I've been listening and reading some of the rumblings about Google but I didn't know about the possible censoring. It looks like I will need to clear out my Google drive and move everything over to my own personal cloud servers.
I set up my own personal network domain with servers about three years ago. It looks like that may pay off more so now. I have several terabytes of storage available between two servers so I think I'm good for a while. I also have my own VPN server mounted on my equipment so when I connect, I'm not using anyone else's service. I don't need to use it at home but it works well anywhere in the U.S. that I have a good internet service.
I also set up some Linux virtual operating systems on virtual hard drives a couple of years ago but I stopped playing with them and moved them to one of my servers. Maybe I need to consider moving them back to one of my PC's? I will most definitely do that if I start seeing any form of censorship on the traditional browsers. I will most assuredly be watching my Google browser now. I prefer it over Edge, as far as capabilities go but security is more important. I will also switch my Substack email back to my European email server away from Google. It may be time to start divesting myself away from Google and it's parent Alphabet and minimize my Meta exposure.
Another sign that bad things are coming for the people of the United States.
I will try to not sound too IT geeky here. Back in 2021, I purchased a Dell tower server computer and mounted a Microsoft 2019 server operating system on it. I now have my own DNS, DHCP, and other IT domain network services set up on it so all I need to do is some minor security systems patches and such now and again. I am nearly completely isolated on the world wide internet with robust firewalls and a double layer domain IP address scheme (two sets of private IP subnets with firewalled switches and routers).
Two years ago, I purchased a second standalone storage server that came with all kinds of open source apps, one of which was a OpenVPN server option, which I coded and set up myself. Now, whenever I'm on the road somewhere, I can turn on my VPN that connects to my VPN server, and I have access to all of my shared network folders and files on my servers.
The thing about all of this, is that you need a computer science degree or, if you're like me, a vocational tech education in IT network engineering, with CompTia certifications, in order to have the education to set all of this up and keep it all running. You can do a skeleton version of this if you want, without all of the education, by watching a bunch of YouTube videos, if you have some minor IT networking skills.
By maintaining my own servers and a private network, the only public access I have to the world is my own public IP address assigned to my system. For less than $30 a year, I am able to mask my network from the world with a special IP address. I will admit that I have spent a lot of money over the last few years to set all of this up but it is money well spent. My computing equipment cost me several thousand dollars to acquire and set up (not all at once). It costs me a little in small subscription services to keep me off the internet grid but I have no regrets. The less my ISP knows what I'm doing the better. I also have solar panels so my electrical footprint is minimal.
The only other security service I have is mounting my personal website on a domain and hosting server with a company in Italy. My user data and privacy requirements are coded in accordance with the stronger EU requirements, and with the U.S., to a lesser degree (U.S. standards are not as high as the EU). By keeping the website offshore, I don't run the risk of American censors so much. All of my web space site and data privacy compliance services are through EU zone companies.
I realize this is a bit lengthy and if you need any help understanding any of the geek speak, let me know. I also offer offline IT consulting services, free for my friends. If you want more info, I can give you an email address and I can answer questions there, if you need.
I was the same way a few years ago when the VA offered to send me back to school. I chose IT network engineering as my major and graduated at the top of my class from a IT vocational school in Austin, TX. I moved to Virginia within days of graduation and I've been working in IT ever since. I am now semi-retired at 69 but I still do the occasional gig jobs or consultations. Between my military retirement and the generous salary I was receiving from the state when I was working for them, I managed to put my system together and now, I spend a minimal amount to keep it all going.
There are less expensive ways to protect oneself but with Trump's Gestapo agents running all over the country, those American options are becoming less secure anymore.
The algorithms on Medium.com are now showing me more articles being written by dissatisfied Substack writers so I'm taking notice. I may be looking at different writing options myself soon. I am going to start looking into other browser and search engine options as well. The Linux based OS's are one option but they're limited so I will be thinking about them a little more before I make that move. It's a changing world, and it's changing whether we like it or not. We either change with it or suffer the consequences.
