It’s funny that the thought that Google is watching might cause people to resist masturbating to internet based porn, but the idea that “God is watching” doesn’t cause so much as a stutter.
Both are just as invisible to the common person, but one has an IPO.
(except maybe using a more secure browser like Firefox, read up on cyber security tips from the EFF, refusing to sign into a Google account and never going online without the protection of a VPN)
I never use Google, and have no Google account. Use Duckduckgo instead. Use Firefox with uBlock Origin extension installed, and use a VPN. Never go online without a VPN.
This has nothing to do with porn. I just don’t want to be tracked, data-mined, and profiled, not to mention the blizzard of ads that slow my computer and distract from the experience. If you’re not using a VPN, you may as well shout your every move and all your data from a bullhorn.
cough cough
I’m no Linux expert, but this took me all of 30 minutes to set up on an old laptop.
Oh, crap! Now Google knows that I know it’s tracking porn sites 
The phone call, it’s coming from inside the house!
Before I did everything from smartphone simply because my laptop was too old to turn on under 20 minutes (working on getting a new one at xmas), I used Ubuntu for 99% of everything I did.
To be honest though I have no idea how all that stuff on that page works, I know what a VPN is but is there anywhere I can go to gain a better and deep understanding of all the things on that page and how to use them?
I have enough understanding to know what stuff like TOR is but not the understanding to set stuff like that up
There is also “Facebook Disconnect,” because they habitually track you through websites even if you are not actually a member of Facebook.
There is another Firefox extension I use just called “Disconnect,” that stops at least 6 or more trackers on BoingBoing every time a page loads.
Sorry Cory. I ain’t your steppin’ stone.
For us oldsters, internet porn is a passing phase. We are used to porn in dead tree editions, whether it be dirty novels or magazines in brown paper wrappers.
The idea that God is watching has fucked up a lot of people for a long time.
As for me, I’m very uncertain as to the nature of God, assuming there is a god or gods. Threats based on Christianism bounce off me like threats based off of Norse mythology.
Dude! Way to culture! Lol kudos
In flagrant electro delicto.
If you must sign into Google, using Firefox containers is a good thing:
I use Gsuite for my personal email, and I put it into a “personal” container along with other things tied to my real name.
Conversely, I put Boing Boing, Reddit, etc in their own containers so I can shitpost in psudoanonymity* (please thank me for my service)
I had no idea how VPNs worked, until I researched it. I won’t go online without it now.
I use IPVanish. As I understand it, the idea of the VPN is to obfuscate the actual location of your IP address by routing your web traffic through the VPN’s server which is in another city. You get to pick the city, out of a list of hundreds with multiple servers in each city. You can even choose a server in Amsterdam or London and use that location to spoof the BBC into showing you content that they refuse to show in the US.
But mostly, the idea is to “de-flag” your web travels so that nobody can follow you. I can tell it’s working because when I go to the Lowe’s website, it shows my location as being in TX, which it is definitely not. It feels a little “Spy vs Spy,” but I can’t tell you how much better it makes me feel about online financial activities especially.
If you want to go even further in your furtiveness, you can get an anonymous email provider like tutanota.com to encrypt your email. I don’t use that as much.
If someone old like me can figure this out, you can. Just do a DuckDuckGo search for “2019 best VPNs” and another for “2019 VPNs that protect your data best.” Nord VPN is supposed to be good, but there are many others.
Give it a whirl.
Thanks for the details. I know what a VPN does, but reconfiguring all my software to work with it, I dunno how.
I will eventually figure it all out, but I’d happily pay an expert a few hundred for a few hours of detailed explanation, in depth, on how it all works. Googling things all the time just gets tiresome and wears away the braincells as they try to sort out the degrees of truth.
There was nothing to reconfigure, in my case. The VPN simply runs in the background, and self-connects.
Unfortunately, that won’t do anything to keep Amazon, Facebook or Google from tracking you unless you also use ad ons to prevent cookies and scripts from tracking you. They are already configured to track you across dynamic IP addresses, so just using a VPN on its own does very little to their ability to track you.
I also have those other things you mentioned.
-Disconnect
-Facebook Disconnect
-uBlock Origin
All on Firefox.
Sounds to me like a course at a local community college or parks & recreation department might be what you’d want, and you get to save a little money.
Or just the neighbor kid computer whiz, who has this stuff nailed down.
Yeah… the kid fixes my computer, and in exchange I have to draw cute pictures in crayon he pretends are his and gives to his mum. It’s demeaning.
