Archives for January 2025

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” Old adage.

And a picture may be worth even more than a thousand words, including some words you are not aware of and did not intend to share.

When you take a photo with a digital camera or a smartphone, your device collects additional information and stores it with the image. This information is called EXIF data. EXIF is short for Exchangeable Image File Format. It may also be referred to as metadata. Metadata is “data about data.” In this instance, data about the photo.

EXIF data includes camera settings such as the camera model, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, ISO speed and image orientation, as well as the date, time and location the photo was taken. This data is can be very helpful and is used by photo management apps to organize your pictures. Professional photographers may find the camera settings informative and useful.

But are you sure you wish to share with the world the date, time and location you took the photo? This information may be exploited by ne’er-do-wells. In particular, if you share this information while you are traveling, thieves can infer that you’re not at home and target your property (yes, this really happens.) And there are notable instances where this data has been used by law enforcement.

In the post on Social Networking, I mentioned one way to remove this information prior to sharing a photo.  Take a screenshot of the photo using your phone and share the screenshot. Screenshots typically don’t include the same EXIF data that a digital camera or your smartphone captures.

To review and manage EXIF data on your various devices:

• Windows 10/11: Open File Explorer, right click on the photo, select Properties, and select the Details tab.  From there you can view, change or delete EXIF data.
• macOS/iOS: Open the Photos App, select a photo and tap the “i” icon, or use Command-I on mac, to view EXIF data.
• Android:  Open the photo in Google Photos and tap the “i” icon to view EXIF data.
• IOS/Android: You can deny Locations Services to the Camera which will prevent the location from being saved. This is discussed further in the posts on Managing Privacy Permissions.
• MacOS/iOS/Android: Third party apps are available to edit EXIF data. I have no recommendations here. The easiest way to remove EXIF data is to take a screenshot.

The underlying message here is to know what information you are sharing, and make a conscious decision whether or not to share it. The decision is up to you.

On to Private Web Search.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“Inquiring minds want to know what other inquiring minds are inquiring about.” Snarky Friend.

Web search engines are an indispensable tool to help you find what you’re looking for online: what your inquiring mind is inquiring about. Unfortunately, most large search engines are data collection tools that profile you and sell your information to data brokers. Search engines may also censor your search results, denying you visibility into information you have a legitimate right to access.

Data brokers sell your profile to advertising companies which use your data to target you with advertisements. Your information is also sold to other interested parties—financial, healthcare, insurance, government—where your data may be used in ways that adversely affect you. This all happens behind the scenes and without your informed consent.

Most search engines do not respect your privacy and autonomy. You are the product, not the customer.

Private search engines provide great results while also respecting your privacy. They generally limit censorship. Most private search engines are technically metasearch engines. They pull and aggregate information from other search services such as Google and Bing. A few have their own “crawlers” to build and maintain their own search indexes.

• Search engine features to consider include:
• Service provides private, anonymous search
• Services does not collect or sell your personal information
• Service supports https encrypted connections
• Service integrates with common browsers
• Service provides some transparency in results ranking
• Service financial model encourages good behavior: options include contextual advertising, affiliate programs, and donations
• Query responses are fast and provide good results

Given the current state of the marketplace, there is only one private search engine I recommend: Brave Search. Brave Search is provided by the same company that offers the Brave web browser recommended in a prior post. It meets all the criteria above and has it’s own search engine. It is financially supported through contextual advertising. It comes integrated into the Brave web browser by default.

The link to Brave Search is: https://search.brave.com/

To add Brave as a search option in the Firefox desktop browser, from the menu (three horizontal bars in the upper right-hand corner), select “Settings” and then “Search.” Scroll to the bottom and select “Find more search engines.” In the search box “Find add-ons”, enter “Brave Search.” Then select “Add to Firefox.” You can set Brave to your default search engine at the top of the “Settings/Search” page.