I got my Proton account about 3 years ago and love it. The service is based in Switzerland, so is not subject to our current fascist regime stranglehold. They also offer file storage for a small fee. At this point, it’s worth it to invest in my security/privacy. I feel very secure ‘privacy wise’ within Proton’s system.
I use Brave as my main internet search engine.
Using Optery for cleaning up my presence on the web…rated the most comprehensive service.
I know I can’t eliminate all my info, but at least trying to reduce as much data as I can.
I will do a little checking on that. Thank you. I don't need the file storage but a different non-American web browser platform is worth looking into. Linux is an option but as I mentioned to someone a minute ago, those OS platforms are more limited. I'm not ready for that just yet.
External hard drive to your computer. I have some stuff on the cloud but backup is hard disks, dvds, cd, books. One woman in the arts field alerted her audience that the software used to upload to the cloud, is appropriating, artwork, stories etc and trademarking it as their own. YOUR WORK. They were caught and are reviewing the clause.
NEVER TRUST THE CLOUD
CENSORSHIP
Has been going on for a long time. We are more aware of it today. It doesn’t matter which party you follow, they are the same in surveillance, deleting, and obfuscation.
I live in the boonies. I am bugged out, and on my own. We rely on starlink for connections to internet and streaming. Last Friday there was an outage that was world wide. Roughly four hours for some. It came back but, tinfoil hat, I think it was a test, and a threat.
Definitely external hard drive. Got one. Forgot to mention. Yeah, it's probably time for a post and a trip back to cybersecurity world to shore things up.
It is really getting crazy. I like British mysteries been stocking up on the DVDS. Also one person talked about watermarking, or password protecting PDF.
I recently inherited an old iPad. It works fine, but has newly reminded me how exposed we are on the internet, not that I didn't already know. Surfing YouTube videos and the advertising that comes up makes it amply apparent. Got ringing in your ears? Yes, I do! Hey, have we got some snake oil for you. I generally don't see this crap, because my Linux based Mac gives me plenty of ways to block the annoyance, the old iPad, IDK, probably, but what's the dif, other than eliminating annoyance? Doesn't mean they aren't collecting copious data, regardless. They are. We've known this for decades.
I have a Google Drive account with barely anything on it. Hard drives are cheap. I have never understood backing up to the "cloud." So you can show cat photos in the grocery store on your phone? It's ridiculous, and all those servers chugging away, heating up the planet, WTF?
I don't search with Google either. Duck Duck Go is non-invasive, or so it's claimed. Who knows? And then you get a 3000 word terms of service update, LMAO.
No doubt I should ditch Gmail, but why bother. If you're online there are no secrets. If you're publishing against the status quo, you're at risk. Is what it is.
Give brave, smart, Jessica some paid subscriptions if you haven't. Her work is invaluable.
I understand that wide search coverage costs a lot, and it's logical to not make their own crawler that big. reliance on an external service is financially reasonable, but exposes you to censorship, and it's hard to make your own bot index exactly what's excluded by your vendor.
I recently read that Google is skewing results for its own ends. I use it for image sources only when I'm trying to identify and credit photos in the articles I publish. DDG doesn't seem to do that well. Do you have a suggestion for a better search engine?
I've used Linux since 2000 and recommend it as a viable open source alternative to Windows, MacOS, and Google Chrome. I also have de-Googled my life as much as possible by recently replacing Google Android with GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. GrapheneOS is an open source version of Android. Meanwhile, I don't miss the other stuff. There are plenty of alternatives from A to Z.
All I know is I’m so grateful to have been following you for quite some time (early pandemic on🐦) and you remain without question my number one go to. When I’m able. I’ve withdrawn from keeping up on daily readings feeling the pressing need to retreat and chill the weary brain yah know? I feel like I’m sinking in this increasingly deplorable world and at my age I guess that’s kinda normal? (Boomer here) Just when I think I’m “kinda” up to date on relevant tech stuff I realize comparatively I’m totally in the dark ages. I appreciate this heads up post plus reading the comments here despite it sounding like a foreign language to me. I guess life has caught up to this grandma or should I say I can’t catch up on life and what it realllly takes anymore. ::sigh::
Thanks for always having our backs Jessica…& staying in the loop of a convoluted life. Even if I’m unable to implement all I read/should/need to, somehow just reading your work helps me feel properly connected. You invest SO much time into researching for us and it’s invaluable.
