(if you don’t want to go through all my strident words) Thus, after this rant, my question is: where do I start from to build my surviving kit and my right to be private and disclose personal information to who and when I want to. How I become the actual owner of my device?
(I’m Italian, sorry for my Englishi) I feel I’m enduring too many aspects of my everyday life. Because of my scarce knowledge on many things I am enforced to accept other’s companies decisione.
My approach toward The mega companies who, in my view, are owning Internet is obsolete and definitely ineffective: I don’t use X, FB, instagram, TIK TOK and I boycott Amazon. I just use YT, via freetube, reVanced and Newpipe, until this will be possible. (but, alas, I pay to use chatgpt 4, rather useful tool sometimes)
I don’t own a sufficient knowledge to use the net ad the mobile phone to riaffirm my independence and anonimity in this once beautiful world of collective enthusiasts and clever people that once was internet.
Also I find infuriating that I’m spied constantly for the simple fact of using a device that I bought with my money and that from the has never be mine but Google’s. I am just sick of it, but I, repeat, don’t have the knowledge to switch and turn into a citizen who strolls in the world of internet without being followed by ‘people’ who wants to sell you constantly something and wants to profile you. I find this too aggressive and unbearable.
Thus, after this rant, my question is: where do I start from to build my surviving kit and my right to be private and disclose personal information to who and when I want to?
**** How the f**k I defend myself from these greedy psycopaths (in the film 'Don’t look up: Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular, was a pricelees portrait of people I cannot stand and for humanity are more harmful thant covid-19)
Depending on the make and model of your Android phone, you might be able to use GrapheneOS which will vastly improve your situation. Use it together with privacy respecting apps and you’ll be a long way towards reclaiming your mobile privacy. You can also buy Android phones that are pre-configured with Graphene on them on ebay but you are obviously a running a risk.
Desktop/laptop you will need to move to Linux. Mint is (in my opinion) a very good option if you’re new to Linux as it is privacy respecting and looks/acts in a very Windows type way. Like most Linux distributions, you can even try it without installing it by downloading and burning an ISO to a USB pen/stick drive. Here’s a YT tutorial on doing that (also covers going on to install Mint).
Switch browsers to Firefox and install uBlockOrigin, LibRedirect and Firefox Multi Containers add-ons. Switch to a privacy friendly search engine such as DuckDuckGo, Startpage or a SearX instance.
Migrate your email to an encrypted privacy respecting provider such as Tuta (recently changed their name from Tutanota) and stop using things like OneDrive or Dropbox, instead use a service like ProtonDrive or Filen.
Use a decent VPN like Mullvad on all your devices. This not only protects your ISP from seeing what you’re doing it also means you’re using their DNS, which you can configure to block trackers, adverts and a few other things (at DNS level, you’ll still need uBlockOrigin in your browser). It doesn’t offer as much control as PiHole or AdGuard but it’s a lot less complicated to set up.
Chatgpt sub is more expensive than just their api. I use their api with shell gpt, it costs me less than 1$ per month with my usage.
Learn linux of course.
Download data dump of stack overflow, wiki, etc. Set up software to search through it, for example “codesearch”, maybe there is something better. This guarantees independence from bot infected search results.
That’s a setup for a decade, maybe then local LLMs will be smoothed out and reliable enough to use daily.
I completely agree with your point of view. If you don’t control your technology, then your technology controls you.
You should know that it’s really incredibly difficult to actually establish privacy on internet connected devices. They are designed to share information. Security is often an afterthought and privacy is often directly opposed to the goals of the corporations. It is possible to get a fair amount of privacy, but it is not easy. It will cost a lot of time in learning and configuring things, money to buy specific devices with specific features, and the sacrifice of the convenience that comes with mainstream products (you will have to do a lot more for yourself). There is no quick solution, it is an endless struggle - but personally I think the learning process is extremely rewarding and the skills you gain will be very useful.
So, where to begin? I would recommend learning about the technology that underpins all of the data gathering - computer networking. In order to make real decisions about how to use the technology and how to secure it, you need to understand how it works. You won’t ever know if you are leaking data if you don’t understand how that data is collected and transmitted.
