Personally, I use a password manager, vpn, and all of my devices have minimal tracking and are fully encrypted. Just wanted to hear what others do.
I thought of a similar thread but I think the results would be pretty much the same. It’s great to have some mutual inspiration here.
Anyway, there’s tons of stuff I can list here. I’m gonna list some stuff but will probably forget 70% of the other stuff because it’s become so common in my daily life.
- Own NAS as private cloud
- Self-host on my NAS to not use internet services that spy on me (like Bitwarden, Joplin server, cryptgeon, Syncthing, Nextcloud)
- OPNsense as my router of choice
- W10Privacy (because I still can’t switch to Linux because of circumstances)
- Firefox as my browser of choice with some extra settings to harden it (I tried something like LibreWolf in the past but I can’t use Spotify without DRM)
- uBlock Origin of course (and some other browser addons like LibRedirect, ClearURLs, Decentraleyes and so on)
- Privacy respecting mail provider (mailbox.org)
- Signal (instead of WhatsApp)
- Thunderbird (instead of something like Outlook)
- Piped (instead of YouTube)
- Uninstalled/disabled all apps on my phone that I don’t need (also saves battery)
- Been using custom ROMs on my phone (but I made some bad experiences with stability so I stick with the stock ROM for now)
- NextDNS (with encrypted DNS)
- Whoogle (instead of Google)
- Lemmy (instead of reddit, haha)
- Avoid accounts (and even links) to something like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and so on
- Libreddit, Nitter and all the other privacy friendly frontends for social media
- Never connected devices to my LAN/Wi-Fi that don’t need an internet connection (like a stove lol) and never installed the apps on my phone to operate them
Gonna add some more to the list whenever something comes up in my mind. Like I said it’s become so basic in my life that I don’t always think about it anymore when I use it.
Btw things like 2FA only help with security, not privacy.
My main line of defense is using services I fully own (they’re however hosted on a VPS. I’m fine with that) :
- I use my own password manager (safe)
- I use my own DNS with DoT wherever possible
- Emails are selfhosted as well, and I use spamgourmet for deliveries that require a signup email
- Duckduckgo as my search engine and mobile browser
- Adblock plus on Firefox for desktop browsing, with an occasionnal SOCKS5 proxy on my servers
- I used to run SailfoshOS on my phone, but it’s unusable right now. I’m waiting for lineage or /e/OS to support my hardware
- I’m very picky with my cookie selection, and store them in RAM to flush them on reboot
- Occasionally use Tor (though it’s a bit overkill for my usage)
And that’s it for the most part :)
No proprietary software. Open source only. (Partial exception for certain games, in a virtual machine, after I review their privacy policies.)
No retail rewards memberships.
No Google anything.
No Meta anything. (Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram/etc.)
No phone number given to web sites or (most) businesses. VoIP number for the handful that might legitimately need to call me.
Unique email addresses for each web account and service provider. When one gets leaked or spammed, I know who did it and I cut them off.
VPN when I feel it’s appropriate.
Serious approach, respect!
Live in a fairly secluded area. Have privacy film on most of my windows, anywhere that a person could possible see in. Back window overlooks a hill though so airing out after a shower in front of it is still pretty private.
Where sunglasses to hide the windows to my soul when I’m out and about.
Thinking about growing a giant dense bamboo fence around the perimeter of my property.
