7 Privacy Measures that won't make your life difficult
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00:00 Intro
00:42 Sponsor: Get your own Private Linux Server!
01:54 FOSS is the gold standard for privacy
02:29 Web Browser and Search Engine
04:34 Passwords
06:00 Online Accounts
07:40 VPNs (not sponsored by a VPN)
08:33 Your Operating System
10:03 Your Smartphone
Use a private web browser AND a private search engine. Chrome and Google, Edge, Bing, these are not private options.
Move to something that doesn't collect your data, like Firefox or Brave, or Ungoogled Chromium, something like that. At least make sure that your browser of choice is fully open source, so people have been able to check what data it collects.
Using Google as a search engine is also a bad idea: even if you're not logged into a Google account, they will use fingerprinting to identify your browser. If you want to try something else, use Duck Duck GO, or brave Search, or you can use something that uses Google's results, without the tracking, like Startpage.
In your browser, also only use extensions you trust. Finally, enable the privacy protections your browser offers if you haven't already.
Use complex passwords, and different ones for each service you use, plus a password manager, like BitWarden. Also, please set up 2 factor authentication with an authenticator app like andOTP, or Tofu.
First, let's talk about the accounts we still use. If you use Google, your first step is to go into the My Activity page, and disable literally everything you find here.
On social media, try and take a look at the privacy settings.
If you have more spare time, it's a good idea to look through your old emails, and just go into each of them and delete these old accounts.
Finally, for new accounts, use a trash email address to log in.
You can create one at guerilla mail, or yopmail, and these addresses will only work temporarily, and ensure your main email isn't polluted, or shared with anyone else.
Apple and Mozilla offer services that create fake email addresses as you create your accounts, and which redirect the email to your main address. You can then delete the addresses you don't want to use anymore, and keep everything private and clean. They can be good options as well.
A VPN can also be a good idea to hide some bits of data from the websites you visit and the services you use. They can be tedious to use, as they can also reduce your connection speed, and, most importantly, they're not all created equal.
So to use a VPN, pick one carefully, from a company you trust. I'd recommend Mozilla VPN, or ProtonVPN.
On your computer, try and use an OS that doesn't collect data, like Linux.
All proprietary systems, macOS AND Windows, collect data and send it back home. They don't necessarily sell it, but they use it anyways.
If you can't move to Linux, because that's not something everyone can do, at least disable all data collection you can in Windows. On Windows, there are tons of checkboxes you can disable in the "Privacy and Security" section of the settings.
Finally, always auto apply your updates. These have security patches, you need these.
And finally, your smartphone. These are truly tracking devices. They all collect your location data, and a LOT more. You can't entirely disable this, but your smartphone settings generally let you disable at least diagnostic data, or Android personalization service. On iOS devices, you can also disable diagnostic data, and disable app tracking for all apps, so at least they can't collect too much data by default.