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\u2019m still in the world of tech but today, I took the next steps toward further distancing myself from the tech world.<\/p>\n
5-10 years ago, I\u2019d be supported for this decision but now I\u2019m treated like a second class citizen or like one of those people who is Vegan because it\u2019s cool. I\u2019m one of those guys who only uses hand written notes and rocks his tin-foil hat when communicating to someone else. I\u2019m not a conspiracy theorist, I\u2019m not depressed and I\u2019m not leaving the world. I\u2019m just leaving the regular Internet and everyone I know is freaking out about that.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re the customer instead of just a page view. My activities aren\u2019t just sold to the highest bidder, they\u2019re 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\u2019m done. I\u2019m not going to get preachy about this decision because I\u2019m a huge minority here. There is a day in the near future where I won\u2019t 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\u2019s depressing so I feel like I\u2019m 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\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n
Leaving America\u2026.virtually:<\/strong><\/p>\n Step 1<\/strong>: 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\u2019s in the Netherlands and it\u2019s running me about $85 a month. The reason this expense doesn\u2019t bother me is because I am consolidating every paid service in my life so it\u2019s saving me money. Besides the setup part, every web service I use is now installed on it. More on that later.<\/p>\n Step 2:<\/strong> 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\u2019ll lose Hulu and Netflix and other streaming services but I don\u2019t use those anyway so it\u2019s not a loss to me.<\/p>\n Step 3: <\/strong>Order a\u00a0DD-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.<\/p>\n At any time I access any web content via any device in my home, I\u2019m doing so from another country in a fully anonymous stream.<\/p>\n Protecting My Activities:<\/strong><\/p>\n Pre-Shared Keys:<\/strong>\u00a0GPG Keys<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n Using the Tor Browser Suite:<\/strong>\u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n In Safari, using blockers so that advertisers, cookies, trackers and packet sniffers are thwarted:<\/strong>\u00a0I 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\u2019ve gotten almost 90% of the trackers set to deny.<\/p>\n Abandoning all services that don\u2019t take my money:<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019re asked to. Enough.<\/p>\n I deleted all of the social networks I wasn\u2019t already using and I\u2019ll be purging more as time goes along. I\u2019m 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\u2019ve gotten rid of. The purge will happen slowly but it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n This is only the beginning:<\/strong><\/p>\n I really don\u2019t know what\u2019s 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n The future comes faster when your\u2019e have concrete ideals toward how you use technology. Every video game is a digital download, Blockbuster is gone and you\u2019re forced to rent movies digitally. A credit card \u00a0is necessary. For years, I never had a credit card and still don\u2019t have one but my debit card just isn\u2019t really doing it and my credit score is keeping me from getting loans\u2026not 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n I will continue to blog and maybe I\u2019ll 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\u2019t think anyone would go out of their way to read it but I enjoy Twitter, blogging and photography. I just won\u2019t give in further to the way things are going and I\u2019m going to do it on my terms. I\u2019d say you should join me but it\u2019s not for everyone.<\/p>\n Actually, in talking to my Dad about these his response was, \u201cI just don\u2019t use the internet at all and remain cash-only on everything\u201d He\u2019s right but he also was pretty bummed when Blockbuster closed. I feel his pain.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s the world we\u2019re living in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I work a job that issues a smartphone and a computer. I have to attend meetings from home…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-12k","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8271,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2020\/07\/19\/linked-daringfireball-no-longer-about-tech\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":0},"title":"Linked: DaringFireball no longer about Tech","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Twitter:\u00a0 Remember when @daringfireball was about Apple and tech? The occasional political commentary was OK but this is just too much. I love @gruber\u2019s take on most about anything, but I came for the tech commentary and it\u2019s almost absent of it at this point. pic.twitter.com\/dHWnS0mxBT I don\u2019t follow\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4152,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2014\/07\/23\/technology-new-home-network-planning-advice-needed\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":1},"title":"Technology: New Home Network Planning…advice needed.","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019m planning out some home networking changes and posted to Reddit to get some feedback. The readers here are pretty tech-savvy but I think everything is covered. I\u2019m working out a diagram today but the shopping list I think is set in stone.\u00a0 The only research I want to do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2316,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/04\/28\/andrew-hyde-is-on-to-something\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 Andrew Hyde is on to something","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"ABCNews: By all rights Mr. Hyde should reside in an expensive Manhattan condo and dine at the most exclusive restaurants. Instead, Mr. Hyde owns just 15 things and is currently homeless. After leaving his job as community organizer for the New York-based start-up incubator TechStars, Mr. Hyde sold all of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":937,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/08\/16\/bring-ca-to-nh-from-a-tech-perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 Bring CA to NH (From a Tech Perspective)","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First of all, thank you to EVERYONE for the overflowing of advice, encouragement and well-wishes. I'm happy to report I only had one anonymous comment saying, \"guess you just couldn't survive in the big city. glad to see you go. We can go back to having fun. Fuck you.\" When\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5013,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2015\/09\/04\/tech-why-cant-i-get-into-podcasts\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":4},"title":"Tech: Why can’t I get into Podcasts?","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"September 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2026and to a lesser degree, talk radio. I am constantly trying to absorb new information. I read the Times and New Yorker a few times a week, I religiously watch Lynda.com videos almost daily. I read long-form articles from Atlantic, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal and I read non-fiction books about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3410,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2012\/01\/09\/a-year-or-more-away-from-tech-conferences\/","url_meta":{"origin":3988,"position":5},"title":"\u2605 A year (or more) away from Tech Conferences","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The last tech conference I attended was SXSW in March of last year. Prior to that, Blogworld was in between trips to Columbus and Amsterdam. I really love those two shows because of the people, the content and the locations. Austin and Vegas are two of my favorite cities and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Dancing @ Enzo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5060\/5520281583_19841f9ee0_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5060\/5520281583_19841f9ee0_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5060\/5520281583_19841f9ee0_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}