I’m glad your daughter benefited from your plan of COVID care action. Nice work momma bear. I look forward to your new creative writing journey. Take care.
A very valid warning Jessica. I cleared out of Google some time ago. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a number of years. Any private/sensitive/creative work goes onto external hard drives. I have ended up with a headache of hard drives to manage but my data is safe and it is formatted so I can read it all on a Ubuntu iMac. T’interweb can now fall over. Which it will!
I'm pretty sure substack uses AWS for their email and runs on public cloud to manage everything else. One way or another, the Christian Nationalists will probably find a way to out Virgin Monk Boy and his scrolls. Another repeat of Russia invading Mount Athos is certainly in the near future.
Even with VPN, Substack and their Cloud provider (AWS) Still knows
Who subscribes to you (name/email)
What content you publish
Any metadata collected server-side (browser fingerprints, analytics, payment info, etc.)
If the government sends a subpoena or court order to Substack or AWS, a VPN won't stop that from going through. Your identity as a writer or your content could still be traced via payment systems (Stripe), email logs, or even the domain registrar.
If the infrastructure itself gets deplatformed—like if AWS cuts off a site entirely—VPN won’t help. You’d need mirrored hosting or an alternate publishing pipeline.
Thanks for this awesome post (and for linking to your herbal antiviral protocol)! Something I've also found useful for my day-to-day hygiene is a nasal saline rinse. I do it once to twice a day, depending on how "into the world" I need to go. The first one is when I come home from said outing. The last one is always after I brush my teeth before bed. It seems to have a good track record in the research papers too. Here's one:
Also, for folks who are interested, I did a piece earlier in the year on about how to get 90% free of Big Tech. Over the last several weeks, I started to make a fuller transition out of the Google ecosystem, since those who had been sharing Google docs with me for editing/etc. finally have started doing the same. If it's helpful, I can write more about that too.
I’ve used Linux for decades. It used to be pretty tricky but now it’s very simple. Setting up a dual boot system takes a bit more doing, but still completely doable for most. So…don’t be intimidated! I like the ‘Mint’ version or ‘distro’ in geek speak.
Please expose this loathsome character to the world, his smut, his corruption, his thugs and their smut. Let everyone know, read, find global media outlets. The take down of democracy can happen anywhere given that the multi-rich work as a corrupt machine and the techies are everywhere. People should be aware of the playbook and have ways to avoid it. Go global with a smear campaign.
I think ive noticed this on some issues. Trump ideas are front and center and a few opposing articles below if you do a long scroll.
People need to report to the world the playbook on the take down of US democracy by the megarich and techies and all the smut on these thugs. This will happen again
Mercola has been warning about this for a long time. Google and other platforms, including mainstream media, have been censoring for years. Anything deemed "anti-vax" was labeled conspiracy or misinformation, and they vilified early off-label treatments. Good for you using supplements to help prevent/treat COVID. Just as well you don't qualify for vaccines. They don't prevent infection and carry risks. Check out React19.org.
I've been listening and reading some of the rumblings about Google but I didn't know about the possible censoring. It looks like I will need to clear out my Google drive and move everything over to my own personal cloud servers.
I set up my own personal network domain with servers about three years ago. It looks like that may pay off more so now. I have several terabytes of storage available between two servers so I think I'm good for a while. I also have my own VPN server mounted on my equipment so when I connect, I'm not using anyone else's service. I don't need to use it at home but it works well anywhere in the U.S. that I have a good internet service.
