How to privacy-ify myself?

[Guest]

I have win 10 and use chrome atm and I care for my privacy but I only want to know some simple things I should do,

 

For win 10, i've disabled all privacy I can using tools from reddit or other sources. And for chrome all I have done is turned privacy settings off where possible, is this all I should be doing? (I beleive the tools add hosts file ip adresses, and most microsoft ones are blocked)

 

Reason I ask is 1. When microsoft sends data about me it lags my internet (win 10) no issue on win 7.

reason 2 is privacy.

[Guest]

1. Download and install Debian.

2. Run a multilayered VPN Setup.

3. Stop using WiFi.

4. Stop using Public APs.

5. Unplug your computer and put it in a lead box.

 

^{Okay, maybe not those last two.}

[DaltonM]

Yeah right we all know you're just trying to buy drugs online.

 

Just use an incognito tab, ctrl+shift+n

[ALwin]

snip

 

1. Stop being paranoid, no one really cares about you.  Not the government, not enemy agents... well perhaps Chinese or Nigerian scammers might be interested in you.

2. Best way to be "off the grid", disconnect yourself from every from of technology.

3. Use common sense.

[Guest]

Yeah right we all know you're just trying to buy drugs online.

 

Just use an incognito tab, ctrl+shift+n

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

And I do use incog.

[Guest]

1. Stop being paranoid, no one really cares about you.  Not the government, not enemy agents... well perhaps Chinese or Nigerian scammers might be interested in you.

2. Best way to be "off the grid", disconnect yourself from every from of technology.

3. Use common sense.

1. No. Data = money and they care about money

2. No

3. I do

[TheKDub]

1. Stop being paranoid, no one really cares about you.  Not the government, not enemy agents... well perhaps Chinese or Nigerian scammers might be interested in you.

2. Best way to be "off the grid", disconnect yourself from every from of technology.

3. Use common sense.

 

Some people just like their privacy and don't want a company having all their shit sent back to them.

 

I for one greatly oppose the spying that is going on within windows 10, unless they stop with all the spying bullshit, I'll be sticking to 7 & 8.1. (Updates manually installed so I don't get any of the windows 10 or spying related ones)

[XTankSlayerX]

Oh man... If you want to be super private...

Don't use: anything electronic, Internet...

Use VPNs, definitely don't use Windows, Don't use Chrome.... Errr, Is there really anything that is 100% private?

I'm legitimately trying to help here.

[JoshB2084]

Dual boot with Linux Fedora or something.

[Guest]

Oh man... If you want to be super private...

Don't use: anything electronic, Internet...

Use VPNs, definitely don't use Windows, Don't use Chrome.... Errr, Is there really anything that is 100% private?

I'm legitimately trying to help here.

 

I appreciate it, but i just want to do simple things to prevent privacy intrusions

 

(I have to put up with some privacy no matter what)

[SparkySamZa]

I appreciate it, but i just want to do simple things to prevent privacy intrusions

 

(I have to put up with some privacy no matter what)

vpn and AES encryption, easy way, and it's how i do it

[Guest]

vpn and AES encryption, easy way, and it's how i do it

what about speeds? I'm already australian and my upload is less than a MB. I'll see what AES is about

[Kiyuubi]

Easiest way: get rid of Windows altogether.  Though I will assume this isn't an option.

• Get rid of Chrome entirely.  Replace it with Firefox, or a fork of Firefox like Pale Moon or Waterfox.
• Get rid of as many Google products as possible.  GhostMail for e-mail, StartPage for searching.
• Change your DNS to OpenNIC.
• Run this privacy tool.  It uninstalls modern apps, blocks Telemetry, IPs, etc.
• Install PeerBlock.  Once installed tell it to block Spyware, Advertising, Education, and Microsoft.
• Install TinyWall.  This is a front-end for Windows Firewall.  Once installed it will block any program not allowed through it, so it will take some time to configure correctly. 

For Firefox, install these add-ons:

• uBlock Origin
• HTTPS Everywhere
• HTTPS Finder - Used alongside HTTPS Everywhere

This is all that comes to mind for me atm.  Use this site as reference as well, to help any privacy needs.

[Guest]

Easiest way: get rid of Windows altogether.  Though I will assume this isn't an option.

• Get rid of Chrome entirely.  Replace it with Firefox, or a fork of Firefox like Pale Moon or Waterfox.
• Get rid of as many Google products as possible.  GhostMail for e-mail, StartPage for searching.
• Change your DNS to OpenNIC.
• Run this privacy tool.  It uninstalls modern apps, blocks Telemetry, IPs, etc.
• Install PeerBlock.  Once installed tell it to block Spyware, Advertising, Education, and Microsoft.
• Install TinyWall.  This is a front-end for Windows Firewall.  Once installed it will block any program not allowed through it, so it will take some time to configure correctly. 

