My Take on Privacy

Input methods

On Windows, macOS and iOS, use the system’s built-in keyboard. On Android, use the privacy mode of the vendor’s keyboard, revoke its network access, and grant other permissions only when needed.

Clipboard

I have my own way of using the clipboard. First, pick a text app for everyday use, ideally one that uses UTF-8 and recognises links. Give that app clipboard access and set every other app to “ask”. When you paste the latest item, allow it just once. Paste anything you need to reuse into the text app and copy it from there when you need it.

Advertising IDs

An advertising ID records your usage data. Most of the personalised recommendations you get come from it; the rest mostly come from your clipboard and what you type. Put simply, it tracks your personal data. Don’t allow any app to track you; nobody knows better than you what you want to see.

Passwords

Use a different password for every app and manage them with a password manager. I usually pair Chrome’s password manager with Microsoft Authenticator. When setting passwords, I split them into a core password and an app-specific part: make up a core password and remember it, then add an app-specific part related to the app so you’ll recall it whenever you use that app. My passwords are all over 16 characters, some even 20, except where a site caps them at 15.

Cloud data

In the age of big data, nothing in the cloud is safe. My principle is that I would rather leak data to foreign software than to domestic software, and that’s not about political correctness. You and I are nobodies; we don’t do research and we aren’t officials, so at the national level our data has no value at all. Given that, you should look after your own interests first. Since 2018 I’ve moved to Google’s and Microsoft’s ecosystems. My experience is that when data is stored in China, personalised recommendations about you appear; stored abroad, that has never happened once.

Masking your IP

Level up your technical means and disguise yourself with proxy software, mainly for browsing. Set up a server on your LAN with a soft router, and on the LAN use a MITM approach to rewrite the X-Forwarded-For IP in some apps’ HTTP(S) headers to mask your IP.

Ideas are priceless

Consider every idea you have that is feasible and doesn’t exist on the market yet. Maybe you can’t build it now, but one day when you finally can, you may find someone did it long ago. Once you write it down on an internet-connected device, one casual disk scan plus big-data filtering, and your inspiration and your idea no longer belong to you. That is the technology and wealth monopoly of the big-data era. I deal with it in two ways. The first is to write these notions down with pen and paper. The second is to keep an absolutely offline machine with no wireless hardware and no network cable, plus a hard drive for data; bring the software you need in on a USB stick and create there. You can also build your own private network on top of that, which is how most companies protect their data.

Sensitive information

Don’t register or bind any app with a QQ Mail address unless you have to. Don’t use your real name anywhere on the internet unless you have to. Don’t give your real name for parcels, food delivery and the like. Get a virtual phone number just for delivery apps and other services that expose your number publicly.