I also set up some Linux virtual operating systems on virtual hard drives a couple of years ago but I stopped playing with them and moved them to one of my servers. Maybe I need to consider moving them back to one of my PC's? I will most definitely do that if I start seeing any form of censorship on the traditional browsers. I will most assuredly be watching my Google browser now. I prefer it over Edge, as far as capabilities go but security is more important. I will also switch my Substack email back to my European email server away from Google. It may be time to start divesting myself away from Google and it's parent Alphabet and minimize my Meta exposure.
Another sign that bad things are coming for the people of the United States.
Can you share some more info on your VP and personal domain network? I've got a VPN service but think your approach sounds more secure.
I will try to not sound too IT geeky here. Back in 2021, I purchased a Dell tower server computer and mounted a Microsoft 2019 server operating system on it. I now have my own DNS, DHCP, and other IT domain network services set up on it so all I need to do is some minor security systems patches and such now and again. I am nearly completely isolated on the world wide internet with robust firewalls and a double layer domain IP address scheme (two sets of private IP subnets with firewalled switches and routers).
Two years ago, I purchased a second standalone storage server that came with all kinds of open source apps, one of which was a OpenVPN server option, which I coded and set up myself. Now, whenever I'm on the road somewhere, I can turn on my VPN that connects to my VPN server, and I have access to all of my shared network folders and files on my servers.
The thing about all of this, is that you need a computer science degree or, if you're like me, a vocational tech education in IT network engineering, with CompTia certifications, in order to have the education to set all of this up and keep it all running. You can do a skeleton version of this if you want, without all of the education, by watching a bunch of YouTube videos, if you have some minor IT networking skills.
By maintaining my own servers and a private network, the only public access I have to the world is my own public IP address assigned to my system. For less than $30 a year, I am able to mask my network from the world with a special IP address. I will admit that I have spent a lot of money over the last few years to set all of this up but it is money well spent. My computing equipment cost me several thousand dollars to acquire and set up (not all at once). It costs me a little in small subscription services to keep me off the internet grid but I have no regrets. The less my ISP knows what I'm doing the better. I also have solar panels so my electrical footprint is minimal.
The only other security service I have is mounting my personal website on a domain and hosting server with a company in Italy. My user data and privacy requirements are coded in accordance with the stronger EU requirements, and with the U.S., to a lesser degree (U.S. standards are not as high as the EU). By keeping the website offshore, I don't run the risk of American censors so much. All of my web space site and data privacy compliance services are through EU zone companies.
I realize this is a bit lengthy and if you need any help understanding any of the geek speak, let me know. I also offer offline IT consulting services, free for my friends. If you want more info, I can give you an email address and I can answer questions there, if you need.
I wish I could afford that! Sounds amazing. I haven’t had networking courses, etc., in 30 years and am very out of date. 🤦♀️
I was the same way a few years ago when the VA offered to send me back to school. I chose IT network engineering as my major and graduated at the top of my class from a IT vocational school in Austin, TX. I moved to Virginia within days of graduation and I've been working in IT ever since. I am now semi-retired at 69 but I still do the occasional gig jobs or consultations. Between my military retirement and the generous salary I was receiving from the state when I was working for them, I managed to put my system together and now, I spend a minimal amount to keep it all going.
There are less expensive ways to protect oneself but with Trump's Gestapo agents running all over the country, those American options are becoming less secure anymore.
The algorithms on Medium.com are now showing me more articles being written by dissatisfied Substack writers so I'm taking notice. I may be looking at different writing options myself soon. I am going to start looking into other browser and search engine options as well. The Linux based OS's are one option but they're limited so I will be thinking about them a little more before I make that move. It's a changing world, and it's changing whether we like it or not. We either change with it or suffer the consequences.
I got my Proton account about 3 years ago and love it. The service is based in Switzerland, so is not subject to our current fascist regime stranglehold. They also offer file storage for a small fee. At this point, it’s worth it to invest in my security/privacy. I feel very secure ‘privacy wise’ within Proton’s system.
I use Brave as my main internet search engine.
Using Optery for cleaning up my presence on the web…rated the most comprehensive service.
I know I can’t eliminate all my info, but at least trying to reduce as much data as I can.
