Privacy

Data Privacy: Why It Matters and How to Protect Yourself

When it comes to privacy on the internet, the safest approach is to cut your Ethernet cable or power down your device. But, because you can't really do that and remain somewhat productive, you need other options. This article provides a general overview of the situation, steps you can take to mitigate risks and finishes with a tutorial on setting up a virtual private network.

The Fight for Control: Andrew Lee on Open-Sourcing PIA

When I learned that our new sister company, Private Internet Access (PIA), was opening its source code, I immediately wanted to know the backstory, especially since privacy is the theme of this month's Linux Journal. So I contacted Andrew Lee, who founded PIA, and an interview ensued. Here it is. DS: What made you start PIA in the first place? Did you have a particular population or use case—or set of use cases—in mind?

Privacy Plugins

Protect yourself from privacy-defeating ad trackers and malicious JavaScript with these privacy-protecting plugins.

An FUQ for the GDPR

I started writing this on Privmas Eve: the day before Privmas, aka GDPR Day: the one marked red on the calendars of every company in the world holding an asset the GDPR has suddenly made toxic: personal data. The same day—25 May—should be marked green for everyone who has hated the simple fact that harvesting personal data from everybody on the internet has been too damned easy for too damned long for too damned many companies, and governments too.

Nextcloud 13: How to Get Started and Why You Should

Nextcloud could be the first step toward replacing proprietary services like Dropbox and Skype. In its simplest form, the Nextcloud server is "just" a personal, free software alternative to services like Dropbox or iCloud. You can set it up so your files are always accessible via the internet, from wherever you are, and share them with your friends. However, Nextcloud can do so much more.

Privacy Is Still Personal

Summary: We solved privacy in the natural world with clothing, shelter, manners and laws. So far in the digital world, we have invisibility cloaks and the GDPR. The fastest way to get the rest of what we need is to recognize that privacy isn't a grace of platforms or governments. It starts as a grace of our own agency and the tech we use to express it.

Review: the Librem 13v2

The Librem 13—"the first 13-inch ultraportable designed to protect your digital life"—ticks all the boxes, but is it as good in real life as it is on paper?

The GDPR Takes Open Source to the Next Level

Richard Stallman will love the new GDPR. It's not every day that a new law comes into force that will have major implications for digital industries around the globe. It's even rarer when a such law will also bolster free software's underlying philosophy. But the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will be enforced from May 25, 2018, does both of those things, making its appearance one of the most important events in the history of open source.

May 2018 Issue: Privacy

Most people simply are unaware of how much personal data they leak on a daily basis as they use their computers. Enter our latest issue with a deep dive into privacy. After working on this issue, a few of us on the Linux Journal team walked away implementing some new privacy practices--we suspect you may too after you give it a read. In This Issue:

How Wizards and Muggles Break Free from the Matrix

First we invented a world where everyone could be free. Then we helped build feudal castles on it, where everyone now lives. Now it's time to blow up those castles by giving everybody much better ways to use their freedom than they ever would enjoy in a castle. I'm going to mix movie metaphors here. You'll see why.

Thinking and Working Outside the Platform

On the one hand, Facebook is on fire, and soon the whole surveillance economy will start burning down too (including publishers who depend on that economy no less than Facebook does). On the same hand, lots of Linux wizards work in that economy, which is a lot larger than Facebook alone.

The Linux Journal NSA Reading List: Tails and Tor

Tails is a live media Linux distro designed to boot into a highly secure desktop environment. Tor is a browser that prevents somebody watching your internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Learn why anonymity matters and how you can protect yourself by reading the following archived Linux Journal articles:

Help Us Cure Online Publishing of Its Addiction to Personal Data

Since the turn of the millennium, online publishing has turned into a vampire, sucking the blood of readers' personal data to feed the appetites of adtech: tracking-based advertising. Resisting that temptation nearly killed us. But now that we're alive, still human and stronger than ever, we want to lead the way toward curing the rest of online publishing from the curse of personal-data vampirism. And we have a plan. Read on.

Every User a Neo

We can start the biggest revolution in 200 years. Or we can stay in the dreamland of business as usual.

The Wire

In the US, there has been recent concern over ISPs turning over logs to the government. During the past few years, the idea of people snooping on our private data (by governments and others) really has made encryption more popular than ever before. One of the problems with encryption, however, is that it's generally not user-friendly to add its protection to your conversations.

Jetico's BestCrypt Container Encryption for Linux

Cyber-attacks are now constant, threats to privacy are increasing, and more rigid regulations are looming worldwide. To help IT folks relax in the face of these challenges, Jetico updated its BestCrypt Container Encryption solution to include Container Guard.

Own Your DNS Data

I honestly think most people simply are unaware of how much personal data they leak on a daily basis as they use their computers. Even if they have some inkling along those lines, I still imagine many think of the data they leak only in terms of individual facts, such as their name or where they ate lunch.