Hello normal human who just wants to exist in a world without surveillance and without vultures selling what belongs to you…your private data.
I have compiled many ways that you can begin to take back what is yours. Your private details. So you can meander through life without wondering who is watching.
Privacy is not an individual project. We are all connected…through our contacts, calendars, social media, photo shares, and so much more. They collect and connect our data like a perfect puzzle. The only way for me to have privacy is for all of my contacts to have it as well. It’s a group project and I need your support.
As a bonus, I also included an ethical shopping page to help you navigate through the murky waters of unethical business practices. If you value privacy, equality and animal rights, you will love these recommendations!
Communications
Paralino, where art thou.
If you’ve ever wanted to share your location with people you actually trust — without handing that data over to a corporation that turns around and sells it — Paralino might just be your new best friend. What is Paralino? Paralino is a private, end-to-end encrypted location sharing app available on iPhone and Android. The idea is beautifully simple: you …
Don’t get Googled.
Google quietly enrolled every Google Workspace and Gmail user in its AI training program without asking. If you have a Gmail account, a Google Docs folder, a Google Drive — your emails, your documents, your files are being used to train Google’s AI. There’s no guarantee of privacy. No guarantee of encryption. At any point, the contents of your inbox …
Apple’s Messages is secure about its privacy.
There’s this thing people do — they’ll guard their front door, lock their car, put a passcode on their phone — and then turn around and send their bank statement, their medical records, or their most personal photos through Gmail or Facebook Messenger like it’s perfectly fine. It’s not. The way you send private things matters just as much as …
Browser your way to privacy.
Most people spend years on the internet without ever once thinking about their browser. It’s just the thing you click to get to the internet — like a window you don’t think about until someone tells you it’s a two-way mirror. Because for a lot of people, it is. If you’re using Chrome, Google is watching what you search, what …
Send your private messages with Signal.
Signal is the gold standard for private messaging, and it was never just for whistleblowers, journalists, or anyone making headlines for the wrong reasons. It is for anyone who believes that a private conversation should actually be private. That includes you. Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, which means only you and the person you are talking to can read …
Make the privacy call for mobile with US Mobile.
Your phone carrier knows a lot about you — where you go, who you call, what you do online. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have all faced scrutiny for selling customer location data and building profiles on users. And their plans are expensive, locked-in, and full of bloat. US Mobile is the alternative that doesn’t make you choose between coverage and …
Design
Shared content creation with Adobe.
Designers beware. Adobe quietly updated its Terms of Service in June 2024, and buried inside that update was a phrase that stopped designers, photographers, and artists in their tracks: “shared content creation.” It sounds harmless. It isn’t.1 The updated terms granted Adobe the right to “access, view, or listen to your Content through both automated and manual methods” — including …
Entertainment
My TV is so dumb.
Welcome back to Protect Our Privates. Today we’re talking about something sitting in almost every living room in America — the smart TV — and why one of the best things you can do for your privacy is to never, ever connect it to the internet. What your TV is really doing That big beautiful screen on your wall isn’t …
Financial
Purchase with privacy, um, Privacy.com.
Every time you check out online, you’re handing a vendor your real name, billing address, and full card details. That’s a lot of trust to place in a company you may know nothing about — and any one of those companies could get hacked, sell your data, or charge you again without permission. That’s exactly what Privacy.com makes possible to …
Internet
Cleaning up the internet’s reckless storage of private data, one account at a time with EasyOptOuts
Somewhere on the internet right now, there are websites you’ve never heard of selling your home address, your phone number, your age, your relatives’ names, and your estimated income to anyone willing to pay for it. You didn’t sign up for these sites. You didn’t agree to be listed. They just scraped your information from public records, social media, and …
Hire Optery to remove your privates from public.
Remove Your Private Data from the Internet Your name, home address, phone number, and personal details are being bought and sold by data brokers — companies that profit from your private information without your knowledge or consent. Optery finds you on hundreds of these sites and removes your data automatically, then keeps monitoring to make sure it stays gone. With …
Get your home blurred on Google Maps.
Gain privacy from Google Maps by having your home blurred on the satellite view. Google has a straightforward tool for this — here’s how: Go to Google Maps and find your house in Street View Click the report a problem link (bottom right corner of the Street View image) This opens Google’s “Report Street View issue” form Use the tool …
Podcasts
Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons is our favorite privacy podcast.
