem with this change for me was inconvenience. At first I thought about going all out with open source apps only. I was pretty pumped up about it, not gonna lie. However, soon I hit a wall. Without play store, I was hard pressed to find apps to get the job done. F-droid has only a few apps. To get around the play store issue, I downloaded the apk files of my most used apps separately, and the ones that have no alternatives, for example, binance, spotify. A point to be made here that there some apps that require play services to work properly, I couldn't use them.

But I've also found a few great open source apps that made me hopeful for the future and for the open source ecosystem. For example, you can essentially replace google suite apps with nextcloud ones. Replace youtube with New Pipe, which is superior to youtube app in my opinion. You can use Simplenote or markor for writing all your notes. Telegram and signal for communicating with friends and family etc.

What this change will avail me in the long run, I do not know. But I'm feeling pretty good about it. It's been more than a month already and I think I won't go back to the old ways.

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About Me

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