Our homes are places of sanctity, domains of privacy. It´s here where your face and your identity are protected. As the choices of smart devices become more widespread, we equip our homes with more technology making our lives easier and more comfortable. But, the intrusiveness of smart devices in our own spaces means that our homes will no longer be our sanctities. Smartphones, smartwatches, smart TVs, tablets, laptops, wireless speaker systems and headphones, smart doorbells, and even home drones are all tools that track our movements and behaviour inside our homes.
MEASURES YOU CAN TAKE TO CONTROL YOUR PRIVACY
Use Signal
This is a messenging app that is 100% open source. In fact, it´s considered to be the superior app when it comes to privacy and also has strong encryption. Even more, it’s free, it works on every mobile platform, and its contents of every chat remain private and unable to be read by anyone else. As a result, it´s also been admired for its cryptographic strength.
Use E-mail providers with better privacy and encryptions:
Consider using Protonmail for best privacy protection. It includes a free version which doesn´t have free advertising. Check out other alternatives before you decide which one is the best for you.
Change your default search engine:
Whatever you´re searching for online, Google will track and collect your search data. As an alternative, use privacy-friendly options such as Duck-Duck Go, Qwant, or Brave which won´t collect unnecessary data about you.
Avoid using digital assistants:
Be wary of smart home technologies that extend beyond the home. When smart devices collect data from within the home and communicate that data outside the home, the homeowner is like a product. Devices such as Alexa, Google Nest or Google Home, Smart TVs can capture your conversations through their always on microphones in your private domains. Communicating this data outside the home enables machine learning and other techniques to improve voice recognition technology.
Limit your use of sharing personal photos online:
Companies scrape thousands if not billions of images online from public sites without consent to train and improve their AI models. They constantly take your face and your identity storing them on datasets and use them to ID you. In fact, they own them.
Protect your web browsing:
To block ads and data collection, use a browser extension like uBlockorigin. Privacy Badger blocks trackers, and ads won´t follow you around as much. Install the HTTPs Everywhere extension that encrypts your communications with major websites. It automatically directs you to a secure version of a site when the site supports that.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
LOCATION DATA TRACKING
Do you know how you are being followed each time you take you smartphone with you? Find out more about location data tracking.
SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM
Ever heard of the term ´Surveillance Capitalism´? Watch this documentary which looks at the phenomenon of this new economic logic that came about at the beginning of this century.