Basic privacy and anonymity tips

Due to the rapid development of technology and the Internet now-days, it's hard to reach a high-level privacy and it's impossible to become completely anonymous. But that doesn't mean average users must and put up with the idea their personal data are collected and shared with third parties by the services they use every day. Today I would like to provide some useful tips to make our activity a little more private (why?).

Monopoly is evil

What are you doing on the internet and which services are you using? Have you noticed that most of them are provided by the world IT leaders such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Apple? Each of this companies offers (or rather forces) you to pass a registration process and set up a common account to use their services. Yes, it's convenient, but also it will let them associate each your action with your identity.

Don't just share your data

Don't answer the question the question just because they've asked, don't fill in form field just because it's there. For example, many websites may ask a permission to access your location, I never understand why they need it. Also, I usually notice mobile apps asking for more permissions they really need, like phone contacts or photos. Before granting them access make sure it's really necessary for the services provided.

Prefer using "independent" services

I've already provided you good google's alternatives in my recent post, but I think I should repeat myself and mention DuckDuckGo (search) and Protonmail (mail service) again.

Prefer using Telegram rather than WhatsApp or Skype. I can't say for sure that Telegram won't spy on you, but I can say with certainty that the ones belonging to the IT giants will. And in my opinion Telegram the most secure messaging application аmong those that are acceptable to average users. Encrypted chat lets you hide your messages from your provider and anyone who is highly interested in what you write.

Look for opensource software, especially when choosing apps that "will know much" about you, like browsers, email agents, calendars... You better use Firefox or Brave (maybe Chromium) instead of Chrome, Safari or IE. It's really not hard to find an opensource alternative for every software. Especially now, when more and more blockchain based startups appears one board ;)

Look at Linux, believe me, you can, it's not such complicated than few year ago :) If you're using Windows check out my latest post. If you're using Mac, sorry, you have no choice :( At least I can't help you, but would be glad to help if someone can leave a useful reply.

That's all I can say about basic privacy, it's just a simple rule that anybody can and should follow, there is nothing complicated. If you like the post, please feel free to leave comments and follow me for more. I'm going to get deeper in privacy and anonymity ;)