In the Firefox phone app, from the menu (three horizontal bars in the lower right-hand corner,) select “Settings/Search/Add Search Engine.” Enter “Brave” as the search engine title, and the following as the URL, “https://search.brave.com/search?q=%s”  Enter “Save.” At the top of the Search screen, you can set “Brave” as your default browser.  (This should be easier, sorry).

If you wish to explore further, MetaGer and DuckDuckGo are reasonable alternatives.

To take full advantage of private web search, always search using a private web browser with your VPN enabled.

Which web search engine did Alice and Bob choose?  As you recall, Alice has a Windows 10 PC to support her personal IT consulting business and a MacBook Pro for personal use. She carries an iPhone for both personal and business calls. Bob has a Windows 10 PC for gaming and an Android phone which he only uses for phone calls. Both installed privacy-modified versions of Firefox for web browsing.

And both added Brave Search to Firefox and set it as their default search engine. Alice appreciated the speed and accuracy of the search results. Bob appreciated that fact that it used its own search index and was not contaminated by those “other” big brother search engines.

Now you must choose. Protect your privacy.  Only search the web with a private web search engine.

On to a discussion of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“Walls have ears.” Dionysius, Greek tyrant of Syracuse.

Dionysius reportedly constructed a cave in the shape of an ear so that he could hear what people were saying in other part of his palace. These days, an ear-shaped cave it not required. IoT devices of all kinds keep tabs on you 24 hours a day. Sometimes without your knowledge or consent. But what is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The IoT is an extraordinarily large collection of physical devices containing small computers, software, and sensors, all connected to the Internet. What they are and what they do varies immensely. Examples include:

• Wearables — smart watches, fitness trackers, health monitors
• Smart home devices — security systems, home lighting systems, thermostats
• Smart audio-visual equipment — home entertainment systems, smart screens and speakers
• Home appliances — ovens, refrigerators, coffee makers, vacuum cleaners
• Voice activated personal assistants — Amazon Alexa, Google Home

The list goes on and on. IoT now even includes your car!

IoT devices do offer benefits. Many appreciate the convenience and control they provide such as the ability to remotely manage home heating, cooling and lighting. Or the sense of safety and security they provide. Who is at the front door? Did I leave the stove on when I left the house? Let me check. Health monitoring, particularly for those with chronic disease, can be especially valuable.

However, IoT devices also come with risks to your privacy and security. These risks vary widely depending on the product and the marketplace. Examples include:

• Companies that market IoT devices seldom prioritize privacy and security. They invest in features, time to market, and reducing cost. Basic security practices are not followed and security features are absent or poorly implemented. As such, these devices are often ripe for exploitation and misuse.
• Privacy policies may be ambiguous, opaque and incomplete. There is little opportunity to make decisions about how your personal data is collected, stored, used and disseminated.
• Products are rapidly overtaken by the market and fall out of support by the manufacturer. Updates to software and firmware are not available. Security vulnerabilities are not patched.
• Products sometimes simply violate their own terms of use. There are known instances when products recorded conversations when such recording was explicitly disabled by the user.

So if you choose to use IoT devices, what steps might you take to reduce your exposure to these risks?

• First and foremost, do your homework. Research products, their terms of use, privacy practices and maintenance support commitments. Prefer well-established, reputable companies which have a history of responsible customer support and whose brand is at risk if they fail to meet their commitments.
• Take the time to understand what options are available to you to secure the product and make decisions on how your personal information is collected and used. Configure the products to conform to your preferences.
• Apply software and firmware updates as they become available.
• Monitor the network usage of the device through your home router, or firewall if you have one. If you observe outgoing traffic you don’t expect or understand, investigate it.

I admit that this discussion feels a little negative, perhaps even grim. At the moment, however, privacy and security of IoT devices is “the wild west.” I would view it as such.

I encourage you to take action to become better informed and understand what information you’re sharing when you use IoT devices, and what are the potential risks. Make a conscious decision what IoT devices to use and how to use them. Don’t leave the decision to others. It’s unlikely they have your best interests in mind.

