Information is power. Anyone who has a vast ammount of information about us has power over us. Keep your personal data safe. Do not acconsent on everything while online.
Did you ever think how much garbage your tv serves you every day? Propaganda instead of information, sadness instead of happiness, concern instead of calmness, worries instead of serenity. Have you tried turning off the tv for a few days?
Privacy is a fundamental right, essential to autonomy and the protection of human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which many other human rights are built.
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin discusses her new book, "Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance" (2014). Angwin details her complex and fraught path towards increasing her own online privacy. According to Angwin, the private data collected by East Germany's Soviet-era Stasi secret police could pale in comparison to the information revealed today by an individual's Facebook profile or Google search.
Here are some low-tech tips to protect your privacy while online:
1. Don't post identifying details on public site (such as tagging photos online)
2. Use search engines that don't track or store personal information (like DuckDuckGo)
3. Turn location services off on your phone when not needed
4. Organize against surveillance
5. Place a sticker over your computer's camera to prevent a hacker from tacking pictures of you
6. Don't use cloud backup, Google Calendar or Webmail
7. Configure your browser to delete cookies
Source: Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier
YOU CAN ALWAYS BE FOUND.
Your name, address, and other identifying details - even the location of your cell phone at any given time - are all stored in various databases that you cannot view or control. Stalkers and rogue employees have consistently found ways to abuse these databases.
In 1999, a deranged man named Liam Youens paid an online data broker called Docusearch to find the social security number, employment information, and home address of a woman he was obsessed with, Amy Boyer. A few days later, Youens drove to Boyer’s workplace and fatally shot her as she left work. He then shot and killed himself. (Dragnet Nation, Julia Angwin)