How to Protest and Protect Your Privacy
Stay Incognito like a Chameleon
It is a timely opportunity for us to make our demands as they are intricately linked to what would become of our future.
It is a timely opportunity for us to make our demands as they are intricately linked to what would become of our future.
In doing so, we flocked together in large groups to achieve a common goal and it was the initial tactic to rid ourselves of the mindful implications of being identified — or caught — as an individual.
However, as the evolved concept of our open public spaces are further complicated in the digital reality, we sought to devise ways to address our main dilemma: how to continue with the open protest with our individual identities protected.
The public arrest and subsequent punishment may not have been the only concern before all the protesters though. What if the personal data of some protesters (especially those that are participating in their first stint as activists to fight for a cause openly) are being sourced — unbeknown to them — by other means beyond what could be obtained from our participation in the public display of resentment e.g. digital footprint?
Online Privacy Checkpoints
We create a huge digital paper trail of data about ourselves when we go online. A complete data set on an individual can be analyzed, packaged, and sold by data brokers without the user’s knowledge or permission and used for various purposes.
To protect our online privacy, there are three main checkpoints you need to be cautious of:
Digital Identity (email address/phone number)
User could create multiple email address or apply different numbers for different web services to break data association.
User Information (full name, gender, birthday, photos, places, geo location, posts, tweets, browsing history or other content)
Users could choose which information expose to web service provider (social apps, browsers for example)
Network Access Point (IP address/network traffics)
Users have to apply IP from Internet Service Providers (ISP) to connect to internet, so data mining algorithm would easily associate data with user.
Minimalist Way to Protect Your Online Privacy
Under normal circumstance (you are a normal person that just want to participate in a peaceful protesting, avoid online identity theft, or data-ad companies profiling you, not a criminal that CIA or NAC is looking after — sorry we can not help with it), what would be the most efficient way to protect your online privacy? Here are some suggestions based on the three checkpoints:
1. Use encrypted messenger and email
Any app that is registered with a mobile phone will expose a wide range of metadata including notification streams and IP traffic — as it is with other encryption applications. Using encrypted messengers like Signal instead of email will leave much less metadata behind as your messages pass through your ISP. It will not be apparent from your traffic who you are talking to, only that you are using that specific app. You can check out qTox, which does not require mobile phone registration if you want go one step further.
If you are an email person, check out privacy-conscious email platforms (that based outside the U. S. — why not in U.S.? we will explain this later, and support SMTP TLS — a way to encrypt your email traffic from server to server) are Protonmail or Disroot.org.
2. Anti-tracking from apps, browsers and search engines
A lot of people don’t realize but even when mobile applications are not on, it still is doing a lot of network requests and data collection in the background. Sounds ridiculous? Yes, many apps send network requests when our screen is turn off and even secretly record our screen without asking! The apps can be sneaky, watching what we do and listening to our conversations to better target advertisements to us (if not with other intentions). Isn’t it a basic human user rights to be informed when our data is exposed to third-parties and not letting apps secretly draw data from us without permission.
Modern web browsers do not follow the standard of ensuring personal privacy and security on the internet, either. For you not to worry about leaving fingerprint identification when browsing, ad-block function is needed, but be aware that most of ad-block softwares that plug in browsers (such as AdBlock and Adblock Plus) still collects/tracks your information. The most useful ad blocker should works independently, at system level that can block ads, tracker or malware requests for all applications, including browser, apps and games on your device.
We can use Tor Browser as it gives additional anonymity layer protection pre-installed with some components for privacy protection, encryption and advanced proxy. Other relatively safe browsers recommended are Mozilla Firefox’s open source user privacy online tool and Brave’s open source browser based on Chromium which automatically blocks ads and trackers.
For search engines that value privacy, check out searx, StartPage and DuckDuckGo (based in the U.S. but has nothing to do with Washington)
3. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a Must
Using a VPN service creates an encrypted channel between your device and the internet, making it impossible for your ISP to see what website you’re on or what app you’re using. VPN services can be used from your desktop as well as your smartphone and will route all your traffic through them, so be careful.
Choosing secure VPN services comes first to secure our location. The catch is to choose one that is from outside the United States, uses encryption, supports OpenVPN protocol and adopts a policy of not recording user activities.
Using internet services located in the United States makes you liable to the country’s surveillance programs and accompanying court procedures which can make the government force companies to agree to surrender customer data, thereby transforming private enterprise network services into a tool for large-scale monitoring. The warning against US-based internet services could also be extended to countries it shares intelligence with, e.g. the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes agreements.
Protecting our online privacy is crucial in today’s information age if you are a protestor, especially as a first time protester, or for anyone that care about his/her online privacy — it ensures that the content we have published online does not lead back to us — if we don’t want to be identified, or that our personal data on a platform are safe and not sold to third parties — if we don’t want it to be sold.
That’s what Incognito is being made for: a fast and secure VPN with data control and ad-block functions to make sure you can stay incognito and worry-free whenever, wherever you want to be.
Check out on www.incognitonetwork.com
