I am not a youtubber (would love to become one), don't use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook (and I will never do, I hope). I use every day Whatsapp and dropbox only sporadically for not critical data.
I use GMAIL with Calendar and Contats.
Lately (don't ask me why), I got more interested to understand how my privacy and data in the internet are protected.
10sec later I realize that all my emails, contacts, calendar are in Google hands in some server on this planet. I don´t believe Google will cause damage to me, and it never did in the past (at least I did not notice that...).
What now what bothers me is the feeling there is someone (who could/can/is) always watching me and maybe keeping track of all my activities... I don't like it.
Please I don't want to start a political or ethical privacy discussion here (thread will be locked in hours, I believe), I just want a nice technical discussion what make sense to do in order to protect our privacy.That says what I did so far....
1) At work only Chrome is allowed, so I have there 100% incognito on with uBlock Origin on. When I get home end December I will install Mozilla with noscript and auto cookie delete.
2) Use duckduckgo.com instead of google.com
3) On my Android Phone (yes I know... don't tell me) I installed the excellent Firefox Focus/Klar.
4) Pfsense with pfBlockerNG on (<-- This is very cool and stable! I love it)
Next on my list (with a very relaxed timeline/schedule) is to get rid of GMail.
I spotted this:
https://kolabnow.com/which seems to be okay. (PS: Switzerland was famous to keep the bank info secret, now they want to keep the data secret?
)
Another attack plan (much more time and money cosuming) could be to buy a domain and have a nice server at home which runs IMAP email, ownCloud, Roundcube and Z-Push.
I am considering to buy a VPN service, but it is just shifting the problem I think. TOR is also on my radar, but I read it is slow.
I don't think I will ever be protected in the internet, but at least I want to try to rise the bar a little bit, right now I am just walking with my pants down and a smile on my face I think.
What you smart guys do? Do you have a private server at home? Thanks in advance for the suggestions.
Again please keep it technical, thanks.
TO MOD/ADMIN: IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS POST FEEL FREE TO LOCK IT IMMEDIATELY. MY APOLOGIZES.