I will do a little checking on that. Thank you. I don't need the file storage but a different non-American web browser platform is worth looking into. Linux is an option but as I mentioned to someone a minute ago, those OS platforms are more limited. I'm not ready for that just yet.
External hard drive to your computer. I have some stuff on the cloud but backup is hard disks, dvds, cd, books. One woman in the arts field alerted her audience that the software used to upload to the cloud, is appropriating, artwork, stories etc and trademarking it as their own. YOUR WORK. They were caught and are reviewing the clause.
NEVER TRUST THE CLOUD
CENSORSHIP
Has been going on for a long time. We are more aware of it today. It doesn’t matter which party you follow, they are the same in surveillance, deleting, and obfuscation.
I live in the boonies. I am bugged out, and on my own. We rely on starlink for connections to internet and streaming. Last Friday there was an outage that was world wide. Roughly four hours for some. It came back but, tinfoil hat, I think it was a test, and a threat.
Definitely external hard drive. Got one. Forgot to mention. Yeah, it's probably time for a post and a trip back to cybersecurity world to shore things up.
It is really getting crazy. I like British mysteries been stocking up on the DVDS. Also one person talked about watermarking, or password protecting PDF.
I recently inherited an old iPad. It works fine, but has newly reminded me how exposed we are on the internet, not that I didn't already know. Surfing YouTube videos and the advertising that comes up makes it amply apparent. Got ringing in your ears? Yes, I do! Hey, have we got some snake oil for you. I generally don't see this crap, because my Linux based Mac gives me plenty of ways to block the annoyance, the old iPad, IDK, probably, but what's the dif, other than eliminating annoyance? Doesn't mean they aren't collecting copious data, regardless. They are. We've known this for decades.
I have a Google Drive account with barely anything on it. Hard drives are cheap. I have never understood backing up to the "cloud." So you can show cat photos in the grocery store on your phone? It's ridiculous, and all those servers chugging away, heating up the planet, WTF?
I don't search with Google either. Duck Duck Go is non-invasive, or so it's claimed. Who knows? And then you get a 3000 word terms of service update, LMAO.
No doubt I should ditch Gmail, but why bother. If you're online there are no secrets. If you're publishing against the status quo, you're at risk. Is what it is.
Give brave, smart, Jessica some paid subscriptions if you haven't. Her work is invaluable.
fyi, DDG relies strongly on Bing search API
Thanks for the info. According to this article DDG does still protect privacy. Hopefully this is true.
https://thedroidguy.com/does-duckduckgo-use-bing-results-the-ultimate-search-engine-guide-1261346
I understand that wide search coverage costs a lot, and it's logical to not make their own crawler that big. reliance on an external service is financially reasonable, but exposes you to censorship, and it's hard to make your own bot index exactly what's excluded by your vendor.
I recently read that Google is skewing results for its own ends. I use it for image sources only when I'm trying to identify and credit photos in the articles I publish. DDG doesn't seem to do that well. Do you have a suggestion for a better search engine?
I've used Linux since 2000 and recommend it as a viable open source alternative to Windows, MacOS, and Google Chrome. I also have de-Googled my life as much as possible by recently replacing Google Android with GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. GrapheneOS is an open source version of Android. Meanwhile, I don't miss the other stuff. There are plenty of alternatives from A to Z.
Excellent advice on the cybersecurity front.
I’ll try to put some time into a good password security primer soon.
Hope your daughter recovers quickly.
Take great care of yourselves 🙏
And keep your elbows & masks up 💪💪🇨🇦🗽😷
Sounds good, and thanks!
All I know is I’m so grateful to have been following you for quite some time (early pandemic on🐦) and you remain without question my number one go to. When I’m able. I’ve withdrawn from keeping up on daily readings feeling the pressing need to retreat and chill the weary brain yah know? I feel like I’m sinking in this increasingly deplorable world and at my age I guess that’s kinda normal? (Boomer here) Just when I think I’m “kinda” up to date on relevant tech stuff I realize comparatively I’m totally in the dark ages. I appreciate this heads up post plus reading the comments here despite it sounding like a foreign language to me. I guess life has caught up to this grandma or should I say I can’t catch up on life and what it realllly takes anymore. ::sigh::
Thanks for always having our backs Jessica…& staying in the loop of a convoluted life. Even if I’m unable to implement all I read/should/need to, somehow just reading your work helps me feel properly connected. You invest SO much time into researching for us and it’s invaluable.
