Sweet Suite of Security
First, a disclaimer. This article is opinion based on my experiences. I am not paid by any person, company or entity to shill their products.
If you are as concerned as I am about cloaking your identity while living in the Police State of MAGA, you need to understand that _EVERYTHING_ you post on the internet is collected, scanned, analyzed, packaged and sold to anyone who has the bucks. I hope you didn’t seriously believe Google offered free Gmail out of the goodness of their heart! MAGAmoron and his minions are busily using this information to make life as miserable as possible for Americans who don’t fit their image of “real” Americans.
The very first thing you need to start weaving your invisibility cloak is a secure, encrypted e-mail account. Most people today use text for quick messages but that’s what your burner phone (another article) is for. Real security and comms require secure, encrypted email. There are so many choices I won’t bore you with a list. I’ll point out how popular choices like Gmail and Apple Mail fail the security test. Both are extremely convenient and free. That’s a hard combo to beat but that’s where the old adage comes in: “There’s Good, Fast and Cheap. You can have any two but not all three at once.” Let’s tweak that a bit to accommodate email technology. “There’s Good, Secure and Cheap.” Almost all email are limited by Internet speed. The faster your Internet connection, the faster your mail but, in reality, most people can’t keep up with the emails they receive so speed is a moot point.
Good is generally defined as easy and intuitive to use as well as cleanly integrated into your workflow. This is part of the convenience factor. If your email interface quickly allows you to cull spam, open and reply, follow-up, schedule future actions and otherwise make life easier for you, you’re likely to just use whatever is easiest. But, Google and Apple don’t make life easier for you because they’re good guys, they do it because that lets them capture more information about you.
Cheap is a given since both Google and Apple Mail are either free or less than the cost of a latte. And, everyone knows, Americans will do anything, pay any amount for “FREE!”
Secure is the joker in the deck. For-profit companies like Google and Apple don’t want to spend a lot of money making your email secure from prying eyes because they make money by spying on you. The more they know about you, the more targeted their ads become and the more money they make. It’s that simple.
In today’s email landscape, Proton is the only email client (app) that offers an entire ecosystem (interconnected apps) of security focused software. Proton was developed in Switzerland by researchers from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), the preeminent research organization that operates the world’s largest particle physics lab. For our purposes, CERN is the organization that produced Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, the Internet as we know it today. It’s safe to say without Tim BL as he’s known, the WWW would not exist. So, from that exalted background Proton was born.
Today, Proton offers an entire suite of security and privacy focused computer applications. Proton Mail is end-to-end encrypted which means it’s encrypted from the moment it leaves your device (PC, Mac, Linux, smartphone, tablet, etc) until it reaches your recipient’s device. That means NO ONE, not even Proton, can read your emails (caveat, if your recipient insists on using an insecure email client, it can be read on their end.) However, Proton offers free anonymous email addresses to send emails to the less security conscious.
Even better, Proton includes a world class VPN (virtual private network) in their paid subscription. You can also pay for a separate VPN account with a free Proton Mail address. Called Proton VPN (original,) a VPN effectively camouflages your location to avoid snoopers. To be truly useful, a VPN should always be on. In fact, Proton has a “Kill Switch” that automatically “kills” you Internet connection if your VPN ever disconnects for any reason. But, VPNs are a topic for another post. I have several articles in the queue that will be posted over the next few weeks. In the meantime, remember, after you’re locked up in an American concentration is NOT the time to start securing your identity.