In the next post, we’ll review private text messaging.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him.” Cardinal Richelieu.

Yikes! Now that I’m retired, I try to avoid even wearing a necktie. And I text more than six lines a day.

Text messaging services provided by your phone company are neither private nor secure. Message content is visible to the phone company and to the account owner. Messaging services provided by the phone company implement the Short Message Service (SMS) protocol. SMS was not designed for privacy, therefore you should assume that your messages might be viewed by third-parties.

The iMessage service provided on iPhones is much more secure. Message content is protected by an encryption key held only on the sending and receiving devices. However, iMessage only works between two iPhones, not between and iPhone and Android device. And if you backup your messages to iCloud, and fail to enable Advanced Data Protection, Apple may disclose your messages under subpoena (see the post on Backup and Recovery).

Further, while the content of iMessages is encrypted, metadata such as the contact with whom you’re chatting can still be accessed and disclosed under a subpoena. This includes information like the sender, recipient, and timestamps of messages.

Private and secure messaging services protect your messages in-transit and at rest. They retain very little metadata associated with your messages, and therefore cannot disclose much data under subpoena, or for any other purpose.

Private messaging features to consider include:

• Service provider and servers are located in a good privacy jurisdiction
• Service has been reviewed by third-party auditors
• Service provider has no access to messages and has little or no logging
• Product is open source and has had extensive expert community review
• Strong end-to-end encryption is employed
• User-friendly apps are available for major devices and operating systems
• Service supports text, voice, video, document, and picture messages
• Service provides for group messaging
• Messages can be time limited and can self-destruct at all end points

The only private messaging service I recommend for most users is Signal. While Signal is owned by a U.S. based non-profit, it’s open-source and has been extensively reviewed by security professionals. It otherwise meets the criteria above and has a broad user-base. A broad user-base is important. You can’t message family and friends if none of them are using the same messaging service. It’s free for all users and supported by donations.

Signal may be found at: https://signal.org/

A phone number is required to register. This is a concern for some. It’s possible to register with a second phone number, a process I will not further discuss here.  It is now also possible to identify yourself to those with whom you message with a user name instead of your phone number if you would prefer not to share your number with others.

If you choose Signal, I recommend you become familiar with its features, in particular, how you verify the identity of people you are messaging. If you use it, please make a donation.  Fair is fair.

If you wish to explore further, Wire and Threema are reasonable alternatives.

And if you are messaging over an Internet connection, remember to enable your VPN.

Now what did our friends Alice and Bob do?

Alice carries an iPhone for both personal and business calls. She installed Signal on her phone and required her business associates and customers to use Signal for all business related messaging. She was, after all, an IT professional. She cajoled and wheedled family and friends to join her on Signal with some success. For those friends that chose not to do so, she is perfectly comfortable using iMessage to communicate with them if they has an iPhone. For her Android friends, she suffers SMS messaging for inconsequential communications. For things she cares about, she calls them. And she still receives SMS two-factor authentication codes (2FA) from services that provide no other option. This is not a great option in her view, but it’s better than nothing (see the post on Password Management).

Bob only uses his Android phone for phone calls. The one exception he grudgingly makes is text messaging with Alice and his older sister. They refuse to message him unless he uses Signal.  And they bake him cookies. He has no choice. He also accepts SMS 2FA codes, cursing and wailing, when there is no other option.

Now it’s time for you to take action. Keep your private messages private. It’s up to you.

Next we’ll discuss virtual credit cards.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“I went to a general store, but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.” Steven Wright.

Specifically, have you ever had to cancel a credit card after it was used to purchase something that you did not order? Or struggled to cancel a subscription that renewed itself on your card against your wishes? Or had unexpected fees show up on your card after a purchase was completed?  If so, you are not alone. And canceling and replacing a credit card is a major inconvenience.

Enter virtual cards.

