🦺 Digital safety checklist updated! 🦺 Happy to say most of it has held up in the last seven months since we last published an update. But of course, there was still a lot to catch up on — like the sudden uptick in attention to cross-border travel, and some shiny new features from phone and app makers.
Full guide here — https://zebracrossing.narwhalacademy.org — but tap on to read our commentary on the updates, and why we are giving a 👎 to burner phones, Google Chrome and Samsung phones.
1️⃣ Updated international travel (part 1 of 2):
Added two associated scenarios about spring cleaning and backing up data, because you need to do both before a trip. Plus only after you do that will you be able to confidently DELETE things. Because you should. Really. Before a trip.
The other quick tip is just to remove some apps while you’re on the road. Who needs all those work apps linked to a cloud of docs when you’re on vacation anyway?
1️⃣ Updated international travel (part 2 of 2):
We clarified our stance that burner phones are a Bad Idea 99.9% of the time. They quickly become useless if you use it at home or text your friends AND they make you look extra sketchy. (I blame Hollywood’s theatrical tossing of burner phones that has caused our collective brain rot in thinking they’re great.)
Lastly: review your social media profiles. Retrain the algorithm if need be. You can’t just pretend you’re not on social media.
2️⃣ We got spicy about Samsung, and are telling people to avoid their phones now. As this @TechFinitive @bazzacollins article says, “It turns out that AppCloud is a complete piece of junk that’s trying to install unwanted apps on your device. Samsung should be ashamed for shoving this onto people’s devices.”
https://www.techfinitive.com/explainers/what-is-app-cloud-delete/
3️⃣ We also got on board with the Don’t Use Google Chrome bandwagon. They did lose a lawsuit regarding data collection in Incognito Mode — https://apnews.com/article/google-chrome-privacy-lawsuit-settlement-203cc5063f1a1d4013de1900d9376814 — but I don’t know the specific technical details, and I have heard some people extol the security virtues of Chrome.
So if you’re one of those people, now’s the time to inform/correct/pitch me!
Google has agreed to purge billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the U.S. surfing the internet through its Chrome web browser. The move comes as part of a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegal surveillance. Although Google isn't paying consumers any money in the case, estimates made in court records pegged the value of the privacy controls at $4.75 billion to $7.8 billion. The details of the settlement emerged in a court filing Monday, more than three months after Google and the attorneys handling the class-action case disclosed they had resolved June 2020 lawsuit targeting Chrome’s privacy controls.
5️⃣ Updated the mutual aid organizing scenario with a bit about Signal’s new features that indirectly allow people to create broadcast channels of up to 1000 people.
Shout to @micahflee’s article for highlighting that and more: https://micahflee.com/using-signal-groups-for-activism/
Things are heating up. Millions of people are taking to the streets against Trump's rising authoritarianism. Communities around the US are organizing to defend against ICE raids, to protest Israeli genocide, for mutual aid, and for other forms of fighting fascism. Signal can help people safely organize in all of
6️⃣ Added instructions for people to turn off auto-load images in emails, so that they are tracked less easily. We didn’t use to ask people to do this, because we thought the inconvenience would dissuade people to do it. Then we realized that even spam messages track people, which feels like a good enough argument.
Shoutout to @protonprivacy Proton Mail for building a feature that sets up a proxy server for images to load, so users get auto images but email senders get nothing :)
7️⃣ Got stricter (and more clear) about web browser extension/add-ons. Right now, we’re whitelisting a few extensions can have permission to read your webpages, everything else is a no-no.
The whitelist is: uBlock Origin (and its Lite cousin), Privacy Badger, whatever your password manager is, and whatever your browser company makes (Firefox has Facebook Containers, Chrome auto installs Google Drive).
Anything else I’m missing? Any reason why limiting the list is a bad idea?
8️⃣ Lastly, I wanted to circle back to the backups scenario. In it, we outline steps to backup mobile devices as well as computers. And we ran into two major stumbling blocks:
🛑 Is there a way to backup an Android device (in a way that’s restorable) by plugging in a cord to your computer?
🛑 In Windows, how do you encrypt an external hard drive without BitLocker? Some places say Veracrypt but that doesn’t work with File History, which seems to do the Time Machine thing of restorable states.
Anyway that’s all for updates! If you’ve read this far, thank you 🤓
As always, the full checklist can be found on our website https://zebracrossing.narwhalacademy.org or on GitHub https://github.com/narwhalacademy/zebra-crossing
Jason Li
small cypress
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