Daily Archives: January 15, 2021

Digital privacy is hard work. But now that there is a conversation around it, sparked by the latest WhatsApp policy and terms and conditions that have spooked users, it is a good time to talk about it. By its very nature, the internet is something of an open medium. Over the years, some blinds have been draped over it, doors and windows that can be closed have been created, but still more or less it is an open medium that leaks information. A lot of it is also by design. Tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, even Apple up to an extent, have it in their interest to collect user data. And the more data they can collect, the better it is for them.

Given the nature of the web and connected devices, the only way to be sure of not leaking your private data or identity on the web is to cut the cord. In other words, go incommunicado. Take a hammer, smash all your digital devices, then pick a tin-foil hat, place it on your head and move to deep in hills and woods.

Unfortunately, that is not an option. Unless you are a sanyasi (hermit), and nowadays even sanyasis use smartphones.

So, what do you do? How do you remain connected, keep using various digital services and still maintain some level of privacy and keep your data somewhat safe from the tech companies that want to serve you personalised ads, governments and authorities that want to watch your every move, and political parties that want you tracked because you vote? It is difficult, but not impossible.

Uninstalling WhatsApp, which is clearly in the business of tracking users through metadata, and using something like Signal is a good first step. But it is hardly going to make a difference when it comes to your digital privacy. In fact, WhatsApp is one of the better guys when it comes to collecting user data. Some apps are much much worse than it, apps that you use daily.

Consider this: Almost every app that you use tracks you. Apps want your location data, even apps like a notepad. They want to see how long you are using an app, with who you are talking to, who all are in your contacts, what sort of photos are there in your gallery, at what time you use your phone, where you go, and they do it every time you give them permission. An app will ask for GPS permission because it wants to show you local weather. But once it has permission to GPS, it will misuse it. Sure, it will show you local weather, but will also track your location.

There are a few essential steps you can take.

Be careful of apps

1- You should get rid of any app that you dont need. As in not need badly. And this is for the phone apps as well and the laptop or desktop apps. For example, deleting WhatsApp will not help you much unless you also delete Facebook and delete Instagram. In fact, get rid of all the non-essential apps. If you can live without an app, dont install it. Those Beauty Selfie apps? Dont install them. Those ten payment apps? Maybe install just one. All the video and photo-editing apps? Get rid of the ones you dont use.

Basically, be extremely choosy in the apps that you install on your phone.

2- A lot of times you dont need to use an app. You can use a website. It is always safer and more private to use a website to access a service. This is the reason why companies want you to use an app. They get more data this way. This is why many services like to lure users in installing apps by offering app-only discounts or cashbacks.

3- When you use an app, give it permissions that are absolutely necessary. If a selfie app is asking GPS access, dont give it. If Swiggy or Zomato ask for location info, dont give access to GPS. Just manually add the address. Android and iOS now have the option to give access to apps only when they are in use. Choose this option wherever you can. For example: Why should Google Maps have GPS access all the time. It needs GPS information when it is in use when you have opened it. So give it limited access.

Be careful while web browsing

4- apps are just one part of the story. A lot of data is leaked through web browsing, and you have to be very careful with it. There are a number of steps you can take to keep web browsing relatively private:

Avoid Chrome. Chrome is a data hog. In fact, this Google browser arguably collects more data than any other app. Instead you can choose yo use Firefox. And use Firefox with tweaked settings. Tell Firefox not to remember your browsing history. Tell it to deny access to third-party cookies. Tell it to use HTTPS Over DNS, which will help you avoid prying eyes of your internet service provider.

Get into the habit of logging out of websites. For example, if you log into Facebook and then in the same browser you also do your rest of the web browsing, well Facebook is tracking you. Across the pages. It is done through the code Facebook puts on websites through its network. Google too is doing the same and when you have Gmail open, all the web browsing you do in that web browser is tracked. So, what is the way out? Use a different browser. Maybe you can keep Gmail open in Chrome, but do rest of your web browsing in Firefox or Safari or Edge. It means more work for you and its convenient to keep switching between browsers, but you avoid the tracking cookies of Facebook or Google in this way.

You have to understand this nice and proper: To avoid getting tracked by Google and Facebook ad networks on the web, you must not do web browsing when you are logged into any Google or Facebook service. And no, just closing the tab on which you had Gmail or Google Search will not do. You must log out. In fact, in some cases you must log out twice.

Dont give web pages access to location data. Disable their access to installed programs (defaults).

If you are using Firefox, use it with NoScript. This will break some functionality on web pages, but it will also disable a lot of click tracking, or digital fingerprinting that websites use to collect user data. When you need the full functionality of a website, you can temporarily allow that webpage in NoScript.

You can avoid websites that track you. For example, you can use DuckDuckGo instead of Google to search stuff. You can store photos locally, instead of uploading them to Flickr or Google Photos.