A virtual card, sometimes called a temporary or anonymous card, is a credit or debit card that does not come with a physical card. Virtual cards can be utilized for most online purchases in lieu of a physical card.
Virtual cards are offered by some major credit card companies. American Express, Capital One and Citi are examples. There are also third-party providers of virtual cards. Privacy is one such provider. The terms and conditions of virtual card providers vary considerably, so it’s essential that your thoroughly explore your options before choosing a provider.

Privacy may be found at: https://privacy.com/

Virtual cards offer the following benefits:

• Virtual cards can be instantly opened, paused or closed online. If a virtual card is paused or closed, it does not affect the underlying physical card or bank account. This is especially useful if the virtual card number is exposed in a breach or fraudulently used.
• Virtual cards shield your underlying financial information from the vendors you are purchasing from.
• Third-party virtual cards shield your purchases from your financial service providers (banks and credit card companies).
• Virtual cards can be restricted to one-time use, a single vendor, or a market category.
• Virtual cards can have a maximum spend limit per transaction, or in totality.

There are several cautions to be aware of. If you wish to return an item purchased with a one-time virtual card, and the store only gives you the choice between a refund to the original payment method and store credit, you might have to choose the latter. Or, if you make a hotel reservation online, and are asked to verify your identity at check-in with the card you used to make the booking, a virtual card might present a problem. So be thoughtful about how you use virtual cards.

Virtual credit cards are not the same as digital wallets, although it may be possible to add a virtual card to a digital wallet as a payment option. Digital wallets are apps, normally on your cell phone, that can be used in lieu of a physical card to make purchases in-person. Examples include Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. Digital wallets are a topic in and of themselves. If you choose to explore them further, I recommend you carefully review their privacy policies and make sure you’re comfortable with how your personal financial data is being used and disseminated.

And virtual credit cards are not a cryptocurrency. Your transactions are not anonymous. While a third-party virtual credit card does shield your purchases from your bank or credit card provider, your transactions are recorded and subject to the same financial regulations as any other financial service provider.

Adding virtual cards to your privacy and security toolbox increases your control of your personal and financial information without sacrificing the flexibility and convenience of shopping online.

As with all financial management decisions, do you homework and proceed with deliberation.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.” Johann Kaspar Lavater.

While email is not quite as venerable as communicating with paper and a quill pen, as a technology, it’s ancient. It’s also fundamentally insecure. So Dr. Evil and his minions don’t need to enter your room and turn over your papers, there are a variety of ways to steal your information if it’s shared in an email. And large commercial e-mail providers use your emails to profile you, and those profiles are sold to others.

Private email services protect your information from prying eyes, and don’t collect and share your information with third parties. Your emails are end-to-end encrypted if sent to another user on the same email service, and are stored encrypted in all instances. Your emails may still be exposed in transit if the sender or receiver is on a public or corporate email system such as Gmail or Microsoft Outlook.  However, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Take what actions you can take to preserve your privacy.

When selecting a private email service, here are some features to consider:

• Service provider and servers are located in a good privacy jurisdiction
• Product is open source and features/claims have been verified by third party audit
• Multiple email addresses are supported in one account
• Service provider maintains little or no logs of customer usage and has no access to email content
• Strong encryption is employed for data at rest and in-transit within the service
• User-friendly apps are available for major devices, operating systems and browsers
• Import/export of existing mail and contacts is supported
• Contacts, calendar and inbox search is supported
• SPAM filtering is supported
• Service has a good reputation in the marketplace with responsive support

I recommend the following two private email services: Proton Mail and Tuta Mail.

Both services are in good privacy jurisdictions. Proton Mail is based in Switzerland and Tuta Mail in Germany. Proton Mail is open source in part and has been subject to third party audit. Tuta Mail is open source and has been extensively reviewed. Both support multiple e-mail addresses, log little user data, provide strong encryption, and offer user friendly apps for all major platforms and devices. Tuta Mail can import email messages and securely search on the content of messages. Proton Mail cannot import messages and can only search on the subject line of emails. Both provide tools for SPAM filtering (Proton Mail is more sophisticated) and have good reputations in the marketplace. Proton Mail is a bit more expensive however, both services cost less than $50 per year, and both offer significant first year discounts.

