9 Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy

I haven’t received a targeted ad on my computer or mobile phone since 2014. If you care about your privacy or the privacy of your children — or even if you’re just sick of being bombarded by ads for diet pills seconds after you send an email to a friend complaining that your pants are too tight — here are seven simple steps you can take to make your online presence more private:

1. Jettison Gmail. All Gmail emails, both incoming and outgoing — even the angry draft emails you decided not to send — are analyzed and stored permanently by Google LLC, with every snippet of information the company can extract from your emails added to the massive profile it has compiled about you — and to the profiles of every person you mention in your emails. I recommend using ProtonMail instead of Gmail. It’s based in Switzerland and subject to strict Swiss privacy laws. It takes only a few seconds to sign up, because the company doesn’t ask anything about you (imagine that!). The basic service is free, and the paid version is cheap. ProtonMail is easy to use, and it also uses end-to-end encryption for maximum privacy. Unfortunately, you might be using Gmail and not even know it. To save money, thousands of businesses, schools, and universities use Gmail under their own brands — even news services such as The Guardian, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Salon, and The Hill. To find out whether you have been unknowingly corresponding with someone through Google servers, open that person’s email and then find and click on the “view header” option in your email software. If you find “google.com” anywhere in the expanded header, Google has been monitoring all of your communications with that sender. Even if you switch to ProtonMail, you will still have no privacy when corresponding with someone using Gmail or hidden Google servers. I tell people whose emails are shared with Google that if they want to communicate with me, they will need to use a more secure email service, and they usually switch. Bear in mind that Gmail is nothing like the US Postal Service. Google has no legal obligation to deliver your mail, and it routinely diverts emails to people’s spam boxes, deletes emails, and even cuts people off from their Gmail accounts.

2. Kill Chrome. Google developed the Chrome browser because the massive amount of information they were collecting about you from their search engine (see below) and your emails wasn’t enough for them. With Chrome, they can see which web pages you visit — and what you do on those pages — even if you go to those pages directly rather than going through their search engine. If you value your privacy, never use Chrome, even in the bogus “incognito” mode, which still tracks you. Instead, use Brave which is what I use. Brave blocks all ads, is faster than Chrome, and was developed by the software engineer who built Firefox. And what about other browsers? As I reveal in “The New Censorship,” Google can still get information about you when you’re using Firefox, Safari, and most other browsers, because they all check Google’s “quarantine list” before they take you to a website. Go with Brave.

3. Switch Search Engines. Google’s search engine is the best because it indexes far more web pages than anyone else. But Google (the search engine) is also the most aggressive spying tool ever invented — funded from the outset by the NSA and the CIA to identify people who are a threat to national security. Google records every search you conduct, and your Google profile contains a complete history of every search you ever conducted — even those sketchy ones! Worse still, my research has shown in recent years that Google’s search engine is also the most powerful mind control device ever devised; it shifts the opinions of billions of people around the world every day without them knowing it. Instead of using Google.com, use the new Brave search engine (https://search.brave.com/) which you can make your default search engine once you switch to the Brave browser (see #2 above). The Brave search engine doesn’t track you. It gives you great search results while also preserving your privacy.

4. Axe Android. As I explain in “Google’s Gotcha,” even Chrome didn’t give Google enough information about you, so the company developed Android, an operating system for phones and other mobile devices — the equivalent of the Windows operating system that’s on most desktop computers. Chrome gives Google information about you only when you’re online, but because Android controls all your phone’s functions, it tracks you — the phone numbers you’re dialing, the music files you’re playing, the places you’re visiting—even when you’re offline. If you value your privacy, donate your Android phone to a charity (https://CellPhonesForSoldiers.com), and buy a phone from a company that doesn’t use Google’s deceptive business model. Phones from Apple and other companies protect your privacy, whereas Google phones or phones that use Google’s version of Android do not. You can also now buy a “degoogled” Android phone, which disables Google’s tracking (https://degoogled.com). Companies like Apple and Microsoft make most of their money by selling products, whereas surveillance companies like Google and Facebook make nearly all of their money by suckering you with “free” services they use to track you and your children and then charging businesses a fee to send you and your family members targeted ads. If that doesn’t creep you out, maybe it should. Remember when your parent or grandparent told you there was “no such thing as a free lunch”? On the internet, that’s especially true. When a service seems to be “free,” you are actually paying for it with your freedom.