Digital privacy is hard work. This is because you are fighting a battle against some very smart people, and some very big companies that are interested in your data. And you are not just fighting this battle, but you are also fighting your own nature that tech companies exploit. We seek convenience. It is convenient to stay logged into Gmail so that when you open Chrome next morning you dont have to go the through remember-the-password-and-login routine again. But it is also how you leak your data. It is convenient to browse the web without NoScript, but you also leak more data that way. It is convenient to use an app instead of the Amazon website to shop but you also give more user data in an app.

Trying to maintain some level of privacy means making a few tough and inconvenient choices. It means switching between browsers while browsing, it means logging out often, it means giving apps manual permission every time you use them, it means not installing apps that you dont need, it means not uploading photos that show how you looked 20 years ago.

What if you need even more privacy. What do you? There are a few options, it all depends on how much privacy you need.

For seven better privacy, you can use a good VPN. A VPN can mask your actual location and can make digital fingerprinting harder. This is the reason a lot of websites hate VPNs. Even Google Search freaks out when users are on VPN and forces CAPTCHAS on them. It is as if the idea is to make VPNs inconvenient, and Google Search freaking out at VPN users is one good reason to use VPNs.

If you can, move to an iPhone. Now, Apple does track its users but it does so for some of its own specific purposes. It doesnt serve advertisements, and it collects far less information than Google does from Android. Apple is also harder on apps, including apps like Facebook. It wants apps to explicitly explain to users why they need access to something, and iOS allows users to control apps behaviour in a better way.

Although it is not practical, you can use TOR browser for complete anonymity while browsing. Though your browsing experience with TOR will become slow, and some websites will freak out when they cant figure out your IP and location etc. Like we said, privacy comes at the cost of convenience.

What if you need even more privacy? All right, in this case first of all you should get rid of your phone. If you cant do without a phone, then maybe move to a feature phone.

As for connecting to the web is concerned, you can move to something like TAILS, a Linux distro that boots from a USB and is created with the sole purpose of anonymous web browsing. Although if your aim is just to avoid advertisers, TAILS is an overkill.

More here:
Care about privacy? Don't just uninstall WhatsApp, here is what you need to do for private digital life - India Today

The recent update to WhatsApp's terms, which forces users to share private data with Facebook, has been the center of discussions on the internet. The news has also opened the eyes of a large set of smartphone users regarding privacy. Most users don't realise that the commonly-used apps and services are a privacy risk. Thankfully, privacy-focused alternative apps and services are available that you can use instead of the widely used ones.

Chat and communications:WhatsApp, with over 2 billion users, has been the most popular service for conversation and voice/video calls. While it encrypts your chats, the recent update to terms makes it a privacy nightmare for users. The alternative app that you should try instead of WhatsApp isTelegramandSignal. Both of them are ranked highly for user privacy and do not share any user data making them safe to use.

Social Networks:Facebook is the most used social networks across the world. However, as Facebook has grown in terms of users, it has also come under fire for privacy issues. With WhatsApp sharing its user data to Facebook directly now, Facebook now has access to two user data streams, which is a significant privacy issue. The good thing is that you have alternative social networks available that are focused on your privacy. If you prefer a Twitter-like interface, you can check outMastodon, which is ad-free, easy to use and does not collect any information. Other alternatives for social networks you should check out includeDiasporaorSocial.

Browser:Your browser works as your gateway to connect to the Internet. The trouble is that almost all of the commonly used browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari etc.) track the usage and share user data with their parent company. If you are concerned about your privacy, then it would be best to switch to a focussed privacy browser across your devices. Our recommended alternative isBrave browser, which is available across desktop and mobile operating systems. The browser does not track user activity and also comes with a built-in adblocker. The other option to consider isthe Tor Browser, which masks your activity and encrypts your usage data so that no one can track it.

Email:Your email is a significant source of your personal information. This is why almost all of the commonly used email services by users are a privacy risk. Your emails are not encrypted, and the data from your email account is used to show you personalized ads across the various products offered by the parent's company. The only way out is to use a secure email service.ProtonMailis the top choice as an alternative in this scenario. It offers end to end encryption for email and provides the option to self destruct email for additional privacy to the user.

Search engine:While Google is the most used search engine across smartphones and computers, it is not recommended to be used if you value privacy. Google tracks your usage and then uses that information to show personalized ads across products, which is a privacy breach. If you are concerned about your privacy and do not want to be tracked by your search history, then it's time to switch to a privacy focussed alternative such asDuckDuckGo. To avoid this, we recommend changing to a search engine focused on user privacy. DuckDuckGo does not store any user information as it does not track the user this way, it shows the same search results to different users.

More here:
WhatsApp Messenger new terms: Best privacy-focussed apps and services - Moneycontrol

This tutorial shows you how to install Tor browser in Ubuntu Linux. Youll also learn a few tips around effectively using the Tor Browser.

Privacy is one of the most discussed topic these days. From the NSA spying on citizens and governments alike to the Facebook data scandals. Privacy-concerned people are trying to find ways to protect their privacy.

For those concerned about agencies spying on their network, the Tor Project provides some of the best solutions to protect their privacy. The Tor Protocol is one of the most popular tools created by the Tor Project.