I would like to point you to Professor Messer’s Network+ training course, starting with the OSI model. This will help you learn the terminology of computer networking, and the concepts that underlie everything on the internet. If you get through the Network+ content, do Security+ also.
I also want to recommend the Selfhosted@lemmy.world community. A major goal of self hosting is separating your internet services from corporate control. This community is great place to learn and ask questions.
You should get a cheap computer (old, out of date hardware is completely fine) and install Linux on it so you can start learning how to use it (you’ll need this to get away from Microsoft and Apple, and more importantly to have some control over your computing environment).
You might also be interested in the Murena 2 smartphone. It has physical switches for turning off the microphone and camera and network connections, and it runs /e/os (a de-Googled Android version).
There’s also the Privacy, Security, and OSINT podcast.
I could write about other resources but this post has gotten long. Please feel free to ask me more about anything that interests you.
thanks a lot man, this is really helpful: veyr understandable. (first time that I read in clear letter that this kind of technologiy is designed primarly to share information. And it is a shame that here in Europe laws don’t force corporation to build technology that has as a goal the privacy first. I am passionate in literature and Cultural studies, thus if we were living in another world I believe I would not read this stuff, because my heart beat for humanities (in a finite and short life: reading all Cormac McCarthy’s opus for a second time it would be for me highly preferrable than learn about networks, but this is the world I live in and I am tired of these damn corporation that treat people like objects)
Unfortunately the podcast doesn’t exist anymore. I really liked it.
Oh damn, I didn’t realize. All the episode links are dead. Well, shit.
I’ve still got a local copy of the last episode, #305, in my podcast app… but that’s it.
I was actually thinking about downloading and archiving everything, but then it got taken down. Damn.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !selfhosted@lemmy.world
You need to check out the degoogle magazine. On mobile, can someone link to it?
Sorry, I don’t understand: is there a degoogle magazine? I checked online and I could not find anything that goes under this name.
He’s using kbin, it’s like Lemmy but they don’t call it communities, they call them magazines. I think this is what he refers to: https://kbin.social/m/degoogle. But it ain’t great, I recommend the !degoogle@lemmy.ml community instead.
Correct, Dehydrated. Thanks for your help.
I actually used kbin, but I switched because I dislike kbin’s user interface and the fact that it’s written in PHP. I also considered self hosting kbin, but I want as little PHP stuff on my server as possible. I’ll look into self hosting Lemmy instead. I might also check out mbin, but unfortunately it’s PHP too, not a rewrite in a better language.
Nextdns or a pihole would be a good first step. Blocking tracker and ad domains (and whatever else you want) at the DNS level is fairly easy and inexpensive to accomplish. I use nextdns on my router and on every device that leaves my home network, it took less than an hour to get everything set up.
Sorry, but I haven’t a clue of what you are saying.
That’s your cue to research. You’re gonna have to get technical and learn about these options if you plan to up your privacy game. In short though, both will handle DNS queries from your devices and block those that are known for ad serving or tracking purposes. That way you essentially have an ad-blocker on your entire network, rather than on each device or browser.
where do I start from scratch, taking into account that English isn’t my mother tongue and Italian is? Could you point me a guide, video, something for dummies that can explain, and is authentically conceived to educate and teach to person like me who wanto to learn but 4 times out of 5 ends up with frustration for the jargon and language for initiated the is in forums often spoken?
I see, not many guides in my native language either, but I think the respective websites are explaining things well enough and if they don’t have an italian translation available already Google Translate should do the job.
NextDNS is probably your best bet, as it can be setup on your devices or router directly and is not as technical to get started: https://nextdns.io/
For Pi-hole you will need a dedicated device on your network, like a laptop or Raspberry Pi, or a router with custom firmware. On it you install the software, and after that it will basically act as your own instance of NextDNS, and you can point your devices to it for DNS resolution: https://pi-hole.net/
Disclaimer: i am also just getting started with these tools, still in research phase with not a lot of free time to invest in it so if i made any mistakes explaining i apologise, and definitely understand your frustration.
thanks a lot, very very kind. A curiousity: why google translate and not deepL that seems way more accurate than the previous?
I wasn’t aware of DeepL actually. Google Translate had been my go-to service for a long time so I never searched for another one, but DeepL looks promising , I’ll have to give it a try, and you should certainly use it instead of Google if you know it’s better.
