If You Want More Privacy. . .

Since the explosive revelations last month regarding PRISM, NSA's monumental worldwide invasion of communications privacy, people are changing a lot of computer habits.  Goodbye google, hello StartPage.  The number of queries on the DuckDuckGo search engine doubled in less than three weeks.  Cryptocat's volume doubled within that time.

Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is alive and well and living in the White House, in NSA, and in their inconceivably voluminous facility under construction in Utah.  It's worse than Orwellian.  1984 might have been the wrong date, but certainly the right prescient track.

Here are some changes you can make to your internet habits:

DuckDuckGo does not store personally identifiable information about search queries on its servers. You can see exactly how your Google search information is saved and sold, thanks to DuckDuckGo's simple diagram found on its website: http://donttrack.us/.  Check out duckduckgo.com.

StartPage is a non-US based third-party search engine. When you search with StartPage, they remove all the identifying information from your online query and then submit it anonymously to Google themselves. They get the results and give them to you, keeping your information completely private. Your IP address is never stored… your visit is not logged and they don’t place any tracking cookies on your browser.  They make it clear on their website that anyone seeking to subpoena data on users can forget it - there is no data!  Set StartPage as your homepage!  Simply go to startpage.com.

You can keep your intranet chats private by using Cryptocat. This site encrypts all of its users’ messages so that notes between you and family, friends, colleagues or employees stay off the radar.  It might not be available for all browsers, but check out https://crypto.cat/

Besides governments which copy your inbox, hackers, identity thieves, advertisers, and others are after your personal information.  An offshore email account is not free, though the fees are generally reasonable.  Here are some reputable, relatively inexpensive options to consider.

http://www.SwissMail.org/ Based in Switzerland.

http://www.neomailbox.net/ Based in Switzerland.

https://secure.runbox.com/ Based in Norway, which has strong privacy laws. Runbox is generally considered a cheap and quality option.

https://www.jumpshipservices.co/ Parent company is incorporated in Hong Kong with servers located in Switzerland. JumpShip Services - Jumpmail - www.jumpshipservices.co/jumpmail
 

Instead of a US-based cloud storage or data storage company such as DropBox or Google, consider free alternatives based in a friendlier jurisdiction.  Perhaps the best offshore data storage option is Switzerland-based Wuala. Wuala encrypts and stores your files on servers in Switzerland and offers 5 GB of free storage space.

More to come on some easy-to-access, easy-to-use alternatives for the Road Warrioress!

May your road rise to meet you (without spies)!
Ann