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What started your privacy journey?
(lemmy.world)
Reading 1984
I used to relied a lot on Google. Google drive , google photos , google everything. After reading this article . I decided to self host most of online life and use privacy and security tools as much as I can.
Do you have an alternative link without a paywall? I'm interested to know what it was for you.
Thank you. That was an interesting and concerning read for so many reasons.
One day I was on a website at 2am that blasted an advertisement for TIDE DETURGENT at full volume. Then I found out about AdBlockers, then how creepy advertisement were.
Then Snowden happened.
Wanted to see if I could get my phone to show me ads for Tamale pots, a food I don't make nor know how, and also not something that's not commonly bought outside of holiday times. So I talked about it for days/weeks, not a single typed word, then one day I was seeing them on Facebook. Deleted my facebook, Instagram, installed app cloner to scramble my phone model/gps/location/google analytics ID, got mullvad vpn, and adblockers + uguard. App cloner also let's you isolate apps and force them into a sandbox where they can have fun with my fake data.
I got into piracy because I was 11 and wanted to edit videos
I got out of piracy when I got software through work and streaming made things convenient and fair.
Now I'm thinking of getting back in because things are no longer convenient nor are they fair.
[Edit] oops, we're talking privacy.
Well I started my privacy journey this year when too many services I used changed their policies for the worse
Privacy.
Lmao my bad
Lol bro
Ironically (or not), mine began with piracy. When I was little, I had no money, but I had a computer and lots of time. I figured out how to get games and apps that I wanted and a part of that was covering your tracks.
Fast forward to college and learning about Linux. It blew my mind that you could do something like apt-get install doom and then there it was. No piracy necessary. I dove head first into FOSS.
Then along came Google with lots of free stuff. Great, I thought, but this was different. I think I knew that they were harvesting and selling your personal data, but it was free so I let it go. One day, I was on a site and there was an advertisement for something very personal that I had been referenced in an email. The thing is - this was at my work computer which I never used my personal credentials for.
I started noticing things following me around the internet and got creeped out. I started reading about what's really happening and got very uncomfortable. That's when I started focusing more on keeping a clean profile.
I can't switch to Linux until it supports software I need (the FOSS alternatives aren't there yet) but I do hope I get the opportunity soon. I ran Linux on my laptop in college and loved it
Mine started when I switched teams and ended up in an infosec org at work. Being around a bunch of privacy and security minded folks really taught me a LOT.
Someone online introduced me to redirector. I saw it as a tool for efficiency and redirecting my internet consumption when I was mindlessly surfing the internet.
Then I came across libredirect which was less-customizable but had built-in redirects towards privacy-focused front-ends for popular websites.
Then I made the exodus from Reddit and the resulting communities tend to have a greater focus on privacy and security.
Then I switched from Windows -> Debian and that's all she wrote.
It has just been a gradual change but having children is also a big part of it. I'm in my late 30s so feel the early part of my life compared to now are complete opposite ends of the privacy scale...
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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