Both services can share encrypted emails with external email services, but a secret key must be shared with the recipient.

Proton Mail is generally thought to have a more attractive interface and does have a larger user base. Tuta Mail is objectively more secure. Proton Mail cannot encrypt the subject line of an email while Tuta Mail encrypts the entire email. And Tuta Mail supports anonymous account registration while Proton Mail does not. That said, both are excellent options.

The link to Proton Mail is: https://proton.me/mail

The link to Tuta Mail is: https://tuta.com/

For extra credit, consider a disposable email service. A disposable email address is a temporary email account that allows users to receive emails without providing their permanent email address. It is used to avoid spam and unwanted emails. These email addresses expire after a certain period of time, making them perfect for one-time use. A related market segment is anonymous email services.  They serve much the same purpose purpose, however, email addresses persist until you choose to cancel them.

A disposable or anonymous email service is not the same as using multiple email addresses (sometimes called aliases) in the same account. They sit in front of your primary email service and shield it from spam and third party scrutiny.

There are a number of such services in the marketplace. A representative disposable email service is Burner Mail. A representative anonymous email service is SimpleLogin.

The link to Burner Mail is: https://burnermail.io/

The link to SimpleLogin is: https://simplelogin.io/

In the next post, we’ll see how our friends Alice and Bob met their private email needs.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

So how did our friends, Alice and Bob meet their private email needs?

Alice polled her friends and discovered a number of them were already Proton Mail users, so she selected Proton Mail as her private email service. She purchased a business account for her IT consulting business, provided her business associates with Proton Mail accounts, and encouraged her clients to also use the service. Some clients did, and some did not. For those clients who chose not to use Proton Mail, she sent sensitive emails using a secret key she exchanged with them using Signal.

She took advantage of the capability to have multiple email addresses in the same account, and used several for her personal email. For her personal email, she created separate email addresses for sensitive communications, newsletters, shopping, and odds-and ends.  Over time, she migrated emails from her legacy Gmail account to Proton Mail, starting with sensitive accounts to include her bank, credit cards and healthcare providers. She was aware that  emails sent from sensitive accounts were not encrypted in transit, but appreciated the fact that they were encrypted at rest, and therefore could not be viewed, aggregated or shared with third parties by Proton Mail. She had some concern that the subject line of her emails were not encrypted, and took care not to put sensitive information in the subject line.

She kept her Gmail account open. She had had it so long, she was not quite sure what was connected to it, and did not want to miss any notifications or emails from old friends.

Alice also purchased a subscription to SimpleLogin. This anonymous email service shielded her primary email accounts from spam and also gave her maximum control over the anonymous email addresses.

Bob opted for Tuta Mail given it’s superior encryption approach. He migrated every legacy email account over to Tuta Mail, using multiple email addresses to keep his communications separated in his inbox. He tried, quite unsuccessfully, to convince his bank to communicate with him over Tuta Mail. When they declined, he sulked a bit and got over it.

Bob also established a free account on Burner Mail which he used to confuse and irritate spammers.

It’s now time for your to choose. Protect your emails. Keep Dr. Evil at bay.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” Abraham Lincoln.

I could also have gone with “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you,” from The King and I.

Social networking has become an essential and inescapable part of our social fabric. At it’s most positive, it enables us to meet new friends, renew old friendships, and stay engaged with family and friends across the country and around the world. But like any tool, it can be used for good or for ill. In it’s darker moments, it’s a channel for manipulation, intimidation, disinformation, hate, grievance and fear, as well as serving as an Orwellian surveillance telescreen. (See the post on Social Networking).

