5. Surveillance and basic Internet Safety

A bit of an Understanding and an Acknowledgement

What are the forces that determine world conditions? That is our subject matter. Beneath the actors, (the leaders) that are making decisions, are the forces that alter people’s minds, behavior and habits. In part there are the world movements, but nowadays it is technology. This is the 3rd post about Internet usage. You might think that I have transformed this into a tech site. NO - this is foundational knowledge on how it can be possible that the world is moving so far off of cooperation and into the confrontational. (Sure, it is alarming.) but let’s try to understand it.

(2,000 words)

We don't know the future, nor where our civilizations are headed. It is up to you to see it as how you will interpret it. It used to be that in my lifetime, changes happened at a more even pace. It seemed like past trends were a solid way to project and foresee the future. Perhaps nowadays it is wise to prepare for some surprises.

As a people, we have fear. We are not in control of our lives and we are dependent on many factors. We can limit that fear through modifying our expectations. (I already knew that was coming.) We can also soften or lie about the possible risks. You might think that if I consider, or write about internet privacy, I am coming from that fear. I might be hooked on conspiracy theories of how we are victims of the big corporations.

Quite the contrary my dear friends. I have zero fear about my privacy. That's because I am enough informed, that I know what to do about it. Perhaps you too have read Google's or Apple's privacy policy declaration. So you "are informed" also. It's a case of the chicken taking all the assurances from the fox.

We have been seduced into depending on a complex informational network. There is no way to go back. That network has both a benefit for me, and a benefit for those who invested $ multi-billions to create it. (Did you suppose that they built if for the betterment of mankind, or out of the goodness of their hearts?) They get more value out of it than you or I do. But there are many ways to keep getting our benefits, and to limit the factors that are to our detriment. It might take some changes in our lifestyle.

A. We all know that the tech companies make their money by selling the advertising that appears on the Internet pages that we view. Frankly, I have trained myself to not even see the ads, ever. If I did see one, I would be pledged to never buy anything from that company, no matter how much I had yearned for their product. Well, that's just me. It is up to the tech companies to narrow my interest, and to present the right ads, so that they will get a click-through, which is part of the premium they collect from the advertiser.

It is all hocus-pocus magic isn't it? Is it conceivable that just by sticking a stupid picture in front of my face, called a page view, that massive amounts of capital will flow, enough to run the giant $ Trillion enterprise called the World-Wide Web? HOW DID YOU EVER BELIEVE IN THIS JOKE?

But anyhow; up until now we have acknowledged the collection of all of our massive data, so that this fantasy of advertising can keep functioning, and we will continue having all of our free Internet benefits. WE ALREADY KNOW ABOUT ALL THIS COLLECTION, THROUGH EVERY MEANS POSSIBLE. We just don't know exactly what these means are.

B. There were many jokes and conspiracy theories that through the CoVid vaccination years, micro-chips would e inserted into our bodies, which would be the authorization for everything about our rights and our identities. Listen friends, we already have micro-chips, but they are inserted into our pocket. It is our cell-phone that tracks our every movement. In the West the phone operating systems are iOS, (Apple), and Android (Google). All Asian phones used to rent Android also, but now sanctions have limited that.

There is also an open source Android project, with no proprietary nor secret computer code. Therefore there is no secret spyware that can be operating. This can be the basis for other build-outs, software like the Huawei Harmony OS 2, which does have added proprietary software. Or there are also phones using pure open source Android, with no spyware. These are called "De-Googled" phones, and have no spying ability. They do track however, since they are dependent on a SIM card provider, and their WiFi can be triangulated and decoded. Other open-source possibilities might be a Linux phone. I have never heard of a Linux phone becoming commercial.

Phones are devastating to your privacy. The real solutions is to start limiting their daily use in your life. Never "like" anything, never post anything, never stay logged in to Facebook nor any other big platforms, only search on the bare generic topics. Email is a complete waste from any platform, later on that one.

Your phone has 3-5 independent CPU's in it (3-4 computers), only one is for you, and all the others are for Big Tech. When you turn your phone off, only your part of the computer is powered down. The other ones are up and running. When your battery goes flat, it isn't really discharged. There is always enough power for these other doorways. One proof of this is the "find my phone" application. How is your phone able to signal you if it has been misplaced for a week? Or have you ever heard of "air tags"? They're little chips that you attach to your keys (or to your dog). They keep signaling for a year. The trick is that their pulse is so incredibly short in duration, that it takes little to no power. It is constantly sending its ID code, which can be triangulated for its location.

So one computer is for the SIM card. One computer is to keep reporting to Apple or Google. One computer is for what's called "Blue Tooth Low Energy" BLE, that constantly monitors your location without any WiFi, or SIM connection.

I am not going to explain any of these intricacies, because they are happening anyway.

You're always compromised with a phone in your pocket. Your phone always knows your true identity, and it always knows your current location. It is grossly illegal to tamper with the IMEI identifier code in your phone, International Mobile Equipment Identity, resulting in huge fines or jail time. There is something called a "Faraday Bag" that, sort of, wraps your phone in tinfoil. I have one, but I am not so sure how effective it is. When I take it out, of course I am pinned.

