Safety In Privacy Online

Now is more important than ever for minorities of all kinds to think about their safety and information online. If you find yourself concerned for what someone against you can use, limit the information you share starting today. I've compiled a short list/guide of keeping your information more secure. It is NEVER too late to take back your internet today.

SEARCH ENGINES: Google as a search engine now more than ever is becoming useless. It's a well known privacy concern, AI slop producing, sponsored NIGHTMARE. In terms of search engines, I suggest swapping to Startpage. They're sourced from the Netherlands with notoriously stricter privacy laws than the US. This is great, stricter laws means companies can store less data on you legally. There are many other alternatives as well, like Qwant. Explore your options! It's also ok to keep google search for things these smaller engines might struggle with. These would just limit the amount of data you're sending google.


TEXTS, SMS: You want something encrypted. That means the data is scrambled and only unscrambled to those you are sending it to. Signal is great for this, it uses your phone number so its a secure replacement for your texting app and friends can find you super easily. You can also hide your account on there if you're worried about someone from your contacts seeing you on there. Look for the phrase "End-to-end encryption" in your apps for communication.

VPN: A VPN isn't the end all be all internet safety tool but it's great for keeping what you do on the web between just yourself, and not your nosy internet provider. No matter what you do on the internet normally, even in private browsing, every site you visit is logged and reported to your provider. With a vpn, all they see is that you turned it on and nothing else till you turn it off. A lot of big name ones are not as focused on security as you might think, in fact they scrape what info they can off you and sell it for cheap. The only really trustworthy VPN's I would use are Mozilla, Mullvad, or Proton.

BROWSER: Your browser knows/tracks so much more about you than you think. Modern chrome is basically spyware, and most of the other popular browsers are built from its shell essentially. I personally don't trust Brave or Opera despite their claims of security due to their bitcoin mining shenanigans, so I use Firefox. Like chrome, its been around for forever and has had privacy as its main concern since the beginning. It has a ton of useful extensions and easily imports bookmarks from chrome. It does come with some small issues but these are worth figuring out to keep yourself safe.


This is all I can think of for right now, of course anyone and everyone is free to ask questions. I am happy to explain anything you need. Stay safe, stay private, and stay alive!