If you only listen to one privacy podcast, make it this one — and we mean that sincerely. Carey Parker is the kind of guy you’d want explaining the internet to your parents, your boss, and honestly yourself. He’s Gen X, which means he remembers a world before surveillance capitalism swallowed everything whole, and he brings that perspective to every …
Surveillance Report keeps you current on privacy news.
If you want a tight, no-fluff weekly roundup of what’s happening in the world of privacy and surveillance, Surveillance Report delivers every single time. Produced by Techlore and The New Oil — two of the most trusted voices in the privacy community — this show distills the week’s most important privacy news into something you can actually get through without …
This Week in Tech is the OG tech podcast.
Leo Laporte has been doing this since before most people knew what a podcast was, and This Week in Tech (TWiT) is the show that basically invented the format. If you want the big picture on what’s happening across the entire tech world — from Silicon Valley drama to AI regulation to privacy policy — this is where you go. …
Darknet Diaries is true crime for the internet age.
Most people hear the word “hacking” and picture someone in a hoodie typing furiously in a dark room. Darknet Diaries is what happens when you replace that cliché with the actual, documented, deeply human stories behind some of the most significant cybersecurity events in history. Host Jack Rhysider spent years working in a Security Operations Center for a Fortune 500 …
Scamfluencers is our shameless guilty pleasure.
Okay, look. This one has absolutely nothing to do with privacy. We know. We don’t care. Scamfluencers is a deliciously unhinged deep dive into the world of influencers, con artists, and the beautiful chaos that happens when social media fame meets spectacularly bad decisions. Hosts Sadie Gennis and Scaachi Koul bring serious investigative chops and zero chill to stories about …
My TV is so dumb.
Welcome back to Protect Our Privates. Today we’re talking about something sitting in almost every living room in America — the smart TV — and why one of the best things you can do for your privacy is to never, ever connect it to the internet. What your TV is really doing That big beautiful screen on your wall isn’t …
Security
Please don’t Ring my bell.
The name says “security.” The pitch is peace of mind. But Ring — Amazon’s home camera and doorbell brand installed in over 10 million American homes — has quietly built one of the most concerning surveillance systems on the consumer market. And you probably didn’t realize you were opting in. Your employees can see your bedroom In 2023, the Federal …
Bitwarden protects and manages your passwords.
If your password is your dog’s name followed by “123,” we need to talk. And even if it isn’t — if you’re reusing any password across multiple sites, one data breach exposes all of them. That’s not paranoia, that’s just Tuesday on the internet. Bitwarden is an open-source password manager that generates, stores, and fills in strong, unique passwords for …
Social Media
Remove your stolen camera roll photos from Facebook.
Facebook is quietly scanning your camera roll — the one holding photos of your children, your partner, and your most intimate private moments. Every time you grant Facebook access to your photos, Meta’s AI analyzes them: detecting faces, reading locations, identifying objects and themes. They use this data to push “sharing suggestions” and upload your images to their cloud for …
Tools
Turn on Apple’s Lockdown Mode before you cross any border.
There’s a setting on your iPhone that most people have never heard of — and for most situations, you don’t need it. But there are moments in life when you absolutely do. Crossing a border. Getting pulled over. Traveling to certain countries. Attending a protest. Entering a legal situation. In any of these moments, Lockdown Mode is the single most …
Claude is the AI that said no.
Most AI companies will tell you they’re building technology for the good of humanity. Then they sign contracts with defense departments, hand their models over to governments, and let you figure out the rest. Anthropic — the company behind Claude — did something different. When the Pentagon came knocking and asked them to remove the guardrails that prevent Claude from …
Privacy in every email when you use SimpleLogin.
Every time you sign up for something online — a newsletter, an app, a loyalty card — you’re handing over your real email address to a company that may or may not sell it, lose it in a data breach, or spam you into oblivion. SimpleLogin puts an end to that. SimpleLogin lets you create email aliases — fake addresses …
Proton is the ultimate privacy weapon.
Proton was built by scientists who met at CERN — you know, the people who figured out how the universe works. So naturally, they decided to take on a slightly smaller project: making sure Google and your government can’t read your emails. The whole suite works together under one account. It’s basically a clean break from Big Tech — and …