For Firefox, install these add-ons:

• uBlock Origin
• HTTPS Everywhere
• HTTPS Finder - Used alongside HTTPS Everywhere

This is all that comes to mind for me atm.  Use this site as reference as well, to help any privacy needs.

what about if i have to use some google products? Just disable privacy settings and use those plugins? 

[Kiyuubi]

If you have to use Google services, namely GMail, then just falsify any information on your account (like name, etc), and never use it for personal business.

[Guest]

If you have to use Google services, namely GMail, then just falsify any information on your account (like name, etc), and never use it for personal business.

exactly what ive been trying to do. I really need to avoid personal business however

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Stop being paranoid, no one really cares about you.  Not the government, not enemy agents... well perhaps Chinese or Nigerian scammers might be interested in you.

Isn't that enough? Why give them all the info they need to successfully scam you or steal your identity?

As for the government, you'd be surprised. The more info they have on their people, the more power they have over them.

Just because something isn't illegal or wrong now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. What they don't know about you, they can't ever use against you.

Even the most innocent data can become your death ... literally. Being Jewish in Germany wasn't a problem in the early 20th century. Having your religion listed in the national database wasn't a problem either. I assume I don't need to tell you what happened when the Nazis came to power and immediately had access to all that info.

[Guest]

Isn't that enough? Why give them all the info they need to successfully scam you or steal your identity?

As for the government, you'd be surprised. The more info they have on their people, the more power they have over them.

Just because something isn't illegal or wrong now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. What they don't know about you, they can't ever use against you.

Even the most innocent data can become your death ... literally. Being Jewish in Germany wasn't a problem in the early 20th century. Having your religion listed in the national database wasn't a problem either. I assume I don't need to tell you what happened when the Nazis came to power and immediately had access to all that info.

Yes, i agree. Like Alwin said, noone cares about me, and I agree, noone does. But lets gain the information in case he becomes someone one day. But for right now they dont care about me, but they care about money in the meantime

 

Which is why im only half tinfoiling it, not gonna switch to linux or whatever, just doing simple things that might help

[Stuff_]

God dammit my entire reply got fucked up.. 

 

 

Isn't that enough? Why give them all the info they need to successfully scam you or steal your identity?

As for the government, you'd be surprised. The more info they have on their people, the more power they have over them.
Just because something isn't illegal or wrong now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. What they don't know about you, they can't ever use against you.

Even the most innocent data can become your death ... literally. Being Jewish in Germany wasn't a problem in the early 20th century. Having your religion listed in the national database wasn't a problem either. I assume I don't need to tell you what happened when the Nazis came to power and immediately had access to all that info.

 

 

As I meant to say, it's going to be tough to argue your case that the government might use your religion or beliefs against you, when right now we're moving towards a more tolerant society towards many different religions. If there ever comes a time that it can be used against you, that's likely not going to be your own problem. Your entire government and country was likely overrun by another nation and you're entirely fucked.

 

But I digress. 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

As I meant to say, it's going to be tough to argue your case that the government might use your religion or beliefs against you, when right now we're moving towards a more tolerant society towards many different religions. If there ever comes a time that it can be used against you, that's likely not going to be your own problem. Your entire government and country was likely overrun by another nation and you're entirely fucked.

It was an extreme example and it's unlikely that this particular thing would happen again. But other things could, you never know what the next thing will be.

If tomorrow a nutcase like Donald Trump becomes president of your country and declares that discussing privacy on tech forums is a danger to national security and punishable by death, you wouldn't want your government to be able to run a search in a big database that contains your browsing history.

[Azgoth 2]

How much of your privacy are you trying to secure?  Because if you just want to have Windows 10 stop sending data to Microsoft, there's not much you can do if you're on Windows 10 Home.  Home doesn't let you disable all telemetry, but there are some third-party programs out there that claim to block everything (I don't know enough to say if, or how effectively, they work; they might work just as described, they might now).  A good option, if you have the money, would be to switch to Windows 10 Professional, which lets you disable all telemetry back to Microsoft (and comes with some additional stuff automatically supported, like drive encryption and some business-oriented stuff that probably doesn't matter much for a home user).  I think it costs about $100 to upgrade from Windows 10 Home, or about $140 if you buy a Windows 10 Pro installation disk.  This would be the most surefire (but most expensive) route if you just want to stop Windows sending data, but need to stay with Windows for compatibility reasons.

