Here is my short list of steps for digital control.

Basics

• Reject all cookies. Some sites make this obnoxious, so I wind up trying to avoid them if possible. The UK’s ICO agrees.
• Unsubscribe from email you don’t want or need (or recognize!). Some email clients (like GMail) can do this automatically for you: this is especially handy when unsubscribe links fail.
• Avoid autoplay and infinite scroll, like YouTube taking you to the next video automatically. Disable them or avoid the site.
• Disable, deny, or mute unimportant notifications. Ditto for location services and ads. (On iPhones, that’s usually in “Settings” under each application.)
• Report and delete unsolicited DMs or texts from strangers.
• Silence calls from unknown numbers (use your phone’s settings).
• Practice anti-phishing strategy: check URLs, look for signs of urgency. Here are several informational sites to hone your strategy:
  • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency: “Phishing Attack Prevention: How to Identify & Avoid Phishing Scams”
  • FTC: “Phishing”
  • America’s Cyber Defense Agency: “Recognize and Report Phishing”
• Be mindful. Ask yourself: why am I reading, watching, or consuming this? Who wrote or created it?

Intermediate

• Try an RSS Reader: instead of handing out your email address or social handle to have information shoved at you, collect a list of links to follow for updates when you want them. (Sound too good to be true, like the days when Facebook worked? RSS is almost 26 years old as of this article.)
• Consider alternate browsers and search engines. Recent trends favor engines like Ecosia and Kagi, as well as browsers from Mozilla (though Firefox has been under some fire lately).
• Claw back privacy from invasive trackers. The EFF published a guide on how to limit what Meta can do with your data.
• Be aware of how much time you spend on individual sites (esp. the usual social suspects like Twitter, Instagram, the cesspit that is Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
• Practice skepticism. Many people have something to sell you: question motivations. Study arguments and how and why they are made. Decide for yourself if they are persuasive.
• Find self-awareness: listen to your emotional state as you consume. Are you allowing media to exert pathos-directed influence on you? Why? If it’s genuine, what action does this prompt?
• Use Linux. This is not nearly as hard as it used to be! Ubuntu is the flagship for “user-friendly” distributions, but you might be interested in other variants and distributions¹. Get your local techie friends to help (make some if you have to). According to Iris Meredith of deadSimpleTech, so much surveillance happens through operating systems today: relying on a system that won’t surveil you gives you back control.

Advanced

• Invest in digital privacy. Use your local techie friends for these, too. This usually becomes the costliest step financially, but should lead to the most control. Remember, you don’t have to use most things you don’t want to, and there’s often an analog route to what you seek.
  • You might try a VPN or set up a network-level tracking blocker.
  • What do I do now?: Covers privacy/security, forming community, etc.
  • WIRED guide to protecting yourself from government surveillance
• Use more open-source software. If it goes in a direction you dislike, you always have the right to the source to build, modify, and run it yourself! (This typically comes with an educational cost: you might have to learn to build, modify, and run programs!) Corollary: avoid proprietary platform lock-in. See for example Give Up GitHub; I’ve been eyeballing sourcehut for a while, personally.

Notes

Categories: Blog

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