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The desire to build a self-defense kit from Google and the Internet as it is today (self.asklemmy)

submitted 11 months ago by vanveen to c/asklemmy

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(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 My approach toward The mega companies who, in my view, are owning Internet is obsolete and definitely ineffective: I don't use X, FB, instagram, TIK TOK and I boycott Amazon.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)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

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.