Via @iamdylancurran (Twitter)

I’ll repost this whenever I see it on my dashboard.

fuck…

So, one thing you can do is use Firefox instead of Chrome. Another thing you can do is use duck duck go instead of google search. In fact you know what let me get on desktop and make a proper reply, give me about an hour and I’ll hook y’all up with some privacy

ok I took a bit more than an hour, I have time blindness don’t @ me.

Step one, download and install Firefox.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

It will ask if you want to import all your bookmarks and saved passwords from your current browser/s. Do that. It will also ask if you want to make it your default browser. Do that too.

You will be given the option to create an account, but it’s not mandatory. It’s just a convenience service if you want to access your bookmarks and saved passwords on different devices.

Firefox has a load of built-in privacy protections but we’re going to install some addons to make it EVEN BETTER. Don’t worry they’re all free and once you’ve installed them you don’t have to think about them again.

First, Duck Duck Go Privacy Essentials. Firefox does still set your default search engine to Google, we don’t want that. You could manually change it but the Duck Duck Go addon gives you some tracker blocking, encryption, private searching, all set up and ready to go

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/duckduckgo-for-firefox

Next you need an ad blocker. ABP went stupid, so here’s uBlock

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Do you use farcebook or any related product like instagram? Facebook Container automatically puts those in a little quarantine pen so they can’t follow you around and spy on what else you’re doing

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/

If you have multiple accounts (eg. work/school, family, public, personal, private) you can use Firefox Multi-Account Containers to manage them and keep their footprints separate

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/

Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere are published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and those people are serious as a heart attack when it comes to online privacy.

Privacy Badger sends a do not track signal, and also breaks link tracking by sites like facebook, twitter, etc.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-badger17

HTTPS Everywhere is… ok there’s a lot to explain here, and we’re already longposting so just, every time you connect to any page it makes it more secure.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/https-everywhere/

If you want to learn a bit about how this works and why it’s good to have, might as well start with the HTTPS page on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS

You could stop here, that’s pretty good. But you can do more. You could install NoScript. A big warning with this one, it can break half the internet. It’s a LOT more user friendly than it used to be but if you can’t figure shit out by fucking around you should probably skip it. It blocks scripts from running without permission, protecting you from drive-by scripts that give your computer herpes, but also sometimes protecting you from script-heavy sites working at all.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

Lastly an honourable mention for Ghostery. Ghostery has been a solid privacy addon for years, and now has adblocking powers. Honestly I haven’t used it in ages, a long time ago it conflicted with something else I deemed more important so I removed it and I never got around to picking it back up, but it has a great reputation and is trusted by a lot of people who I trust.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/

Now, this all only covers your browser activity, which is a lot but you will still need to manually adjust privacy settings on your google/gmail/youtube account/s if you have any, your facebook/instagram account/s if you have any, and your actual gotdamn operating system if you use windows. I know it seems like a lot of effort, I’m a lazy bitch too, but it’s very set-and-forget, you only need to do it once, and then just review it a couple of times a year.

Here’s some stuff about Windows 10 privacy settings

https://pixelprivacy.com/resources/windows-privacy-settings/

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/5-privacy-settings-to-change-in-windows-10/

And some stuff about google privacy settings

https://mashable.com/article/google-privacy-setting-you-should-enable-now/

And some stuff about facebook privacy settings

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/facebook-privacy-settings-2939307

And here’s an honest explanation of what a VPN really does and does not do, why you don’t actually need one, and the few real reasons you might ever want one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY

And  a bit about password managers

https://www.cnet.com/news/best-password-managers-for-2020/

This is by no means the limit of the steps you can take to secure your online privacy, if you want to go deeper you definitely can. But if you don’t want to or don’t have the time or aren’t very technically minded, this will still put you way ahead of the pack. It won’t make you The Most Private but it will make you Much More Private Than Most, and it should take you less than an hour or two, depending on how many accounts you have on predatory datenkraken sites.

Now go hide your panties from the evil empire.

You can also use Invidious to use youtube privately, and there are extensions like Privacy Redirect that’ll send youtube links directly to it. The subscription page can be a little unreliable, so I just send my youtube notifications to my email with RSS instead

ProtonMail is a free email service that’s not google (already a good start), but also encrypts all your mail so no one but you and the person you’re emailing can read it

From experience, Tor is a lot more user-friendly than you might think. It does take a little bit of fiddling and getting used to, but the payoff is that all of your traffic becomes extremely hard to track. They have a desktop browser that’s built on Firefox and comes pre-installed with many of the extensions listed above. I recommend trying it on without uninstalling your current browser, just to see how you like it

switching.software and privacytools.io have tons of recommendations for privacy-friendly alternatives to google software and tools that can be used to avoid surveillance. But remember that this isn’t yours or any other user’s fault - we shouldn’t be expecting every single person to load their computer up with encryption to avoid surveillance that private companies shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Lay the blame where it belongs, on google and facebook, and hold them responsible

All of this is great advice but also let’s stop telling each other that we

“gave away all our rights just to watch dog videos”

That’s some victim blaming shit. These systems were designed to be as essential as possible for us and to socially isolate those who refuse to participate. These companies spend a shit ton of energy and money on suppressing alternatives. If you work from home, if you go to school, it’s likely to have NO CHOICE but to use Windows, Google and maybe even facebook because your school or work does not provide alternatives and does demand that you access it’s platforms.

