How to become a first world digital citizen

Photo by Saketh Garuda on Unsplash

Are you in some public transportation right now? Look around you. What do you see? Right. 80% of the passengers look at their phones.

Nowadays, we’re engaged with our phones/tablets/laptops at all times.

However, there’s a huge difference in how one uses our novel technology.

Some people use their tech as if they’re walking down a Turkish bazaar in a pink Armani suit: It’s slow and disruptive because all vendors step in your way to sell you something, and the whole world watches you.

On the other hand, there are people navigating through the web like a Ninja over nightly roofs: Fast, unstoppable, and nobody sees what they’re doing.

In this article, I show you how to switch from the former to the latter.

Why it’s important

The three qualities of using digital services and in terms of Ninja are:

• Fast — achieve your digital goals fast and with ease
• Unstoppable — don’t get stopped by internet providers, search engines or advertisements
• Privacy — keep control of sensitive information such as passwords, and information that’s used to target you in advertisements.

For most folks it’s easy to understand why the first two qualities (Fast & Unstoppable) are important. The third, privacy, might need more reasons to be taken serious.

Why Privacy?

I know, you don’t care that anybody reads your messages “I need a weekend!” with your friends. But let me just give you some quick reasons pro privacy in the digital world:

• Authentication information — passwords, codes, passport, etc. You want to make sure that nobody can impersonate your Facebook account and write “I’m a pedophile” or transfer 1000€ from your bank account to his.
• Personal information — Age, interests, location, etc. You want to make sure that big data kraken cannot assemble an accurate picture of, track your digital movements, and influence your decision making by showing you highly customized content. In times that private interest groups like Cambridge Analytica can influence elections by using personal information, it’s extremely important to keep your information to yourself.
• Confidential information — your chats, your browser history, etc. You want to make sure that anything that should be private to you, is indeed private. Governments and their intelligence service shouldn’t be able to know what you’re doing. If you google “Iraq” and “how to build a bomb” out of interest, you don’t want the police at your door because your government declared “the war on terrorism”. If you google “Gay porn” you don’t want the police at your door because you live in a homophobic country. You don’t want the finance authority reading your chats how you do black labour on the weekend.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Get your citizenship here!

Below you’ll find a non exhaustive list of services and behavior that I believe let you be fast, unstoppable and undetected — become a Ninja, to enjoy the digital world as a privileged citizen!

Disclaimer: I have to admit that I’m not following all my guidelines all the time, but I try to. Furthermore, if a cyber attacker specifically targets you, probably more precautions are needed to stay safe. ExpressVPN, TransferWise and N26 links are affiliate links.

Adblock

Ninja qualities: Fast, Unstoppable & Privacy

If you integrate just a single advice from this article, it should be this:

Ublock origin

Ublock origin is a free browser extension that exists for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and more browsers. Do not confuse “Ublock origin” with just “Ublock”!

It’s a content blocker that keeps you safe from malicious sites and trackers, but most people primarily use it for it’s Adblocking abilities.

Install it now in 1 minute, and you’ll never have to see again:

• Search engine ads
• Youtube ads
• Spotify ads
• Streaming site ads
• Ad Pop ups
• Any other ads

Very rarely sophisticated advertisements find their way through to your display.

Often times people use different adblockers such as Adblock or Adblock Plus. Don’t do it, they’re shit. They let through ads, depending on the companies agenda. Uninstall them now.

Ublock origin is open source, fast, efficient, and the hero to thank for this life changing extension is Raymond Hill (gorhill)!

Cookies

Ninja qualities: Privacy

Cookies are small pieces of information that get stored in your browser. Websites can store and read your cookies. They were invented to solve the problem “how to remember information about the user”.

E.g. you browse Amazon, put 3 items in your basket and close the browser. When you open the browser again and go to Amazon, the 3 items are still in your basket! This is possible through cookies. Amazon stores a cookie for each item in your browser like “amazon-baseball-eb34a1”. When you close and open the site again, Amazon looks through your cookies to see if there are “amazon item” cookies. If yes, they display these items in your basket.