C. The objective of internet privacy is not to disappear from the world, (unless you are a hunted spy or a terrorist). You will always have a true identity on a legacy phone or computer, which you need for banks, driver's license, the tax authorities, health care insurance, and many other functions. This identity is focused on the past, what you did, but not so much on what your are going to do.

So when you say, that privacy is impossible anyway, - that is not even the objective. It is a false reasoning.

✓Still, on your legacy computer there are things that you can do to improve your privacy. One is to always use a VPN, virtual private network. Every location on the Internet has an I.P. address. They are like 169.150.218.20, which is my VPN address at this moment. (I change mine every time.) On top of these numbers is superimposed a Domain name.

Every I.P. address in the world has a physical street address that locates it on a physical map, recorded by lots of IP address compilers. Your personal router also appears on this map, which is your street address. If you are in a house, it is only you that lives there. If you are in an apartment, maybe 50 people live at that address.

✓When you connect with WiFi, a list of options on which WiFi to choose appears. Why is that? Each router that's close enough is broadcasting a signal, and it pings your router. Your router pings back to all those other routers, and you are on their list of choices. This is called WiFi triangulation, whereby you are located. Therefore it is safer to plug into an ethernet cable and not use WiFi at home.

✓One of the best practices is the procedure called Browser isolation. Most browsers have what they call a "fingerprint" that further identifies you and your computer and your next moves. Each task should be done on a separate browser to switch these fingerprints. If you are on Chrome and logged into Google gmail, everything you do on that browser is sent to Google. Only do gmail and Youtube or maps on Chrome, and absolutely nothing else. Make no searches on Google. Use a different search engine on a different browser.

If you go onto Facebook or Instagram, do nothing else on that browser. Facebook is one of the most toxic collectors out there. Firefox has an extension called "Facebook Container". Use it, and do nothing else on Firefox.

✓Privacy browsers are pledged not to collect any information nor keep logs on your movements. They block ads and block pop-up windows, which you can adjust. All the Ads are not just graphic pictures that tell you what to buy. Each advertisement is a 3rd party computer program inserted onto that page to collect your responses. (All "Like" buttons are also computer programs.) They collect not only responses to that ad, but everything you do on that page and the cookie monitors everything you do on that browser.

Privacy browsers are like Brave, AVG, Chromium (different than Chrome), Iridium, some people use TOR, but I stopped with the onion browser. Too many sites stall-out (on purpose) with TOR. TOR blocks their collection which they don't accept. If you have to accept cookies to access something, immediately on finish, delete all cookies in the browser settings. These browsers can watch a Youtube video, but never log into Google, so you can’t comment or upload a video, (that on Chrome).

All the standard browsers I have discarded, Safari, Opera, Microsoft Edge, Outlook and whatnot. These are the spy-ware.

D. I only use the computer for everything. As I said before, phones are the device to move away from. It's sure that Apple and Microsoft also collect everything you are doing on their computers. With Apple there is no hope, you can do nothing on a Mac without an Apple ID. That is my legacy computer, they know everything about me anyway.

With Windows 10, you can set it up to be pretty private. You can operate Windows without a Microsoft ID. There is a developer's method to install Windows without a license, so there's no ID. Perhaps periodically it comes due, but it is all right there in the computer, to just turn it on again. Some reporting programs like "Cortana" have to be disabled, which might come to life, and need to be put down again.

The other computer operating system is Linux. It is open-source and reports to no one. Ads and cookies can still be inserted on browsers, but they can be managed. There are many modifications of Linux and Ubuntu, which I won't talk about. I have chosen Linux Mint, Cinnamon 21 to install on a DELL laptop. All the same precautions are used with both Windows and Linux, a VPN, limiting WiFi, and Browser isolation with privacy browsers. You need new anonymous emails, (which I'll talk about later)

SURVEILLANCE IS MADE UP OF TWO THINGS, DATA PLUS IDENTITY.

If you can deny either one of these, you have defeated surveillance. My extra computers have NO IDENTITY. They run on a "pen-name", an alias, with no registered ID's, or they are Anonymous ID's made differently for each occasion. I never log into Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft on these computers. All my VPN's or email accounts are anonymous. I never use any telephone based application, I never use two factor identification with a phone number. I just don't use those aps that demand it. There are free generic aps for every function. I don't buy anything nor try to collect any money. I don't pay for any services, only free, no banks.

I have my legacy computer for any of those necessities.

Alias names are future operators. I don't know all their uses now, but they are expanding every day. If some of that data is somehow collected, it has no identity attached to me. This is a learning process, because you might just be giving things away. I have been practicing for a year and a half. Some mistakes, well I don't do that anymore.

THAT IS THE MEANING OF INTERNET PRIVACY. You can take some measures on your existing computer right now, (forget it on the phone). But you really need a 2nd computer to learn by experimentation. Buy a used Windows computer and build a non-identity. It is just a few hundred dollars, and the opening of a whole new lifestyle.

I am going to stop at this point, at about 2,000 words. I'll tell you how to set up anonymous accounts and about email and Chat-engines at another time. There is already a lot you can do on your existing computer. You can also contemplate if you need your phone as much as you think that you need it.

Thanks for your interest, and good luck on your decisions.