I’m glad your daughter benefited from your plan of COVID care action. Nice work momma bear. I look forward to your new creative writing journey. Take care.
A very valid warning Jessica. I cleared out of Google some time ago. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my search engine for a number of years. Any private/sensitive/creative work goes onto external hard drives. I have ended up with a headache of hard drives to manage but my data is safe and it is formatted so I can read it all on a Ubuntu iMac. T’interweb can now fall over. Which it will!
I'm pretty sure substack uses AWS for their email and runs on public cloud to manage everything else. One way or another, the Christian Nationalists will probably find a way to out Virgin Monk Boy and his scrolls. Another repeat of Russia invading Mount Athos is certainly in the near future.
VPN, at least a little protection.
Even with VPN, Substack and their Cloud provider (AWS) Still knows
Who subscribes to you (name/email)
What content you publish
Any metadata collected server-side (browser fingerprints, analytics, payment info, etc.)
If the government sends a subpoena or court order to Substack or AWS, a VPN won't stop that from going through. Your identity as a writer or your content could still be traced via payment systems (Stripe), email logs, or even the domain registrar.
If the infrastructure itself gets deplatformed—like if AWS cuts off a site entirely—VPN won’t help. You’d need mirrored hosting or an alternate publishing pipeline.
Thanks for this awesome post (and for linking to your herbal antiviral protocol)! Something I've also found useful for my day-to-day hygiene is a nasal saline rinse. I do it once to twice a day, depending on how "into the world" I need to go. The first one is when I come home from said outing. The last one is always after I brush my teeth before bed. It seems to have a good track record in the research papers too. Here's one:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10312243/
Also, for folks who are interested, I did a piece earlier in the year on about how to get 90% free of Big Tech. Over the last several weeks, I started to make a fuller transition out of the Google ecosystem, since those who had been sharing Google docs with me for editing/etc. finally have started doing the same. If it's helpful, I can write more about that too.
https://jasperbrown.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/155374624
Google sucks more and more. Once I switched to other apps, I realized what I was missing. Here's another take on Google
https://leonardodeltoro.substack.com/p/trying-to-get-google-out-of-my-life?r=gsxvz
If you have any questions about Google please direct them to pedophile Brin or Ursula von der Leyen’s fat, little Hanseatic, messianicjew son.
I’ve used Linux for decades. It used to be pretty tricky but now it’s very simple. Setting up a dual boot system takes a bit more doing, but still completely doable for most. So…don’t be intimidated! I like the ‘Mint’ version or ‘distro’ in geek speak.
Please expose this loathsome character to the world, his smut, his corruption, his thugs and their smut. Let everyone know, read, find global media outlets. The take down of democracy can happen anywhere given that the multi-rich work as a corrupt machine and the techies are everywhere. People should be aware of the playbook and have ways to avoid it. Go global with a smear campaign.
I think ive noticed this on some issues. Trump ideas are front and center and a few opposing articles below if you do a long scroll.
People need to report to the world the playbook on the take down of US democracy by the megarich and techies and all the smut on these thugs. This will happen again
Mercola has been warning about this for a long time. Google and other platforms, including mainstream media, have been censoring for years. Anything deemed "anti-vax" was labeled conspiracy or misinformation, and they vilified early off-label treatments. Good for you using supplements to help prevent/treat COVID. Just as well you don't qualify for vaccines. They don't prevent infection and carry risks. Check out React19.org.
I used Yahoo to leave this comment . Is Yahoo platform the same as Google Drive, Apple and Hotmail for the security/issues?
I just read Pinterest terms of service. What a bunch of BS.
Like your thoughts.
Art