PRIVACY is up to YOU!

Hello all and welcome back. I hope GOD is blessing you and keeping you safe in these perilous times and with Helene or, what is left of it.

I hope this finds you well. My local AccuWeather blog states the following " At least 44 deaths reported amid catastrophic destruction, millions without power after monster Helene" so it was a major storm we just encountered. My hope is you will keep those that have went through this in prayers over the next few months as they recover from a massive storm.

I have titled this post PRIVACY is up to YOU! I truly believe this! It is ultimately our responsibility to maintain our privacy online. The Internet was never meant to be secure, ever! We choose to put our data out there for anyone to see and once it is out there it is there for ever unless, you want to pay someone to scrape it off the internet and if you do not change your habits you will have to do it again and again. This does not apply to the latest SSA data breach which some company with poor OPSEC or operational security allowed to be access by very bad actors and now we are paying the price. I believe they owe us I never nor you I would venture to say ever agreed to allow them to keep our data forever. My opinion they owe us! Something at least. Furthermore they should be made to change their policies to never allow this to happen again! They the company that got hacked will not agree because it will cost them lots of money to fix it but it MUST be fixed! The reason I am so adamant about this is they are not a social media web site. They dealt with very sensitive data that I never agreed or allow them to access. I never clicked on any agreement or terms of service for them. So enough on the SSA data breach,

Back to the topic. Privacy is up to you!

If you are on any social media at all you had to agree to letting your data to be gathered and used at the companies use or how ever they want to use it. I came to this realization when my wife and I changed cell phone companies. We had been with AT&T for almost 20 years. Maybe longer than that. Anyway I found the new company by accident really. I was on YouTube of all site! LOL. When I ran across a channel that makes content on homesteading or getting off the grid type media. I love channels like these and documentaries of all types. YouTube became my television a very long time ago. My family and I had for more than 20 years had Dish Network for our main television needs. The price just got higher and higher every year and the content remained the same I just got tried of them. My wife and I were empty nester's I guess would be the best description for us then. She only used the satellite service for one show mainly. The Walking Dead. So I went searching and found we could get TMC where her shows were on or owned by them and we could stream them online. The straw that broke the camels back with Dish Network was when they were in negotiations with TMC at the exact same time the new season was coming out and she missed half of the season. That did it she gave me the go ahead to make us satellite free and in turn would save us a lot of money every single month. I am talking 300.00 to 400.00 a month. That is substantial savings for the average family. So back to the point. I was watching the video and it gave the name of a cell service which was unlimited data for 35 dollars a month which could be brought down to 25 dollars a month if you had more people on your plan. The only real catch was your phone may or may not work on their networks. They have a handy way to check on their website using your phones IEMI and other information to check and see if your phone would work on their network. Which I used and found ours would not so we had to purchase new phones however I am getting ahead of myself. I was originally looking for a better way to get internet service due to ours was really poor at the time. I talked it over with my better half told her my plan and bought the cheapest phone they had a ZTE which was only 89.00 dollars then. I bought it received it and set it up as a WiFi hot spot basically. I also bought a WiFi extender and it worked beautifully. If I have not said it before I am a hacker at heart. A hacker is just someone who looks at problems and thinks I can fix this or do this better or cheaper in this case. So now you know Pop Pop is a hacker. Anyway it worked great and served us a very long time and was our main internet for a year. Then it struck me we can save more by switching from AT&T and we did. We bought new phones and saved even more. Now eventually I found an even better deal with Verizon LTE Lite internet that was even faster.

All of this to tell you how big tech is gathering all our data. My wife received her new phone and we installed all her apps. She came to me a few days later saying her Facebook app wouldn't work. I told her the only way I knew of fixing it was to uninstall it and reinstall it. She did and afterwards a pop up came up that stated she had to agree to allow unlimited access to her phone if she wanted to have the app on here device. She did because of family ( grand babies ) and friends etc. I was never a big tech user of any of those apps so I never used them if at all for long. I know if you have the apps on your phone they are tracking you. Whether the app is open or not. I do not like this. No I am not doing anything wrong however it us no ones business but God and myself what I do on my phone. All data can be used against you! Look at the news today they are really targeting Christians and their activities these days. I know most believe protesters maybe targeted most however I find most people stop caring about what anyone that claims to be Christian thinks or what happens to them. Most protest groups during the pandemic that burned buildings to the ground never saw an ounce of justice. Those that stood with God and the bible did.