 

The other major option is to pick up a Linux distribution (or BSD if you're more hardcore).  Most Linux distributions are pretty great at privacy compared to Windows, in that I don't know of any that have telemetry enabled by default.  But there are some, like Parrot OS, that are specifically geared towards being usable desktops geared heavily towards security and privacy/anonymity.  (I don't know much about these distros, but they absolutely exist).  But you lose program compatibility for stuff you're probably used to running on Windows, and if you haven't used Linux before there is a bit of a learning curve, though there are user-friendly distributions like Mint and Ubuntu that make this curve really shallow (i.e., easy to learn, though you still have to do some learning).

 

You can also, as has been mentioned, switch to FireFox or another such open-source/free (as in speech and beer) browser (as well as other internet-facing programs, e.g. Thunderbird instead of Outlook), since being open source means it's way more likely that someone will have spotted possibly malicious or privacy-compromising code in the program and raised flags about it, which will either result in fixed code or just readily available information about "don't use this".  Regardless of what browser you use, it's probably wise to disable Diffie-Hellman encryption (don't worry, your browser knows and will still use many other ways of doing encryption), since there's some speculation that due to the implementation of DH, the NSA may have managed to use brute-force attacks to compromise lots of DH-based traffic.

 

Of course, if you want more "total anonymity," rather than "stop actively sending my data to people," there are plenty of more extreme options available, but switching to Windows 10 Professional (which is pricey, but should work)/Linux, using more privacy-friendly, likely open source software for internet browsing, using a VPN, and disabling things like Diffie-Hellman that are suspected to be compromised security standards are relatively easy and likely sufficient steps.

[Guest]

How much of your privacy are you trying to secure?  Because if you just want to have Windows 10 stop sending data to Microsoft, there's not much you can do if you're on Windows 10 Home.  Home doesn't let you disable all telemetry, but there are some third-party programs out there that claim to block everything (I don't know enough to say if, or how effectively, they work; they might work just as described, they might now).  A good option, if you have the money, would be to switch to Windows 10 Professional, which lets you disable all telemetry back to Microsoft (and comes with some additional stuff automatically supported, like drive encryption and some business-oriented stuff that probably doesn't matter much for a home user).  I think it costs about $100 to upgrade from Windows 10 Home, or about $140 if you buy a Windows 10 Pro installation disk.  This would be the most surefire (but most expensive) route if you just want to stop Windows sending data, but need to stay with Windows for compatibility reasons.

 

The other major option is to pick up a Linux distribution (or BSD if you're more hardcore).  Most Linux distributions are pretty great at privacy compared to Windows, in that I don't know of any that have telemetry enabled by default.  But there are some, like Parrot OS, that are specifically geared towards being usable desktops geared heavily towards security and privacy/anonymity.  (I don't know much about these distros, but they absolutely exist).  But you lose program compatibility for stuff you're probably used to running on Windows, and if you haven't used Linux before there is a bit of a learning curve, though there are user-friendly distributions like Mint and Ubuntu that make this curve really shallow (i.e., easy to learn, though you still have to do some learning).

 

You can also, as has been mentioned, switch to FireFox or another such open-source/free (as in speech and beer) browser (as well as other internet-facing programs, e.g. Thunderbird instead of Outlook), since being open source means it's way more likely that someone will have spotted possibly malicious or privacy-compromising code in the program and raised flags about it, which will either result in fixed code or just readily available information about "don't use this".  Regardless of what browser you use, it's probably wise to disable Diffie-Hellman encryption (don't worry, your browser knows and will still use many other ways of doing encryption), since there's some speculation that due to the implementation of DH, the NSA may have managed to use brute-force attacks to compromise lots of DH-based traffic.

 

Of course, if you want more "total anonymity," rather than "stop actively sending my data to people," there are plenty of more extreme options available, but switching to Windows 10 Professional (which is pricey, but should work)/Linux, using more privacy-friendly, likely open source software for internet browsing, using a VPN, and disabling things like Diffie-Hellman that are suspected to be compromised security standards are relatively easy and likely sufficient steps.

I switched to win 7 and uninstalled privacy updates, fuck win 10

[Yongtjunkit]

Don't use android devices if you want privacy, use iphone then. Use linux/Mac as your replacement for pc

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Don't use android devices if you want privacy, use iphone then. Use linux/Mac as your replacement for pc

 

Actually Android itself is okay, it's the Google apps that turn it into pure spyware.  As long as you root the phone and go for a ROM that doesn't have them by default (Cyanogenmod for example), you have little to worry about.