Diving Deep on the Opt Out Cyber-Cleanse

Can I just say … Mastodon is great!

I follow several people there who are part of the free and open source (FOSS) tech movement and are working to free themselves from online surveillance. It was there that I learned of the Opt Out Project by Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton University who works at the intersection of society and technology. She opted out of Google in 2012 (an eternity ago in tech) and has been opting out of various other online surveillance platforms since. She created the Opt Out Project to help others divorce themselves from surveillance capitalism without divorcing themselves from tech.

Starting January 1, 2025, Janet has been posting steps in a 21-day cyber-cleanse on her website. We’re on Day 20 as of this writing, and I’ve been following along, though I have only gotten started with the cleanse itself. You see, if you’ve been online for any length of time, as I have, you’ve likely left digital footprints all over the place and it’s going to take longer than 21 days to reclaim your privacy. (I am not looking forward to sorting out my email accounts. Oof.)

You might be thinking, why bother with a cleanse if all of my information is already out there?

To which I respond, if you are planning to be around and active online for years to come, you’ll have plenty of future data to protect. The best time to start is now.

With the Cyber-Cleanse, Janet walks you through many of the common tech interfaces, including email, texting, social media, cloud storage, web browsers, voice assistants (Siri and Alexa), and cellphones, and explains more secure alternatives.

She also discusses how to clean up and close your existing accounts, the ones that keep spying on you and selling your data, which can so easily be hacked. And, if you must use tech that’s notorious for surveillance (think the biggies, like Google, Meta, Amazon, & etc.), she provides two methods for managing them to limit the data these companies have on you. She calls these methods Balkanization and Render to Caesar, which you can read about on the Day Three post.

Some of the tasks set out in the Cyber-Cleanse are easy and won’t take much time, like purchasing an external hard drive to back up the data you want to save from online platforms, or adopting a privacy-friendly web browser. Others, like cleaning out your insecure email accounts (my heavy lift – oof!) and finding a new provider, will take longer, so pace yourself.

Start with Signal

The one step I recommend you take immediately, which is actually Day Nine of the Cyber-Cleanse, is to download Signal, an end-to-end encrypted instant messaging app, to your phone.

And when I say immediately, I mean IMMEDIATELY. Here’s the link: Signal.

Instant messaging or texting apps work on SMS (Short Message Service), which is horribly insecure and can be easily hacked, as happened in the recent Salt Typhoon attack. After this attack, the FBI encouraged everyone to get an end-to-end encrypted messaging app, and Signal is the best one out there. (WhatsApp is also end-to-end encrypted, but it’s owned by Meta, which I don’t trust.)

I had used Signal years ago, when they still supported SMS. When they stopped supporting SMS, I figured I had to find a new texting app because Signal only works with other Signal accounts in order to maintain security. I didn’t think I could use Signal along with my other texting app, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t talk all of my family and friends into downloading Signal at that time.

After reading about Signal in the Cyber-Cleanse, I did a little digging and discovered that it uses the internet to send messages, rather than your phone’s SMS service, so you can have and use both on your phone. That gives you a way to continue texting people who don’t have Signal, but also allows you to have a secure channel for those who do use Signal.

I was also able to encourage several family members to download Signal this time ’round.

So, have you downloaded Signal and set it up yet? If not, what are you waiting for? (Sorry for the general bossiness here, but it’s really important to move away from insecure texting platforms.)

Leaving Facebook

I’ve been attempting to leave Facebook since 2018. With the Opt Out Project’s Cyber-Cleanse, I can see that goal is finally within reach. I have been minimally active there since 2018, mostly just sharing my blog posts on my timeline. In the past week, I have whittled down my friends list to fewer than 50.

If you find I’m no longer connected to you on Facebook, that’s why. As Janet of the Opt Out Project points out, by using Facebook, those of us who are family and friends are really just hanging out in someone else’s living room. And, I might add, that living room is bugged. Meta is hoovering up as much info on us as they can to sell to advertisers, so they can annoy us all by filling our timelines with companies trying to sell us something (which is probably the least nefarious use of our data).

In addition, Meta is no longer going to make an attempt at moderating hate speech, lies, or conspiracies … although, with reports I’ve seen on Mastodon, they seem to be able to moderate out any mention of leaving Facebook or adopting new social media. That’s why I’m not writing a timeline post on Facebook to announce I’m leaving. I’ll just disappear soon.

If you followed me on Facebook and want to keep in touch, feel free to subscribe to my blog or drop me a line using my contact form.

I encourage you to check out the Opt Out Project’s Cyber-Cleanse and take at least a few steps toward reclaiming your online privacy. Let me know how it goes. We can commiserate about our over-stuffed email accounts. Oof.