The Digital Privacy Triad
Previously, I wrote about social media privacy and email privacy. Digital privacy protects you from being easily tracked across for-profit sites like FB, IG, LinkedIn, TikTok, SM du Jour, etc. These sites are incentivized to mine your profile, posts, replies, images, friends, shares and whatever else they can dig up mine. These companies put all this info into a mega-dossier and sell it to anyone who wants to know more about you. These buyers can range from Home Depot and Amazon to RWNJ affiliated groups to the gubmint. The more nefarious the actor, the more damaging the info. Big box stores might just want to know about your home improvement purchases and plans but MAGA wants to know how to prevent you from voting or, worst case, where you’ll be so MAGAmoron’s Gestapo can scoop you up. In today’s dystopian Police States of MAGA, nothing is to draconian to ensure MAGAmoron remains in power.
The third leg of digital privacy is a good VPN. A Virtual Private Network is the digital equivalent of a private Internet. Most people think of the Internet like their electric power grid but the Internet is more sophisticated. The “grid” of the Internet can be compartmentalized into reserved “wires” to handle just your traffic. And, everything sent over “your wires” is encrypted so only you and your intended audience can view the message. Another analogy might be a worldwide fresh water system. Everyone who wants is connected to the fresh water delivery system. Those who pay a bit more can have private pipes inside the main pipes that deliver whatever flavor water they want. So, I could have flavored soda or sparkling water while others could have soft drinks or juices. Pretty cool, huh!
Like any system, there are weak points that can still expose your data. As always, the weakest point is the human factor. If you use a VPN sometimes but not others, you may as well not bother. A VPN must always be on. Sometimes, the VPN fails and the user fails to notice it’s off. Sometimes, the VPN is so bogged down, a user disables it. All will potentially expose you and your activities. The worst weaknesses are technical issues that can give you a false sense of security. Others are administrative processes like logs that track your activities.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of VPNs to choose from. Many are even “free” but we all know what “free” means. Tunnel Bear is a favorite but a quick review of its Ts&Cs (Terms & Conditions) shows it offers a scant 2GB of data per month at the free level. I’ve used as much as 100GB of data in a month without any streaming. I don’t mean to pick on TB because many “free” VPNs are in the same boat. Another favorite is PIA (Private Internet Access.) A concern with PIA and many US based VPNs is they keep logs of user activities. In today’s Police State of MAGA, MAGAts (maga traitors) can simply seize a company’s records, Constitution and law be damned. Even Proton VPN has a free plan that’s kinda lame except to test it for a few days. However, Proton keeps no logs and is based in Switzerland. Even if they wanted to, they can’t give up logs of your activity because they simply don’t exist.
Most people should seriously consider a paid plan. I’m on an older version of a Proton Unlimited plan that includes the complete suite including Mail, Calendar, VPN, Drive (storage,) Pass (pw mgr,) plus others so I have extra features and benefits that I don’t particularly need but make life easier. Having a VPN integrated with my most used apps across Linux, Windows and Android and covering all my apps simplifies keeping my security locked down.
Here is a site (I don’t know how legit they are) that purports to compare over 30 VPNs. The top ranked VPNs don’t offer a suite of other privacy and security focused apps like Proton.