This isn’t our fault. We can and should resist, but we should stop pretending that we’re all sheep for getting caught in a trap designed to be nearly inescapable.

Also, I’d like to point out that some of these things were designed to be useful and have only become insidious as time has gone on. Your youtube history for instance? History is a standard feature on web browsers and the like so you can go back and have a smaller cache to sort through than the entire internet when you need to look for something. Login history? Ostensibly that’s to make sure that it’s YOU logging in rather than someone hacking your account. Grant it, there’s no reason for them to keep this data for a long length of time, than I can think of and that’s when it becomes creepy and weird.

Anyone got a not-Firefox option for browser suggestion? I use Chrome because Firefox LAGS LIKE SHIT. Several minutes to open the program, several more to open any web page. It was my go-to for years until it started to suck.

Check out Brave browser

my personal curse is the knowledge that I function best with rigid structure and strict routine but am almost totally incapable of independently establishing or maintaining that structure and routine

Apparently this is controversial but if you’ll die without something it should be free lol

Food should be free

Water should be free

Shelter should be free

Healthcare should also be free

If you disagree with any of these things, you’re not welcome here. Block me, you’re a freak

Dental should be included as part of free healthcare because dental IS healthcare.

People treat dental like it’s cosmetic but, like, a tooth infection can cause a heart attack.

Man, sounds like i should try to get in legally

Seeking asylum is legal.

To dive into it a bit more: Pretend the US economy collapsed largely because of Canada’s repeated interference in US economy or the economy of neighboring countries that might have been functional trading partners. After taking resources from America over the course of decades, installing pro-Canada politicians in local and state governments, and possibly even aiding in the creation of these roving gangs, Canada withdraws humanitarian support. They say that America needs to support itself and its own people and that sure they might have done some things a very long time ago (It wasn’t) but now America needs to create a functional government of its own. One not filled by the corruption that they helped to create.

None of which helps with the roving gangs breaking into homes and killing people.

But, seeking asylum is, on paper, legal. In order to legally cross into Canada you need to fear for your safety or for the safety of your family and seek asylum. Well, there are roving gangs, abuse is rampant, and the police force is either functionally useless or in the pockets of these groups so, hey, you have that down!

But you need to move quickly because there are people who want to make this PERFECTLY LEGAL means of immigration illegal, in which case there are no other nearby countries that you could flee to. And the current Prime Minister keeps saying they’ll close the border entirely, threatens bringing in guns, and it becomes increasingly clear that the longer you wait, the more violent and unlikely it is that you’ll be able to find a home in Canada.

So you cross. Legally.

Canada takes you at gunpoint, strips your two year old of anything that you’ve given them, and deports you. Months pass, no word from your child. You hear reports, they could be dead, dying, adopted into a Canadian family, or sold to human (usually sex) traffickers. No one knows, because no one is keeping track of what happens to American kids. You try to reach out for help and you get told that you should have followed the law.

Which you did.

And they stole and possibly murdered your kid for anyway.

By olivedanedraws

Deadass

If you would report an undocumented immigrant to ICE you would have reported me to the Nazis and I don’t fucking trust you

A note:

I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:

Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.

Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.

And then, if you’re asked: no, you haven’t seen anyone residing illegally in the United States. Just people visiting.

Very good very important addition

Essentially, this is the civil society version of a work-to-rule strike.

Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.

In this case:

“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”

“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”

*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*

“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”

And this is correct. You have NOT seen an illegal immigrant, because you have no way of knowing if Jose Fulano is here legally or not. And since you can’t see his paperwork (or lack thereof), and did not personally see him cross the border illegally, you are only answering precisely the question asked.

I’m not American, and I have like, three followers, but this is important.

So, I’m a lawyer, who deals with immigration though does not specialize in it. But here’s the thing(s): 

1) Even someone who’s working could be here on a migrant (or other sort of) visa (hey, there are a few thousand per year, and *someone*’s got to get them, right?) or could be waiting for their case to resolve in immigration court, after having come to America to join a born or naturalized American family member. 

2) Even people who are working improperly could have come into the country legally – and just overstayed their visa or be violating the conditions of their visa, and you have no idea what the niggly little regulations that govern that might be. 

3) If a law enforcement officer asks you about a neighbor/friend/etc., take this moment to remind them that, unlike them, you cannot ask a random person off the street for their ID and be entitled to a response. 

4) Even if someone has told you that they are undocumented, you still don’t know, do you? Humans lie all the time. How could you know for sure? You can’t, because they can’t prove that they have a lack of papers. Just because you haven’t seen papers doesn’t mean they don’t exist! 

5) Don’t ever talk to cops in general. Why are you talking to a cop? Stop that, as soon as it is safe and feasible. 

Love,

a very tired public defender

Every County With A Target Location.

habitable zones