This greatly improves the user experience in the web. No need to log in every time to Facebook or Gmail. Log in once, the “facebook-john-doe-logged-in” cookie gets set, and you stay logged in.

The issue is, that this also makes your internet activity highly traceable. Thanks to the same-origin policy, website A cannot access cookies that were set by website B. However, because of advertisement networks that have co-operations with both A and B, it can happen that your Amazon search history influences your Facebook advertisements. Or that you visit a new Website, and suddenly it shows you a Welcome message with your name! How? A cookie from a different website with your name was forwarded to the new one.

So here are some ways to control your cookies:

Incognito Mode

Most browsers offer an incognito/private mode. The key feature of this mode is that no cookies or browser history are saved once you close the browser window.

Maybe you run like me into the problem that Medium tells you after reading 10 articles for free “Hey Paul, you read a lot! We like that.”, and then wants you to pay their subscription fee. Medium sees in your cookies that you already read 10 articles (or I don’t know what’s the limit). Well, copy the blocked medium URL, open a new private browser window, paste the URL and you can enjoy reading again!

This can be useful, but also limits the overall user experience. Sometimes you just want to stay logged in to your Mail account.

Cookie Destroyer

Cookie Destroyer remove, as the names suggests, cookies from your browser storage.

I recommend the browser extension Cookie AutoDelete for Firefox and Chrome.

Every time you close your browser, all cookies get deleted. When you revisit a Website later on, it’s as if you’re visiting it for the first time. You don’t need to understand all the settings from Cookie AutoDelete. Simply enable “auto-clean”, and you’re good to go!

You can also whitelist certain domains, to keep the cookies of your Amazon shopping tour or Mail account.

Separate Browsers

Deleting cookies makes you less traceable, but Websites also trust you less. It always pisses me off when I have to input my mobile number or different 2FA authentication to log in to my Email or PayPal account because my log in activity looks “suspicious”.

A solution I came up with is to use two dedicated browsers: One to for account activity where you keep the cookies, and one for general activity where you delete them.

E.g. use Chrome for all your accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix. And use Firefox for browsing search engines, forums, or news.

That way you can enjoy the advantages of cookie-world and the advantages of cookie-free-world at the same time.

Log out!

Ninja qualities: Privacy

Cookies are a sophisticated way to track user activity. However, you don’t need to worry about cookies, if you do all your google searches while logged in to your google account!

Cookies are also cumbersome to track for the companies. Which cookie is the right one? Is the person googling right now John or Sara Doe?

But when you’re logged in it’s much easier to gather precise information about you. Now they know for sure it’s Sara Doe!

So, a big shout out to you lazy always logged in users:
Log out of your account! Whether it’s a Social Media, Email or Shopping Site — once you’re done, log out of your account! It’s that easy.

Search Engines

Ninja qualities: Unstoppable & Privacy

Search engines made the internet user friendlier. Thanks to them I don’t need to know an exact URL but just a term to find Websites, Images and anything else. While searching around, the search history you build up draws a picture about you. Sometimes it’s correct, sometimes it’s wrong:

Search 1: “Cat is sick”. Search 2: “How to bury a grave”.

Conclusion 1: Somebody’s cat died.

Conclusion 2: Somebody is interested in what to do if a cat gets sick, and how to bury her before buying a cat for her child.

You don’t want governments observe you because they believe in the wrong conclusion. You don’t want advertisements pop up that are highly influencing thanks to your searches.

When it comes to choosing the right search engine, this is the crunchpoint: To google, or not to google, that is the question. Below I give you a few options.

Google

Fast and good results, but also known to track you and censors sites.

Looking for “Game of Thrones free stream”? You won’t get many good results.

If you want to keep using Google Search Engine, at least learn how to do properly (and log out of your account!).

Startpage

They label themselves as the worlds most private search engine. They use google results but remove all trackers and logs.

I recommend this search engine, as you get the results of Google without the tracking issues.

