Tag: privacy

How to blur your house on Google Street View (And Why You Should)

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Partially Blurred Google Street View Photo

Here’s what you do:

1. Go to Google Maps and enter your home address

2. Enter into Street View mode by dragging the small yellow human-shaped icon, found in the bottom-right corner of the screen, onto the map in front of your house

3. With your house in view, click “Report a problem” in the bottom-right corner of the screen

4. Center the red box on your home, and select “My home” in the “Request blurring” field

Google's San Francisco office.

5. Write in the provided field why you want the image blurred (for example, you may be concerned about safety issues)

6. Enter in your email address, and click “Submit”

After you hit “submit,” you should receive an email from Google noting that it’s “reviewing the image you reported and will email you when your request is resolved.” The company may follow up, via email, and ask you to be more specific about the area you want blurred. If so, you will need to do the entire process again — clearly detailing the specific area of the picture you want blurred.

That’s it!

Source: How to blur your house on Google Street View (and why you should)

Will Deep State “Contact Tracing” End Privacy?

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Contact Tracing: They're Watching

“Alex Newman exposes the Deep State organizations and individuals working to shred privacy and invade your home with so-called “contact tracing.” From HR 6666 and phone apps for tracking you to microchips under the skin for children and home visits splitting up families, the agenda is totalitarian to the core. And yet, with very little resistance, this scheme is moving forward at the state and even global level under the World Health Organization. Clinton, Soros, Gates, and other globalist Deep Staters are involved. Humanity must resist to stay free.”

Press here to view video: Will Deep State “Contact Tracing” End Privacy?

How to secure your browser in 10 minutes for free (and why you urgently need to)

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‘Soon every mistake you’ve ever made online will not only be available to your internet service provider (ISP) — it will be available to any corporation or foreign government who wants to see those mistakes.

Thanks to last week’s US Senate decision (update March 28: and today’s House decision), ISPs can sell your entire web browsing history to literally anyone without your permission. The only rules that prevented this are all being repealed, and won’t be reinstated any time soon (it would take an act of congress).

You might be wondering: who benefits from repealing these rules? Other than those four monopoly ISPs that control America’s “last mile” of internet cables and cell towers? … these politicians — who have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the ISPs for decades — have sold us out.

VPN company Private Internet Access paid $600,000 to run this full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times — even though they would make a ton of money if these rules were repealed. That’s how this CRA is — even the VPN companies are campaigning against it.

…ISPs can now continue doing these things as much as they want…

  1. Sell your browsing history to basically any corporation or government that wants to buy it
  2. Hijack your searches and share them with third parties
  3. Monitor all your traffic by injecting their own malware-filled ads into the websites you visit
  4. Stuff undetectable, undeletable tracking cookies into all of your unencrypted traffic
  5. Pre-install software on phones that will monitor all traffic — even HTTPS traffic — before it gets encrypted. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile have already done this with some Android phones …

How VPNs can protect you

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network.

  • Virtual because you’re not creating a new physical connection with your destination — your data is just traveling through existing wires between you and your destination.
  • Private because it encrypts your activity before sending it, then decrypts it at the destination.

People have traditionally used VPNs as a way to get around websites that are blocked in their country (for example, Medium is blocked in Malaysia) or to watch movies that aren’t available in certain countries. But VPNs are extremely useful for privacy, too.

There are several types of VPN options, with varying degrees of convenience and security.

Experts estimate that as many as 90% of VPNs are “hopelessly insecure” and this changes from time to time. So even if you use the tools I recommend here, I recommend you take the time to do your homework.

Most VPNs are services that cost money, but the following options are convenient and free to use, with some limited functionality:

Desktop VPN apps

Probably the most secure, trustworthy free VPN you can install (as of when this article was last updated) is ProtonVPN. It’s made by the folks who also make the most secure free email, ProtonMail (which we also highly recommend)

To learn more about why we recommend this stellar VPN, check out BestVPN’s Comprehensive ProtonVPN Review

Mobile Device VPN apps (smartphone, tablet, etc.)

Windscribe – This is our choice for best freemium VPN, since they earn high marks for privacy and give you 10GB free/month. Check out BestVPN’s Review

Opera VPN – While there are definitely better VPNs available, OperaVPN is one of the very few that offer free ulimited bandwitdh. See BestVPN’s Review

Browser-based VPNs

Opera is a popular web browser that comes with some excellent privacy features, like a free built-in VPN and a free ad blocker (and as you may know, ads can spy on you).

Opera’s free VPN service offers a choice of ‘virtual’ country locations to connect through.

I recommend setting the U.S. as your location for Americans, unless you’re quite familiar with the ins & outs of how VPNs work.

Also be advised that you will likely need to disable your VPN in order to use certain websites or apps.

If you just want a secure way to browse the web without ISPs being able to easily snoop on you and sell your data, Opera is a great start. Let’s install and configure it real quick. This takes less than 5 minutes.

Before you get started, note that this will only anonymize the things you do within the Opera browser. Also, I’m obligated to point out that even though Opera’s parent company is European, it was recently purchased by a consortium of Chinese tech companies, and there is a non-zero risk that it could be compromised by the Chinese government.

Having said that, here’s how to browse securely with Opera:

Step #1: Download the Opera browser

Step #2: Turn on its ad blocker by clicking on the Opera menu (upper left) and going to Preferences

Step #3: Turn on its VPN:

That’s it! You can now browse much more privately than you likely had been.

For secure messaging, you may also want to check out Edward Snowden-recommended Open Whisper Systems’ mobile and desktop app called Signal.

Click here for the original article torhis was excerpted from.

What Could Go Wrong With Asking Teachers To Monitor Kids for ‘Extremist’ Beliefs?

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“A core component of the U.S. CVE plan tasks teachers, social workers, and school administrators with monitoring and reporting to law enforcement on children in their care. An FBI document released earlier this year tells teachers to spy on their students’ thoughts and suggests that administrators essentially turn schools into mini-FBI offices.”

Continue reading: What Could Go Wrong With Asking Teachers To Monitor Kids for ‘Extremist’ Beliefs? | American Civil Liberties Union

Edward Snowden Develops Phone Case to Alert Users if Their Data is Being Compromised

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“While the device is still far from ready for commercial distribution, Snowden and Huang note that they hope this case study will influence how individuals perceive their personal tracking devices they carry around in their pockets — also known as cell phones.”

Continue reading: Edward Snowden Develops Phone Case to Alert Users if Their Data is Being Compromised

U.S. to Allow Foreigners to Serve Warrants on U.S. Internet Firms

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“The Obama administration is working on a series of agreements with foreign governments that would allow them for the first time to serve U.S. technology companies with warrants for email searches and wiretaps—a move that is already stirring debates over privacy, security, crime and terrorism.”

Continue reading: U.S. to Allow Foreigners to Serve Warrants on U.S. Internet Firms

NSA Labels Privacy-Centric Internet Users As “Extremists”

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‘The NSA is not making any friends these days, and their latest statement on privacy-centric journalists is not helping matters much either. To be more precise, an investigation by the agency revealed how they are continuing to target the Tor network. Moreover, The Linux Journal is referred to as an “extremist forum”. Quite a strong sentiment, and possibly completely misguided as well.’

’

Continue reading: NSA Labels Privacy-Centric Internet Users As Extremists

Police can use illegally obtained evidence in court, SCOTUS rules, sabotaging 4th Amendment

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Sonia Sotomayor warned in a scathing dissent the Supreme Court’s pro-police ruling violates constitutional rights

“This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants — even if you are doing nothing wrong”

Source: Police can use illegally obtained evidence in court, SCOTUS rules, sabotaging 4th Amendment