What started you down the path to privacy? Was it a particular event, article, podcast or something else?
Reading 1984
My Runescape account was hacked when i was younger. They got in via a dataleak leaking my email credentials. At that point i was already into computers more than the average person, so it kinda was a kick in the butt that pushed me to pursue better security practices, which opened up the rabbit whole into data privacy for me. Rip my mith armor from 2006 lol.
I used to relied a lot on Google. Google drive , google photos , google everything. After reading this article . I decided to self host most of online life and use privacy and security tools as much as I can.
Do you have an alternative link without a paywall? I’m interested to know what it was for you.
Thank you. That was an interesting and concerning read for so many reasons.
One day I was on a website at 2am that blasted an advertisement for TIDE DETURGENT at full volume. Then I found out about AdBlockers, then how creepy advertisement were.
Then Snowden happened.
Someone online introduced me to redirector. I saw it as a tool for efficiency and redirecting my internet consumption when I was mindlessly surfing the internet.
Then I came across libredirect which was less-customizable but had built-in redirects towards privacy-focused front-ends for popular websites.
Then I made the exodus from Reddit and the resulting communities tend to have a greater focus on privacy and security.
Then I switched from Windows -> Debian and that’s all she wrote.
Wanted to see if I could get my phone to show me ads for Tamale pots, a food I don’t make nor know how, and also not something that’s not commonly bought outside of holiday times. So I talked about it for days/weeks, not a single typed word, then one day I was seeing them on Facebook. Deleted my facebook, Instagram, installed app cloner to scramble my phone model/gps/location/google analytics ID, got mullvad vpn, and adblockers + uguard. App cloner also let’s you isolate apps and force them into a sandbox where they can have fun with my fake data.
Mine started when I switched teams and ended up in an infosec org at work. Being around a bunch of privacy and security minded folks really taught me a LOT.
It has just been a gradual change but having children is also a big part of it. I’m in my late 30s so feel the early part of my life compared to now are complete opposite ends of the privacy scale…
I got into piracy because I was 11 and wanted to edit videos
I got out of piracy when I got software through work and streaming made things convenient and fair.
Now I’m thinking of getting back in because things are no longer convenient nor are they fair.
[Edit] oops, we’re talking privacy.
Well I started my privacy journey this year when too many services I used changed their policies for the worse
Privacy.
Lmao my bad
Lol bro
Ironically (or not), mine began with piracy. When I was little, I had no money, but I had a computer and lots of time. I figured out how to get games and apps that I wanted and a part of that was covering your tracks.
Fast forward to college and learning about Linux. It blew my mind that you could do something like
apt-get install doomand then there it was. No piracy necessary. I dove head first into FOSS.Then along came Google with lots of free stuff. Great, I thought, but this was different. I think I knew that they were harvesting and selling your personal data, but it was free so I let it go. One day, I was on a site and there was an advertisement for something very personal that I had been referenced in an email. The thing is - this was at my work computer which I never used my personal credentials for.
I started noticing things following me around the internet and got creeped out. I started reading about what’s really happening and got very uncomfortable. That’s when I started focusing more on keeping a clean profile.
I can’t switch to Linux until it supports software I need (the FOSS alternatives aren’t there yet) but I do hope I get the opportunity soon. I ran Linux on my laptop in college and loved it