However, you still won’t receive censored results.

DuckDuckGo

Another great search engine to does not store personal information. The biggest plus of this option is that the results are not filtered. You will find your favorite semi-legal streaming site, porn sites and whatnot.

I recommend this search engine as it can be set as the default search engine in Firefox and you also get results that are not part of the incorporated system.

Email

Ninja qualities: Privacy

For every online account you need an email. If somebody controls your mail account, they know about all services you use and can get access to all other accounts. Whichever Mail provider you use, you must trust him a lot…

..or, you choose a Mail provider that doesn’t even have access to your data by design:

Use Protonmail! It’s encrypted, it’s free and anonymous.

ProtonMail was founded in 2013 by scientists who met at CERN and were drawn together by a shared vision of a more secure and private Internet.

They got my interest with “swiss quality” and hooked me with “CERN”.

Protonmail does it’s job by encrypting all your data, and only you yourself can decrypt it with your password. Just make sure to securely store your password, as nobody will be able to decrypt your Mails without it!

Also their servers do not run inside the big cloud providers AWS/Google Cloud/Alibaba, but under the Alps.

Bonus: They don’t ask for your phone number to log in just because your IP address is from a different country!

Messenger

Ninja qualities: Privacy

Most people use WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat. Messengers know all about our relationships, from “I’m pregnant” to “Meet me downstairs”.

Many people think that it’s safe to use WhatsApp now since they introduced end-to-end encryption. It’s true that they cannot read your messages anymore. Anyhow, WhatsApp still knows with whom you’re writing, how often and how much.

Using services where the company can deduct information about you, is walking down a Turkish bazaar in a pink suit to meet your friends. You don’t want police to knock on your door because you had a chat with your old friend who became a criminal. You want to move through the shadows like a Ninja to meet your loved ones.

I suggest you to switch to Signal!

Encrypted messages, free and cross-platform — that’s how I like my chats. You can see that a service is a first-degree security application if Edward Snowden promotes it.

Telegram is also a great option. As its confidential messaging option made Russia ban the App for two years, one can see its power. Especially in the crypto-space Telegram is widely used, from chats about projects to interactive Bots.

However, in Telegram one has to actively activate encryption, while it’s the default in Signal. Therefore most people don’t use encrypted messages in Telegram, and that’s why Signal is preferred.

Disable your Location!

Ninja qualities: Privacy

Been to the club last night, and today you get Facebook Ads of this club? Guess what, you had your location activated on your phone. Tracking your online activity is one thing, tracking your physical movements another.

So, big shoutout to all you lazy people who always have their location activated on their phone:
Disable your location!

Additionally, disable as much options as possible to track your physical location in your phone settings. The Verge made wonderful guides on how to do this for Android and IOS.

Notes App

Ninja qualities: Privacy

The wonderful old german song “Die Gedanken sind frei” has the core message that all our thoughts are free. With many people relying on Notes Apps to pin down their thoughts, this might not be true any more. Whether it’s your diary with your deepest fantasies, a list of people you distrust or links to your favorite torrent sites — you don’t want other eyes to see that.

To keep control of your thoughts, my recommendation is

Standard Notes!

Keep encrypted notes on Mobile, Desktop and Web. Securely store passwords and seed phrases for free. Don’t put trust in the people behind a company, but in the Math behind an open-source project.

Ever since I installed Standard Notes, I use it on a daily basis. I have to admit that the user experience in the unpaid version is inferior to big players like Evernote. But storing plain notes with peace of mind works fantastic.

VPN — Virtual Private Network

Ninja qualities: Fast, Unstoppable & Privacy

A VPN works like this:

You connect via an ecnrypted connection to a server, and from that server you access the internet.

The advantages are various:

• Encrypted connection no matter to which (Wifi-) network you’re connected
• Nobody but you’re VPN provider gets to know your real IP address
• Circumvent geographic blocks (No more “This website is not avaible in your country”)
• Potentially faster connection

Personally I need a VPN to access all online services while traveling. E.g. Linkedin cannot be accessed in Russia.

