
Ask HN: How to protect one's privacy? How difficult is it? - Jeff_Brown
(This comes in response to another HN thread[1] about why it&#x27;s bad to lose your personal information.)<p>What are some ways to protect one&#x27;s privacy? And for each such method, how difficult is it?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18829422
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miguelrochefort
\- Don't use the Internet.

\- Don't use a computer.

\- Don't use a phone.

\- Don't use a credit card.

\- Don't use a bank.

\- Don't go to hospitals and clinics.

\- Don't live in a city with CCTVs.

\- Don't live in a city with tourists taking pictures/videos.

\- Cover your entire body when you go outside.

Basically, live like an hermit, or live in a remote undeveloped location and
use cash for everything.

A better approach would be to stop being so possessive about your personal
data, and understand that privacy is not inherently valuable.

------
4d66ba06
One step I am taking besides trying to reduce Google usage (eg use fastmail,
DuckDuckGo) I am trying to stop using my real name as my username and when I
want to particularly reduce links to my email use a service like Abine Blur
which provides email and phone forwarding with multiple email aliases.

------
rayvy
I'll take an actual stab at this, as this is something I've been working on
for the better part of a year

Prerequisites (non-optional): 1\. A good VPN 2\. A non-Google browser (Mozilla
Nightly/Privacy browser) 3\. Extensions - AdBlock, UMatrix 4\. Browser
settings - purge all trackers, don't save history, etc. 5\. Private, secure
services (e.g., Protonmail for email, something similar to a Dropbox for
filesharing, etc) 6\. there are other things to mention here, but for brevity,
I'll skip them (e.g., TOR)

Now that you have all the necessary tools, this is where things get a bit
tricky.

See the fact of the matter is, _you have to settle for some part of your life
being public online_ \- this is simply non-negotiable.

But this isn't inherently a bad thing right?

I'm sure there are people who know that your name is $NAME, and you work at
$JOB, and you have $N siblings, etc - basically, parts of your life are
already _very_ public and that's OK. The same goes with online. It's totally
OK for some parts of your digital life to be public. Example: you visit
github.com regularly, you check your Gmail account, you watch youtube videos,
etc. For these _public_ aspects of your digital life, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT
use a VPN, or a privacy browser, or any privacy tools. You want to come off as
being a regular person, doing regular people things (this is sort of the
bait).

This way, you can build an online profile that says "Hey, John Doe's online
behavior looks like $XYZ, so if we see something that looks like $ZYX, it
probably has a low probability of being John Doe".

However, this strategy requires you to almost live a double online life (a sad
necessity), where you're John Doe by day (i.e., watching youtube, checking
gmail, looking at funny cat memes, not using privacy tools), but Doe John by
night (i.e., using all of your privacy tools to do what you _actually_ want to
do online - look at conspiracy videos, read up on politics, etc).

It can be a bit cumbersome and tiring to switch back and forth in that way,
but once you get the hang of it, it becomes much more natural. You learn not
to mix your "John Doe" digital life, with your "Doe John" digital life.
Because if you log into say LinkedIn via your VPN and they record your VPN IP,
that can _easily_ be cross-referenced across other platforms/sites for that
same IP (it's not an exact match, but it can leave a trail of cookie crumbs).

So can you protect _your real_ digital privacy when needed? Yes. Is it hard?
To start, yes. Even when you get comfortable with switching back and forth, it
can still be cumbersome. But until the world catches up and realizes that
digital privacy is important (maybe in 50 years we'll be there), I wouldn't
sit around waiting for things to change. Take action into your own hands.

Cheers

~~~
snazz
Many VPN services have shady data collection policies that aren’t obvious to
the user. Although you’re more easily fingerprinted, Tor provides much
stronger security and privacy and allows you to continually get new IP
addresses.

~~~
rayvy
I definitely agree that most VPN services are a cash grab, and can be
nefarious to the unsuspecting user. Would definitely encourage the OP (and
others) to do diligent research before signing up for one. And TOR would
definitely fall under #6 in my answer, gonna go back and add it now

