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Advice neededStaying Anonymous Online: With Ovarit closing, this circle says “learning resources” are allowed. Can we all share ways we help anonymize ourselves?
With Ovarit closing, many of us will be trying new platforms and returning to more open ones like Twitter. I posted a comment about small steps I take to help anonymize myself but since technology is part of STEM, I think there may be women who are a lot more well versed than me in that area. I am going to copy and paste a comment I had already typed to prevent having to type it again but if any of you think these methods are good (or even wrong! things are always changing and I am not an expert) I would love to hear all of your thoughts and make a space for us to focus on that over the last month we have on this site.
My comment previously:
Using Twitter can be safe if you take some precautions. or other sites.
Quick guide that isn’t foolproof but can help protect you: make a burner email on Proton, use a different device than you use for anything else. connect to public wifi if possible or if you have the Xfinity hotspot so it’s not connected to your home network. i use Surfshark as a VPN because they’re not located in the USA and supposedly will not turn over anything to authorities. I use a paid subscription to Talkatone app for burner phone numbers for my verification codes, but it’s not expensive. Make a name that is not at all related to any online name you’ve had if you want to be extra anonymous. my suggestion is how I came up with this one: pick a favorite noun or adjective and translate it into languages you don’t speak and pick one you like the sound/look of.
if you have niche hobbies you may want to avoid posting about them, or at least maybe even post about fake ones to throw off anyone who may recognize you from real life. don’t post about where you’re going or when or what time of day it is so that it makes your time zone harder to figure out, and even better if you wake up at odd times and can’t sleep, do some activity outside of your normal hours. if you really want to shake things up post about going to things you aren’t going to or near to prevent people from identifying any patterns that could align with your real social media.
There are other/more steps that can be taken, but these are the easiest ones for people who aren’t super tech savvy. if anyone else has questions or ideas on how to remain safe on other social medias, please feel free to share.
I personally like to buy random devices from pawn shops that I don’t use for my other stuff too, because that way even if they’re tracking cookies and have weird permissions that may allow them to see my other activity they don’t get much. Older devices like old iPads, Kindles etc are both much cheaper and very capable of doing basic browsing and still having apps and are just fine for only social media.
my suggestion is how I came up with this one: pick a favorite noun or adjective and translate it into languages you don’t speak and pick one you like the sound/look of.
No
20 yrs ago I stalked someone obsessively for a long time
His username was hummingbird, and what gave me a treasure trove of info was finding an alt acc that was hummingbird in spanish :-)
To add to your suggestions:
For phone or tablet use a custom dns server, which should be as simple as going into settings/network and pasting this into the appropriate box:
dns.adguard-dns.com
And I block third party cookies and third party javascript by default on windows
Block all things facebook and twitter
Run a decent ad blocker - ublock origin - with good filter lists
Thanks for this. I'm not super tech savvy. So it helps
Dusting off an old device is a good tip. Plus, it gets you off your phone for a while. LOL
There is also Tails that can help... : https://ovarit.com/o/STEM/660101/tails-os-in-100-seconds
Lie. Lie like a rug. But lie down not up - don't pretend to be "more" than who you are - be less. Nobody remembers an internet person who's average in every average way. But people remember things like who's a GP, who's a good story teller. I have personally recognized somebody who I had not met from her having the identical and very unique speaking and writing style irl that she did on local.city.message.board. So lie and make yourself boring.
Don't share personal information. Like obviously, don't share your address duh. But I mean don't tell people funny stories about yourself. Know that if somebody finds a user on a website who's from the same approximate location (you can tell because of when people are posting), who has maybe three random slightly nonstandard facts about you is going to wonder if that IS you. Facts like mentioning "oh I'm really [height]" or "as an [ethnicity]" or "I love roller coasters/sci fi/bookkeeping" or "x family member had cancer".
Clear your cookies/cache/history. Reopen your browser. Shut down your computer when you aren't using it, do not download weird things or enable browser notifications. Don't stay logged in to more than one website at a time, and for the love of all that is holy, encrypt your harddrive ladies. If you take your device out of your house, you need to encrypt the thing. delete your old messages, your old emails. If you have an inbox full of spam, search "unsubscribe" and all the mailing lists you're on will show up and you can just select them all and delete/send to junk/however you want to handle it.
When you look at advice for people attending protests often they say not to bring a phone. Imo buy a flip phone and a prepaid SIM (pay in cash) so at least you have the ability to call for help if you need it.
Tbh I don't think there are many positions where being a terf requires an entirely different device, but I am an optimist and probably misjudging this. A different device that you only use for terfing, where you do not visit (or login but honestly don't even visit them) other internet places that you frequent when you are on your daily-driver device.
I checked this site at least 5x a week and I will truly miss it and all of you lovely ladies. I learnt a lot from this place about things I really didn't expect to learn, and I am at peace with being a woman now in a way that I did not ever think was possible.