Our current political environment is fraught with danger, in both the real and digital world.
This page gives some suggestions for increasing your safety, as well as those around you.
Indivisible National offers this guide:
Safety, Security, and Digital Preparedness for a Second Trump Administration
Use a VPN to hide your location
The internet is a great tool for political mobilization – chatrooms and forums, messaging apps and image boards are where much of the planning for demonstrations, protests and other actions is done. The issue is that your IP address can give you away, and so can your traffic. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) protects your confidentiality. At its essence, what a VPN does is route your traffic through a remote server. This means two things:
The server you’re contacting (a forum, for example) can’t see your real IP address. Instead, it sees the VPN server’s IP address.
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) doesn’t know what you’re actually doing online. They can only see you connecting to a VPN server.
Thus, by using a VPN you’re protecting yourself from government surveillance, as well as ensuring that no online service you’re using actually knows who or where you are.
Use SIGNAL for secure messaging
Indivisible Onondaga County uses Signal for our Neighbor-2-Neighbor project.
You can use it for your own messaging needs as well.
State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption (powered by the open source Signal Protocol) keeps your conversations secure. We can’t read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either. Privacy isn’t an optional mode — it’s just the way that Signal works. Every message, every call, every time. There are no ads, no affiliate marketers, and no creepy tracking in Signal. So focus on sharing the moments that matter with the people who matter to you.
Use Proton Mail and Drive instead of Google
Proton Mail and Proton Drive are privacy-focused digital tools created by Proton in Switzerland. Proton Mail offers end-to-end encrypted email, while Proton Drive provides secure cloud file storage, photo backups, and document editing. Both services share a single account login and storage pool.
Core Features
- End-to-End Encryption: Data is locked on your device before it reaches servers, meaning not even Proton can read your emails or files.
- Shared Storage: Free accounts include a pool of storage (typically 5 GB total) shared across your mail and drive.
- Proton Docs & Sheets: Built-in tools in Proton Drive to write and edit documents or spreadsheets privately.
- Cross-Platform Access: Available via web browsers, desktop apps (Windows, macOS), and mobile apps (iOS, Android).
Use a Privacy-focused browser, such as Brave.
Brave is a free and open-source web browser which was first released in 2016. It is marketed as a privacy-focused web browser and includes features such as built-in advertisement blocking, protections against browser fingerprinting and a private browsing mode that integrates the Tor anonymity network. Independent tests have generally supported some of Brave’s privacy claims. In tests conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cover Your Tracks project, Brave was one of the few browsers to receive a “strong protection” rating and was found to include randomized fingerprinting protections.
Use a Privacy-focused search engine
Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing gather extensive information about you. This info includes your IP address, browser details, a unique ID from cookies, and your search queries. And if you’re like most people, you likely turned to Google for your latest online search. Google’s many apps and services have made it nearly indispensable. Your personal data helps search engine tracking analyze your habits, deliver personalized ads, and follow your online activity.
Luckily, you can swap Google for a genuinely private search engine.
Your digital footprint is like your physical fingerprint, leaving traces of you as you browse. Every click, every query can leave a trail. This growing awareness has spurred a demand for private search engines, which promise to shield our online activities from prying eyes. These search engines offer some refuge for those who value their privacy, promising that searches remain confidential and free from the clutches of data-hungry corporations.
More to come…