Is it possible to reap the benefits of this technology in a safe space where we have control over what we see and who we interact with, where our personal information is not exploited, and where our privacy is respected?

The answer is a qualified, yes. Privacy-focused social networking services are emerging. There are a growing number of such sites, and things are changing rapidly.  I recommend just a few here for your consideration.

Mastodon and BlueSky are free, open-source, federated, decentralized microblogging platforms. Users can share short posts containing text, images, videos and links to external sites. Users have control over whom they interact with and what content appears in their feeds. They both serve as privacy-enhanced versions of X/Twitter. There are no ads, and personal information is neither aggregated nor sold. Their business models are evolving, but at the moment they are supported by some combination of investment, donations and sponsorships. Both have millions of users and are growing.

The link to Mastodon is: https://mastodon.social/

The link to Bluesky is: https://bsky.app/

Pixelfed is a free, open-source, federated, decentralized image sharing platform. Users can share images, videos, stories and collections. Users have control over whom they interact with and what content appears in their feeds. It serves as a privacy-enhanced version of Instagram. There are no ads, and personal information is neither aggregated nor sold. Its business model is evolving, but at the moment it’s supported by investment. It has half a million users and is growing.

The link to Pixelfed is: https://pixelfed.org/

While all three of these services are privacy-focused in the sense that they do not aggregate or sell your personal information, they are not necessarily secure. What you post publicly, or perhaps even privately in direct messages, could be surreptitiously collected by hackers.

What does it mean to be federated and decentralized?  In short, it means that there can be multiple instances of a service, each under separate administration, and each interoperating with all other instances. Imagine that you took X/Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook and seamlessly connected them so you could post anything from anywhere and all your followers would be guaranteed to see it. And if you wanted to leave one platform for another, you could bring all your content and all your followers with you. This model is called by some the Fediverse.

While not federated or decentralized, I would be remiss if I did not mention Signal. We discussed Signal at length in the post on Private Text Messaging. For small groups of people who know each other, it’s a great platform to privately and securely share text, images, videos and links.

As we discussed in the post, Show Me The Money, business models matter. It’s not clear to me that the current business model of any of these services is sustainable over the long term. Expect them to evolve. And if we are all better served if they don’t migrate to an ad-based revenue model, be prepared to pay a subscription fee in the future. Infrastructure, operations and content moderation cost money, and to the workmen their wages. Speaking for myself, I would rather pay a modest fee for a service I value than be the product.

So how might you proceed?  I suggest you take one or more of them out for test drive and see how they suit you. As you do so, be thoughtful what you choose to share.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.

“Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.” Dave Barry.

Congratulations and well done (again)!

We’ve covered a lot of ground together. You’ve implemented your strategy for backup and recovery, password management, anti-malware protection and full disk encryption. Automatic updates are enabled for your operating systems and applications. You’ve taken steps to manage your privacy permissions and understand secure file deletion. And along the way, you’ve learned how to freeze your credit report, avoid getting scammed, tighten up your privacy settings on social networking sites, find a lost or stolen device, and lock your phone account.

That’s a lot. Your digital devices are now much more secure.

You’ve also taken action to preserve your privacy while accessing the Internet with virtual private networks (VPNs), private web browsers, web search, text messaging, and email. You’ve also learned how to securely sell or donate a device, manage metadata in photos, protect yourself when using the Internet of things (IoT),  take advantage of virtual credit cards, and explore privacy-focused social networking services.

You are now much more secure when accessing the Internet.

We’ve come to the end of our time together. I hope you’ve found it helpful and I very much hope you’ve taken action. While it’s not possible to protect yourself from every conceivable threat, it’s empowering to control what you can and take charge of your privacy online.

I will review and update these posts if there is a significant change in the marketplace or the information environment. If I make a change, I will note that fact in the post and in the index.

I can be found on Mastodon at @[email protected]  I will comment on more topical issues there.

I wish you well in your journey.

Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.