I recommend

ExpressVPN.

It’s fast, has server locations in almost 100 countries, and has clients for any device ❤

It’s more expensive than other providers. But it’s easy to set up, easy to use and reliable.

International money transfer

SEPA made bank transfers in Europe cheap and quite fast (approx. 1 working day). However, to transfer money internationally from France to Thailand, it can get expensive quite fast.

My solutions:

Crypto currencies

Ninja qualities: Fast, Unstoppable & Privacy

Damn, that came unexpected from a blockchain developer, right?

The advantages of crypto currencies are many, but sending money across the world for low fees while staying private are definitely main points.

I won’t go into detail about crypto currencies right now (check out my previous articles). But to get started quickly I can recommend buying cryptos on Kraken. They have an easy user interface, good customer service and low fees on deposit, withdrawal (in SEPA area) and trading.

TransferWise

Ninja qualities: Fast

TranserWise lets you send money across the globe for much lower fees than Bank transfer or PayPal.

You send money from your bank account to TransferWise’s bank account. Once your bucks arrived there, they will send the converted amount from their bank in a different currency zone to the bank account you specified in this different currency zone.

Depending on the payment process you choose, it can be super quick, as I had all my payments arrive on the same day. The only downside is that the quality of privacy is completely violated when using this service.

Passwords

I don’t know why people are surprised getting their Facebook account hacked when they have “TheirNameTheirBirthDate” as their password.

Strong passwords are essential to digital sovereignty. It’s also important to have different passwords for different services. Therefore, you need a system to manage these passwords.

Memo Tricks

Ninja qualities: Fast, Unstoppable & Privacy

Many sources tell you that your password needs Uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. That’s not needed if your password is long and unique enough.

I recommend one of the 2 options below. Most important is that you make your passwords long and easy to remember at the same time.

• Take 3 or 4 unusual words, and simply concatenate them. E.g. “EscalatorHalalGossipSalad”. BAM! No indian hacker can deduct anything about your password from your Facebook page.
• Make a sentence that’s related to the online service you create the password for. Then take the first/last/second/etc. letter from each word to form the sentence. E.g. your Tinder password could be: I hope to find 3 wonderful and sensible guys with big muscles on Tinder = Ihtf3wasgwbmoT

Password Manager

Ninja qualities: Fast, Unstoppable & Privacy

A password manager is a place where you’re passwords are saved and encrypted. You need a “Master” password to decrypt the saved passwords to use them to log in.

I recommend

Lastpass.

It works very well, and is easy to use. Until recently I thought that there’s only a paid version. But no! There is also a completely free version which has all the important features (#LastpassAuthenticator).

The issue with password managers is that there is still the single point of failure. Once an attacker finds out your master password, he has access to all your online services. That’s why I recommend remembering the individual passwords for each service with one of the Options from above.

Banking App (for Western countries)

If you’re not living exclusively off your farm or off your crypto, you probably need a bank account. As this article is about digital citizenship, I’m not talking about investment options or loan conditions. I’m talking about the remote customer support, account fees and user interface.

The bank me and many others highly recommend is

N26.

You can open the bank account remotely, you get a debit card, and there is a version that is completely free! No fees for card payment internationally, and no fees for ATM withdrawals in the SEPA area.

The user interface is extremely user friendly, and they have nice a way to organise your finances called “spaces”.

Personally I have the paid version, as this lets me also withdraw money from the ATM for free in the whole world, and gives me a travel insurance.

Downside is that currently only citizens of 23 countries can open an account at N26.

Conclusion

Clap and tell me if you found the article helpful, and switched some of your services to the suggested ones.

I’m aware that to fully ensure privacy, people should switch from Chrome to Firefox, from Windows/Apple to Linux, and from smartphone to no phone at all. I believe that the less information data kraken have about you, the less of an accurate picture they can compose of you, and the more freedom you can enjoy.

Let’s go Ninja!

PS: Install Ublock origin!