The WIRED Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance
2 min read
Summary
With the midterm elections approaching and abortion, health, and privacy at stake, many are looking for ways to strengthen their data security and resist surveillance.
Securing your data and making sure your communications are end-to-end encrypted is important, with Signal, WhatsApp, and Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime all recommended for this.
It’s also important to strongly encrypt your devices, with Apple and Android phones having full disk encryption by default, but you can also use biometric features to make it even stronger.
You should also consider where your data is stored, with cloud storage adding a third party to the mix who can access it and hand it over to governments if asked.
You can also make your online anonymity more robust by using Tor Browser or a VPN, and make sure you’re not giving away location data.
If you don’t want to carry your devices, that’s another way of making sure they’re not collecting or leaking your whereabouts.
Finally, remembering that whatever platforms you’re on and whatever devices you have, you need to have a sense of what kind of data you’re generating and use the controls available to limit who can see what you’re doing.