Tor Project has its own Tor browser which is based on Firefox and configured to protect users privacy and anonymity by using Tor and Vidalia tools that come bundled with it.

Lets see how can you install and use Tor browser.

The Tor browser launcher has made things a lot simpler to install the Tor browser in Linux. It does everything for you automatically, you just have to install it and run it. So, you should prefer using it to get started.

No matter what Linux distribution you have, the recommended method of installing the latest Tor Browser launcher is using Flatpak.

If you have a software store that supports Flatpak (like Pop!_Shop on Pop!_OS), you can easily search for Tor Browser launcher and get it installed.

In case you prefer the terminal, you should first set up Flatpak if you havent and then type in the following commands:

To run the launcher, type in:

When you run the launcher, it will download the tor browser as shown in the screenshot below. All you have to do is follow the on-screen instructions to continue connecting to Tor and launching the browser.

The Tor browser launcher has been included in the Universe repository of Ubuntu so you can easily use the apt command to install it.

If you are using Ubuntu, make sure that you have the Universe repository enabled.

Once you have that, you can install the Tor browser launcher:

Note that this is not the browser itself. Its just the installer. So, to run the launcher, you need to simply type in:

The Tor browser launcher can be downloaded and run in any Linux distribution. You can find the files and instructions on its download page.

All you have to do is to download the file, extract it, go to the extracted folder and run the launcher. Rest of the steps will be the same what I have shown below.

If you didnt run the launcher yet, you should have the following two entries in your application menu Tor Browser and Tor Browser Launcher Settings. Click the Tor Browser Launcher Icon to start the launcher.

Troubleshoot: Its possible that youll see a SIGNATURE VERIFICATION FAILED error if youve installed it using APT (version 0.3.2). Click on the next section to expand and fix for this problem.

When the download finally finishes, you may see this SIGNATURE VERIFICATION FAILED. The error code is GENERIC_VERIFY_FAIL.

To fix this, you need to refresh the outdated GPG key bundled in the Tor launcher with a new one from Ubuntus keyserver.

You can simply click Start to try again and that should fix it. If that still hasnt fixed the issue, you may use the command below to do that:

Normally, it should show that the key has been refreshed:

Now you need to click on Tor browser again to restart the download and installation. It should be quicker than before.

After the download is done, you will probably see a window as shown in the screenshot below. And show a connection screen. Click on connect to start the browser and connect to the network.

Once it is up and running, youll be greeted with the homescreen of the browser.

Tor browser is now successfully installed and you can browse the internet anonymously and privately now.

This is an old method and should only be used in Ubuntu 16.04 or lower versions if the torbrowser-launcher package is not available.

Thanks to Webupd8, we have a PPA that we can use to install Tor browser in Ubuntu and other Ubuntu based Linux OSes easily (if you are not comfortable installing from source code). Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and use the following commands:

The above PPA should also be valid for Ubuntu 12.04 and other Linux distributions based on it.

If you want to uninstall Tor browser, use the following command:

If you are not happy with the Tor browser (installed via APT), you can remove it using the command below:

If you installed it using Flatpak via software center, you can easily uninstall it from there. If you installed it from terminal, type in the following command:

Now that you have installed the Tor browser, let me tell you a few tips about using it. Its up to you if you want to use some or all of these tips.

Go to the Tor network check page to see if your browser is properly connected to the network.

Maximizing the browser allows websites to access device info such as screen size and resolution. If youre concerned about this, do not maximize the browser. The tor browser even shows you a warning if you do it.

By default, Tor Browser chooses the standard security level. However, you can select Safer and Safest levels. You can learn more about the levels here. To access this menu, click the onion below the tabs and select Security Settings.

Try to use search engines that do not track you. A few examples are DuckDuckGo or Disconnect.me. Tor even sets DuckDuckGo as the default search engine. Also avoid installing browser extensions as they may track you.

As Tor is a hidden network so you may come across a few sites that are illegal or promote shady/illegal activities. Try to stay away from these kind of websites.

Unlike a traditional VPN, Tor doesnt just relay your connection through a single location. Instead, your data is relayed and transferred through a number of locations. This is called a Tor Circuit. You can view your current circuit by pressing the lock icon on the left of your address bar.

Instead of using normal websites, you can use Onion services which are part of the Tor network. Some websites are available in this form. They use a .onion address. A few of them are

Beware of the shady and illegal ones, most of them are available only as a .onion service.

You can read more Tor browsing tips in details here.

Do you like using Tor?

I hope this article helped you in installing Tor browser on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions and thus enabling you to protect your privacy.

Speaking of privacy, VPNs are another popular tool for protecting privacy. Switzerland-based privacy company ProtonMail provides an excellent secure and private VPN service, ProtonVPN (affiliate link). You can get their service as well, if you are interested.

What other privacy-related tools do you use?

Original Author

Contributing Author

Like what you read? Please share it with others.

Read more from the original source:
Easily Install Tor Browser in Ubuntu and other Linux - It's FOSS