Popular Mechanics associate tech editor Davey Alba highlights her journey
“I switched to Mozilla Firefox, and I jettisoned my Googling habit in favor of a new search engine, DuckDuckGo. I downloaded Tor, an anonymizing browser bundle that hides your identity—it’s slow but worth using if you’re on an open Wi-Fi network. Right now I am locked in to an iPhone contract, but next time I’ll go with Android, which is open-source. So far, so easy. Next, I set about installing encryption software on my laptop and phone. Honestly, I’d never even heard of some of the tools my sources recommended—with names like Cryptocat, Autistici/Inventati, and GNU Privacy Guard. Downloading a secure instant-messaging client was a cinch. So was adding plug-ins to my browser to block tracking by ad companies. However, it took me an afternoon to wrestle PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption into my email, partly because I insisted on learning how to encrypt my Facebook messages too. I started using a password manager, then promptly forgot the long master password I’d created. But I worked through the mishaps and felt much more secure once I was done.”
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