Okay Okay let me get back on track. So after agreeing to the terms of service, remember that terms of service. She said she caught her devices front facing camera's aperture widening and narrowing on it's own it was software type aperture. Just like when she is taking a picture. I told her I would delete the Facebook app to see if it stopped. She did not do this so I can not prove this theory. I know when I did have the app on my phone I had strange thing that happened also. I was coming home from work and stopped in traffic at a part of the road that was being worked on. There was a young lady that was holding the sign and controlling the flow of traffic when I got a notification on my phone for a friend request on Facebook. I looked at it due to being stopped and found it was the same young lady holding the sign. Now first of all Facebook claims they only suggest friends of friends or what ever they said. I however did not know this young lady. I did have my Bluetooth on because I always use a head set. I have no idea who she was or how Facebook thought I may know her. I did research that one and could not find any friend of a friend that could possibly suggest her as a friend. I became very aware of the tracking of these apps and begin my pursuit into privacy and even anonymity which is a totally separate rabbit hole to go down. I too have to allow some intrusion however I make sure I limit it as much as possible. I love technology but it must have it's limitations. They make billions upon billions on us and give us none of it. While writing this blog post I am watching a documentary on how Google tracks us daily if you allow it. Here is the link. Very interesting and eye opening.

Google Knows your Darkest Secrets = https://youtu.be/yiCP4AwIR78?si=_bkXY8v-kAmdKUIw

I would even say they Google tracks us even if we do not want them to. I use android devices it allows me more control than Apple does. However Google has access to the operating kernel and some state that they are still tracking I am sure I have never or would never allow or say they have my permission to do so. Still I am not sure we can stop it all. I just stay aware and keep my online life as private as I can with good OPSEC. I dive deep into online privacy and anonymity research and implement it on a daily bases.

One of the main things you can do is turn off your location data for everything. Now this is going to create a lot of inconvenience for you if you can deal with that you will start getting some of your privacy back. If you do not want to deal with the inconvenience well you ask for it. Our cell phones are a tracking device anyway with the cell signal always having to ping towers so they still know where you are at all times.

Have you ever been talking about something maybe a product etc. or at a store or restaurant and then go to one of your social apps and have a advertisement pop up for you? You are being tracked.

I also follow a channel called The Hated One on YouTube. Link to his channel is here https://www.youtube.com/@TheHatedOne.

He recently made a video that states "Why phones are more secure than desktops" link to the video here https://youtu.be/Wd4Pa03LvLk?si=1hS19V3vk0lXzDtk.

I am not sure if I agree with him on this one but he makes great points. I am biased I know because I love my desktops. I love my desktop way more than any cell phone I have ever owned. I build my own systems and love doing this. I have had the same computer systems for almost 10 years now and I keep upgrading them. Yes there is a chance they could be hacked but that is the same for your cell phone. It all comes down to your OPSEC. you have to keep your system up to date and do not download any untrusted apps. I stick with the same apps and just make sure they stay updated. I would also like to advise that you do not use the messaging app that comes standard with you phones as they are almost always never encrypted and can be seen by anyone who has access to the servers. Not just the cell phone provider but also our very own government. I am sure you have seen or at least heard about Edward Snowden. Regardless of what you opinion is of him he opened the eyes of the world with what our Government was doing and I am sure all governments are doing the same thing by now in fact I know they are. I know you think President Obama ended it, sorry to break it to you but they are still collecting all data till this day under the guise it is for national security or terrorist activities. If you research you will find they have never caught any terrorist from the data they collect. They are drowning in it and it does no good what so ever. Most local law enforcement use bought data from companies and geofence data that they sometime use that may catch a small amount however again if you do research you will find that some have been falsely accused and sent to prison and thank God someone did their due diligence and found law enforcement were wrong and arrested the wrong person. One, a California man's dad was using his google account and robbed or murdered someone and the police arrested his son due to it was his account etc.

The point is protect your self from everyone at all times. It is a big responsibility but you must do it.

Back to the messenger apps I would recommend Signal or Session. Signal you do have to enter your phone number but they do not keep logs and they are end to end encrypted from signal app to signal app the app and can be locked with a several different types of security as well as well as Session. Session uses the TOR network which may cause some lag time but unlike Signal you do not have to enter a name or number you get a key and QR code you can share with whom ever you wish to text privately with and also get encryption with it. I am not telling anyone this for nefarious reasons those bad actors or people already know about these things. It is the average person that I am concerned with and hope you will encourage you family to do the same.

SO.

Either way Privacy is up to you!

I want to thank this site for the free images they allow bloggers to use.

https://pixabay.com/images/search/privacy/

Well Pop Pop has ranted enough for this post I pray God's Blessing upon you as you go about your week until Next time.

Pop Pop