5 Big Ways to Keep A Little Privacy in Your Spied Upon Life

Make cash king, Hide your face, Disable GPS tracking on your phone and computer, Disconnect from the smart grid, Go private for online searches and socializing

5 Big Ways to Keep A Little Privacy in Your Spied Upon Life

There’s a lot of talk about “reducing your digital footprint.” Well, good luck. Today literally everything is virtually gathered or tracked or cached somewhere,http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-facebook-facial-idUSBRE97S0UZ20130829 from your smiling face at your sister’s birthday party to the number of six-packs you bought:http://www.nocards.org/news/supermarketnews.shtml for Super Bowl weekend to your license plate number grabbed while you were waiting for your kids to come out of soccer practice.
http://forums.officer.com/t114815/


Clearly you’re not going to get away from it. Should you work hard to keep and restore privacy rights even as they become more and more violated? Yes, by pressuring elected officials on school boards, in municipalities, states and provinces, and Washington D.C. and Ottawa to change “opt-out” to “opt-in,” everywhere, public and private.

But that will take while, so in the meantime you can do a few things to ease your discomfort with Big Brother and Snoop Sister:

Hide your face

If you’ve got your mug everywhere in social media get rid of it. Remove your pics and block new tags on Facebook. (And when you’re done, for cryinoutloud, close your account.)http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/06/19/disable-facebook-facial-recognition/

 Do the same for any other place your pretty little face shows up. Admittedly, this might be tough on work oriented websites, but do what you can.

You can also try to block your face from facial recognition scanners which isn’t quite to the point of Hollywood movies, but soon will be.http://io9.com/how-fashion-can-be-used-to-thwart-facial-recognition-te-1495648863

Fooling it is tricky, because they look at the entire face, not just the eyes or the bridge of the nose. Fortunately there are lots of brainiacs out there trying to beat the system so stay tuned. You should also keep a very sharp eye toward your lawmakers at every level who will want to submit to this fancy new technology. Already in some states and in D.C. it’s illegal to wear a mask on public property. Especially watch Congress, notorious for sneaking stuff into 1000-page bills.http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/mcs/maskcodes.html

Disable GPS tracking on your phone and computer

This is simpler than it sounds, but again, you have to think about all the different devices you use. Your phone should give you the option to shut off location in the privacy settings.  And photos in your camera carry metadata that can geo-tag you, so you have to change that setting, too. You already know lots of websites want to track your physical address. Fortunately that’s also very easy to correct.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/07/tip-smartphone-camera-gps/

http://unlockforus.blogspot.com/2012/09/do-not-allow-websites-to-get-your.html

Disconnect from the smart grid

You can live pioneer-style, totally off-grid, and figure out how to run your washing machine and computer with alternative power. Or you can just try to slow down the encroachment with these ideas:

Avoid smart appliances. Though some have been out for a while, 2014 is the year for the first big roll-out of Wi-Fi enabled appliances,  complete with sexy apps, even Apple certification . Obviously, if you go “old school,” you’ll need to have, or be willing to learn, the appropriate skills to repair your appliances, or find someone who can. You’ll also need a supply of parts. There are many places from which to buy “vintage” which is what you will be doing.http://www.antiquevintageappliances.com/

Skip the add-on devices that wirelessly connect your appliances with the smart grid, under the marketing guise of saving you money by letting the utility company conduct “energy savings events.”  These millisecond interruptions in power supply are essentially micro brown-outs, and while you may have the perception of lowering your electric bills, in reality they’ve gone up already due to the installation of smart grid communications systems mandated by state and provincial law (not to be confused with the physical distribution infrastructure, such as poles, wires, substations, etc.)

Watch out for HVAC systems and thermostats with “demand response” technology. They, too, engage in wireless talk with the smart grid and include the micro brown-out capability. Remember, when you purchase and install these systems in your home, you are giving your utility permission to monitor and control electricity service.

Do not enroll in special offers by your utility company that use those demand response technologies. Be skeptical about any cost savings programs dangled in front of you, now that electric companies and cooperatives are offering Department of Energy grants to put them into homes.

