I work a job that issues a smartphone and a computer. I have to attend meetings from home sometimes and this requires having technology. I also like the advantages of buying content digitally and not relying on a cable company and digital books are superior to the physical ones. I’m still in the world of tech but today, I took the next steps toward further distancing myself from the tech world.
5-10 years ago, I’d be supported for this decision but now I’m treated like a second class citizen or like one of those people who is Vegan because it’s cool. I’m one of those guys who only uses hand written notes and rocks his tin-foil hat when communicating to someone else. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I’m not depressed and I’m not leaving the world. I’m just leaving the regular Internet and everyone I know is freaking out about that.
The writing was on the wall for this ever since the day I wrote that people should only use services that charge them for it, where you’re the customer instead of just a page view. My activities aren’t just sold to the highest bidder, they’re exploited and my life is mapped and used to target ads and now, to possibly convict me of terrorism. When our activities online are not only sold but also used to prosecute us, I’m done. I’m not going to get preachy about this decision because I’m a huge minority here. There is a day in the near future where I won’t be able to buy a new computer or phone where the hacks that allow me to live on the Internet anonymously will be totally gone. It’s depressing so I feel like I’m sort of using the web in the 90s but for the sake of owning my own data and being protected from a maniacal government, it’s worth it.
Leaving America….virtually:
Step 1: Own your own web server, a physical box in a data center outside of political unrest and the long arm of the United States of America. These words are being sent to a server across the world in the Netherlands. In examining the full terms of use, my data center promises to inform me directly any time thy receive a notice from any agency regarding my server. My server is secure, it’s in the Netherlands and it’s running me about $85 a month. The reason this expense doesn’t bother me is because I am consolidating every paid service in my life so it’s saving me money. Besides the setup part, every web service I use is now installed on it. More on that later.
Step 2: Purchase a Secure anonymized Tunnel. My tunnel is out of Finland but on an island away from most government jurisdiction. Once the signal leaves my computer, it goes right into an out of the country service. Yes, I’ll lose Hulu and Netflix and other streaming services but I don’t use those anyway so it’s not a loss to me.
Step 3: Order a DD-WRT FlashRouter. I chose a Cisco box that will be flashed with an operating system that has Quality of Service and IP-Mapping specs that far outweigh that of regular consumer routers and the router maintains my full-time tunnels with my Dutch Server and my Finnish secure tunnel.
At any time I access any web content via any device in my home, I’m doing so from another country in a fully anonymous stream.
Protecting My Activities:
Pre-Shared Keys: GPG Keys are encrypting all of my outgoing emails so all content sent by me is signed and hashed so no longer are my messages sent in plaintext and open to be intercepted by anyone that wants to. I also have an SSL Certificate for my server and computers. This way, all of the services that I want to use are protected by a certificate so only a computer that physical has the cert installed can access some of my content. My server requires HTTPS and the SSL Cert be installed on the computer requesting data. Safe, secure and no more sending my content in plain text.
Using the Tor Browser Suite: I wish I knew more about how this worked but Vidalia and Tor work together to anonymize my online activities via a network of global nodes.
In Safari, using blockers so that advertisers, cookies, trackers and packet sniffers are thwarted: I no longer want to use Safari but if I have to, I have a lot of things installed which make my activities untraceable and it took a while to configure but I had it ask me every time a tracker / sniffer on a website was activated and it was a full day of surfing with lots of prompts before I’ve gotten almost 90% of the trackers set to deny.
Abandoning all services that don’t take my money:
There are utilities that enhance my life and then there are time-wasting social networks and none of them take my money. Most often, my activities are making them money and they cave in to give my data to federal agencies the moment they’re asked to. Enough.
I deleted all of the social networks I wasn’t already using and I’ll be purging more as time goes along. I’m still working on finding alternative open source / paid for software to replace a lot of things. Notable, Flickr, Tumblr, AIM/GChat and pretty much every Google Service that I use (Analytics, Voice, YouTube, Mail) Twitter, app.net and Facebook I’ve gotten rid of. The purge will happen slowly but it’s happening. I now have the server capacity to host all of my own content and life moments. I can open some things up to the public and protect the rest to families that have my pre-shared keys.
This is only the beginning:
I really don’t know what’s going to happen next with this change. My social circle is already very small the people that care about me know how to reach me. You’d be amazed how much turning location services off on your iPhone will affect your day to day getting around. Going back to a dumb-GPS unit and uninstalling every social network and Pandora.
The future comes faster when your’e have concrete ideals toward how you use technology. Every video game is a digital download, Blockbuster is gone and you’re forced to rent movies digitally. A credit card is necessary. For years, I never had a credit card and still don’t have one but my debit card just isn’t really doing it and my credit score is keeping me from getting loans…not my score but my lack of credit entirely. These sort of things are going to get more difficult for me as time goes on. For now, I’m happy with the decision and thrilled to have more control over my data outside of the reach of our government and the capitalist companies that mine our data.
I will continue to blog and maybe I’ll find a 140-character open source application that allows me to post blips to a single page on my web server so I can still tweet but do it on my own terms. I don’t think anyone would go out of their way to read it but I enjoy Twitter, blogging and photography. I just won’t give in further to the way things are going and I’m going to do it on my terms. I’d say you should join me but it’s not for everyone.
Actually, in talking to my Dad about these his response was, “I just don’t use the internet at all and remain cash-only on everything” He’s right but he also was pretty bummed when Blockbuster closed. I feel his pain.
but ya know, Blockbuster had a database as well on every purchase. I bet they sold that off to the highest bidder a long time ago. That’s the world we’re living in.