After getting our household tech a lot more private I wrote up this DIY Tech Privacy beginners guide. It seems too long to copy onto here so I’m going to share a link. I hope that is okay. From the link you can read it there or download a PDF version for reference. This is original content and I will post it fully on here if that is desired, but it’s about 20 pages long…
Have a good one, hope this is helpful to someone out there.
Hi and welcome to our community
Thanks for your contributions i look forward to reading it later today
I read it . Well done … you write at a level that people understand.
“surveillance capitalism” I like that term .
I suppose the internet opens the door to strange ways of earning a living.
I dont see the difference between using the internet and walking down the street… they are both public places and you can expect to be visible and even identifiable.
Am I being naive? Does the internet perhaps have some additional extra danger?
I suppose I see it like: people can watch me walk down the street, even potentially identify me. But they don’t automatically then get a list of every street I’ve ever walked down in my life, the streets where I live and work, every street I’ve thought about walking down, and they don’t then place a tracker to watch every street I’ll walk down in the future.
But google maps can show a timeline of where you have been …not always correct but very close
Another reason to switch to FOSS alternatives, like CoMaps 
On the other hand, on the internet you are not likely to be shot or physically assaulted. There are some other advantages too, like more convenient banking and vastly better access to information.
I think, on balance, we are better off with the internet. Monitoring is the price we pay if we want the benefits.
There is a trend to increase surveillance cameras in public places too… sometimes with facial recognition.
I don’t disagree that the internet has brought immense benefit, but maybe I’m nostalgic for the internet as I remember it growing up vs the immensely scrutinised, optimised, and profit-driven internet we have now. It’s less that I’m concerned I’ll be physically harmed, and more an ontological disagreement with surveillance capitalism? Why do you need to hand over so much data to a multi-billion pound megacorp, just to use an app? Is it pure functionality? Or is it to extract wealth from your data? A mix of the two? I’m increasingly coming down on the side of: what we get for what we hand over is not an equivalent exchange, particularly when we have vibrant FOSS alternatives.
I’m not totally idealist; I use Firefox after all. But I think an internet/wider tech landscape not beholden to the whims of Big Tech shareholders is important. It’s important to have sources of information not driven by commercial algorithms. It’s important to be able to opt out of these systems, without being entirely shut out of modern life.
These projects benefit everyone. Like, Wikipedia isn’t without faults, but it’s a great example of the above. Linux is another.
Me too. What used to be an academic facility for free interchange of material, including software, has been commercially exploited.
Some of what you react to can be avoided in Linux … by not using certain apps …but it is not easy to find a totally unencumbered browser.
Phones and tablets and the whole Android world are another matter. They were compromised from the beginning.
That line is getting more blurred for sure. The difference used to be ambiguity. As one walks around in public, unless they were famous or infamous for some reason, they could do so as part of the background noise. You can even go to a restaurant with a crowd and talk about private matters and usually be unnoticed. As the digital world starts penetrating the physical world more and more I believe it would be nice to have more protections to secure our ambiguity and privacy. Going around in public has historically been a fairly private matter unless you stand out for some reason, but it was easy to blend in and be ignored. Going around on the internet has a magnifying glass on everyone who uses mainstream software tracking every move and keeping many profiles on each individual user. With smartphones and facial recognition software with camera systems we now have that in the physical world as well. So if people are aware of this, and don’t like it, there are some ways to limit some of this and regain some privacy. I think ti’s only going to get a lot worse. Perhaps if enough people become aware, and put up some resistance we can carve out a better and more privacy oriented future. I like to be ignored in public, and I’d like that as well on the internet.
Only in recent history, and only in a crowded urban environment.
I live in a small rural town. When I go to the Post Office or the Pharmacy I get “Hello Neviĺle” … When we go shopping, we encounter the same people we see in Church … I dont dislike it, it is nice.
Go back a few centuries, before the industrial revolution … people lived in small villages attached to a feudal manor . They all worked together and everything they did was communal and public.
Go back a few more centuries to the dark ages . People lived in communal medieval longhouses and even slept together in one large room. There was no privacy at all.
Go back to the Ancient World … we only know about large civilisations like Greece and Mesopotamia … the rest of our ancestors lived in tribes… totally communal, no privacy.
So this privacy thing is a modern phenomenon. Humans evolved in a community environment. That is where we are most happy. Urban life is a distortion , and an unhealthy one. A lot of the meaning of going to Church, or belonging to a club, or helping at the men’s shed lies in the sense of community.
That can be annoying for sure … mainly because of the commercial motives behind it. People dont like to be exploited … it is that rather than worrying about spying or gossip.
People have been exploited right back thru history. We have managed to wind back some of the worst forms, like slavery and disenfranchisement. So there is hope that we can control this new digital form of exploitation … but history shows that it may take centuries to gain control over such a thing. It will be a fight.
There is also a positive side to the internet. It is an opportunity for new forms of community and collaboration … like this forum … like open source software … like internet games … like online meetings …
I think part of the answer must be to flood the internet with healthy community activities and drown out the commercial noise.
The other part of the answer has to be for our legal system to catch up with this new unregulated global environment which at the moment has become a free-for-all of rampant capitalism. We have a poor record at controlling multinational companies … controlling the internet will likely take centuries of effort.
I have the same thoughts where we live, my great difficulty is remembering the others name. Especially when our normal greating involve a Kiss (mâle of female the same) also remembering who I have already greatest that day.
I see what you are saying Neville and Paul, and don’t really disagree. I’ve lived in small towns for the last 15 years or so. But I can travel to other places and gain that obscurity again. The last 300+ years many have been able to start afresh by moving to a new area. That is getting more difficult with all this profiling following people around. From what I’ve read is the average person can have from 500-2,000 people in their mind as familiar faces. Less than that for having a more in depth relationship. We have overall had private lives from the bulk of mankind. It is completely different in my view to have a local community that knows me and I know them to some extent compared to power hungry and controlling governments and corporations profiling everyone for profit and targeting. The surveillance systems that Palantir is creating is being used to target and kill people, deport people, and who knows what else.
It would be nice if governments could reign in the corporate overreach but I’m not holding my breath. They are in bed with one another, helping advance the surveillance state and more. So yes, times change, things are different, but maybe deep down it’s still the same. People do act differently when they know they being watched. It seems to me part of this is to get humanity to self police themselves and one another. Not over major things but over everything. For people to feel at ease to speak freely being private really helps. Also just being able to have a pseudonym and anonymity can really help one explore ideas and discover who they are. I think a significant part of the discontent, depression, anxiety, and other negative mental states are due to this constant surveillance. It’s not like all this surveillance is stopping much violence either. I don’t think the authorities even care to stop it, acts of violence help justify the systems they want to expand. But it is creating an atmosphere where everyone feels that they are being watched, which I believe suppresses free speech. Kids talk differently when teacher or parent is around. Parents might talk differently when a neighbor that gossips is around. Many act differently when authority figures are around. And so on.
But, I’m fine with people being okay with it. The default is being surveilled, monitored, profited from, and more. My hope is to help bring a little awareness and help people block a portion of that if they do not like it. I do not consent, I do not like it, and this is my tiny (likely insignificant) act of protest.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead