Security Quest

This quest started in early May with my newsletter issue on digital security. As I was researching for the issue—hunting down organizations, guides, and tools that independent researchers could use to protect their work—I found a couple resources that I immediately wanted to try. Later in the month, I had the chance to interview a few experts on the subject. I’ll be incorporating more of their wisdom in future episodes, but I summarized it all for you here. And finally, I spent some time poking around the internet and social media for more spaghetti to throw at the wall.

Here’s everything I tried:

• installed Privacy Badger

  • this is a free browser extension that blocks trackers and cookies from following you across webpages

  • developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to digital privacy rights, which is probably the most trustworthy you’re gonna get when it comes to free software

  • super easy to install

  • it’s usually blocking at least two trackers but I’ve seen it go as high as 35, click the badger symbol near the top of your browser and it gives you a report of everything it’s blocking (like aax.amazon-adsystem.com and track.customer.io) and a slider where you can allow the site, or just its cookies, if you really want to

    • (The site with 35 trackers hiding on it was Tech Advisor, which also begged me to turn off my “ad blocker.” Privacy Badger doesn’t block ads, unless they’re also tracking you, so I guess Tech Advisor was just desperate to sell out my data from under me.)

  • some of my browser applications have had a hard time keeping me logged into my accounts since I installed this extension, maybe some of their non-malicious cookies are getting blocked too

  • overall, I highly recommend this extension

• installed Signal

  • after getting assurance from multiple experts that Signal is still the most secure messaging app, I decided to install it on my phone

  • easy to install and figure out how to use

  • following the advice of this Freedom of the Press Foundation article, I went into the app’s settings and set notifications to “no name or message,” so my conversations can’t be scraped off my lock screen

  • I still don’t entirely trust it, I might try Wire instead

• phone privacy settings

  • I found the privacy section in my phone’s settings and turned off location tracking for most apps (other than maps), and advertising tracking

    • here’s EFF’s guide if you want to follow along with your own device

  • then I turned off my phone’s voice assistant’s access to my apps (painstakingly, one-by-one), which prevents your apps from listening to your conversations

    • please follow this All About Cookies guide to shut off Siri’s wire-tap function

• submitted a Delete Request through California’s DROP program

  • data brokers are required to delete your information from their databases if you request it, but they don’t have to start “processing” until August

  • I had to prove I was a CA resident, which meant submitting sensitive information to the DROP portal

  • I also had to tell them exactly what information I wanted deleted, which meant entering it into the portal… I guess I just have to trust that my privacy will be respected this time

  • I’ll give an update on this once August rolls around