I have not always had an interest in data privacy. Actually, it took me moving in to being a data engineer in the marketing world to really realise the intense nature of data capture.
Like, I am sure, a large proprotion of the privacy aware population, it is not that there is anything to hide, just that privacy of data should be a right. It is one of the reasons I stepped away from most social networks, try to de-Google as much as I can and take care in my data landscape.
But, how does everyone else manage theirs? It would be good to share some useful tips, resources, tools, etc. that the wider community (as it grows) can use.
For me, I use:
- A VPN (Mullvad in this case)
- Firefox with ‘some’ hardening (don’t want to totally cripple the online experience)
- Windows OS with telemtry disabled across the system (never perfect but I am happy)
- Simplewall (Windows App) to manage some outbound traffic
- Random password generators (exact logic is incredibly unique to me)
- Android (mobile) with as much telemetry disabled as possible
- Privacy Guides, a great website to keep atop of new updates
- Various threat landscape blogs and podcasts
Listing it out, it sounds like I do a lot but this is pretty tame. I accept that there is a balance between user experience and privacy. Yes, I could totally de-Google my phone but then a lot of useful functionality is lost. Same with Windows, I could move to Linux full-time (and would if I could) but I am a gamer and, while Linux is improving in that landscape, it ain’t great just yet.
This is a great topic, that’s right up my street.
The biggest change that I made to my home privacy / security is deploying PiHole on the local network. The sheer amount of tracking and nasty ad / malware sites out there is astonishing. About 15% of all my web traffic at home is blocked at the DNS level. All of that crappy MIcrosoft Telemetary just gets stopped dead. Samsung also trys to ingest a lot of data from my TV and Washing machine, but PiHole stops most if not all of that.
When out and about on the Android phone / tablet, I’ve switched to FireFox and Ublock origin.
I really need to setup a PiHole. I have an old Raspberry Pi 2 lying around somewhere so might do that when I get a minute.
The worst “nornal” devices are my LG TV and Playstation. The absolute worst I’d my TP Link Tap Web can I use to watch the dog. Its blocked from accesses the internet, but accounts for something ridiculous like 30% of all my network traffic.