So, I’m back in San Francisco. This is a quick update about where I am with my exploration to divest myself of proprietary (particularly web) networks. This has been motivated by many things, mainly privacy, control of my own webspace, and the desire to live in an ethical web. It is also in part an attempt to keep my head free of internet junk.
I’ve done the following:
- made this site my ‘home’ on the web. It is run by 100% free software on servers that I rent and which run the Ubuntu open source operating system.
- handed off all social media accounts that I managed for other orgs (Coko and Book Sprints) to other people.
- removed my Linkedin profile and put a place holder saying ‘Adam doesn’t live here anymore’.
- registered some social media handles (which remain dormant) and domains as a defensive strategy against trolls.
- replaced all my weak passwords with strong passwords.
- installed a password protected password manager.
- installed and run a VPN with a provider that I trust.
- purchased a phone with no wifi or location services. It allows only calls and SMS. I keep limited contact information on it.
- uninstalled as many apps on my old smart phone (now SIM-less) so I can use it as a podcast player and backup (just in case).
- installed Chromium (free spyless browser).
- installed TOR Browser as a secondary browser.
- use Duckduckgo (trackerless) search engine.
- started putting a lot more energy into this site, new design coming soon!
I already had an encrypted partition on my drive and use GPG so the above is the new stuff only.
That’s it for now. It is a good start. I’ll see how I go. All things so far are pretty good but I’ve only had the ‘dumb’ phone for a few days… let’s see how that works out.