Use it only when you need it. This does require some calorie burning and extra time and planning, but in the olden days (1970s), we managed just fine without all the fancy appliances. We washed dishes by hand, and hung our clothes up to dry on a clothesline. It was family time and it saved money. We didn’t have an air conditioner. At all. You get the idea.

Turn off the electricity from your home at the breaker box for short time periods. Yup, it’s inconvenient, but rumor is, you’ll be shocked at how quiet the world becomes! You’ll have to think ahead about keeping your food from spoiling, drawing water and anything else where you absolutely, positively must have direct power to stay healthy and safe. But you can’t argue it doesn’t work, and guess who’s in control?

Go private for online searches and socializing.

http://lifehacker.com/this-graphic-shows-how-to-keep-your-browsing-email-an-1084193239
This might be tougher than giving up the dishwasher. It starts with divorcing yourself from the major companies who happily comply and collude with government agencies, and who own all the information you put onto their websites (Google and Facebook.) If you only stop using those two platforms, you’ve made a huge dent in that digital footprint.

There are a number of smart pro-privacy companies creating products that encrypt or block surveillance, tracking and cookies. These developers know there are millions of people around the world just like you who hate the NSA and believe you should control your stuff. They stay in business because both the company and you share a commitment to privacy and support the use of new innovation to do it. Here are some examples:

Startpage,  developed by Ixquick, is a Netherlands based company that reports to be “the world’s most private search engine.” Unlike other search engines, the company does not store IP addresses, doesn’t sell your information and you have better control of those nasty cookies. You can also use the “proxy” option to visit websites without the website knowing you were there (most of the time). And good news for those of you who rely on email for your news and correspondence, Ixquick is currently beta testing an encryptable system called Startmail.

For Facebook addicts, Sgrouples is a social media site that allows you to connect privately with others online, but, you maintain ownership of what you put on the site (unlike Facebook). It’s set up so you can organize your posts and messages more like your real-world relationships, and carefully choose who is connected to whom. Fishing buddies see different posts from work colleagues, recipe sharing can be separate from political rants, and great-grandma can get pictures of the new baby from one grandchild while avoiding the college sorority photo bombs from another.

Then there’s Twitter. Yes, oddly enough, Twitter actually ranks as one of the most private companies in social media.  That’s because Twitter has shown itself willing to fight for the privacy of its users against government intruders, both in court and in Congress.https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

If you really want to go deep, you can head down the rabbit hole of Freenet,  which truly is “free,” meaning anything and everything that can be put out there is there. It is not for the faint of heart (porn and worse, though there is a search option that attempts to filter most of the bad stuff), nor is it particularly easy to navigate (very clunky—think 1996). But it is about as anonymous as the internet gets for us regular folks since the information shared over it is broken into virtually untrackable pieces and scattered across computers around the world. Because it relies on the power of all those individual devices to run, you can’t use Freenet until you agree to download it onto your computer. You also have to keep it available even when you aren’t there.

And when you use your public library for internet use, you win all around. You’ve already paid for it and librarians are notoriously anti-spy when it comes to protecting patron rights. Thankfully, the American Library Association shows no signs of letting the government in anytime soon.

Make cash king

Despite all the tempting flippity-doo-dads in the promised cashless society, you maintain much more control over your privacy if you use bills and coins. Using cash also keeps you away from all those data breeches at retail stores. (It goes without saying you are not using store loyalty cards, no matter how great the perks.) This does require you to get up off your arse and physically interact with the outdoors and other humans. It’s true you don’t have the convenience of watching your bank account online, almost in real time, so if you’re not sure if you can manage cash flow without the card, get some guidance.

When you use an independent bank and shop at neighborhood businesses you are also building relationships. Be sure to make polite small talk. Except for extreme circumstances and the occasional gossip, people in community together tend support each other. And that’s the kind of facial recognition you want.http://www.icba.org/consumer/BankLocator.cfm?sn.ItemNumber=51757