Own Your Devices

Take this home

A four-part guide to taking back your phone, computer, and attention. Pick one box from any part and do it this week. You don’t need to be technical, and you don’t need to do it all.

Part One: Everyday privacy

Your provider, browser, and phone give away more than you think.

• Turn on encrypted DNS (Quad9, ControlD, or Mullvad)
• Reset or delete your phone’s advertising ID
• Switch to a browser that resists fingerprinting
• Move one group chat to Signal

Part Two: Go around your ISP

A VPN for every day, Tor for what matters, no logins where none are needed.

• Pick a VPN: paid, audited, open source
• Leave it on, phone and laptop
• Keep a second, signed-out browser for reading
• Install Tor Browser from torproject.org

Part Three: Reclaim your attention

You were never going to out-willpower a system tested on millions of people.

• Trace one angry post back to its source
• Turn off notifications for everything except people
• Delete saved cards; sleep on anything over $100
• Export your data from the company that holds the most

Part Four: Switch to Linux

Free, runs on the laptop you own, and trying it erases nothing.

• List the apps you truly can’t replace
• Make a Linux Mint USB stick
• Boot it and click around for an hour
• Revive the old laptop that Windows made slow

Tools named here (all free, all open source)

Browsing and network: Firefox, Brave, Mullvad Browser, Tor Browser, Quad9, uBlock Origin Messages and accounts: Signal, SimpleX Chat, Proton Mail, Tuta, Bitwarden, Thunderbird Computer and files: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, LibreOffice, Joplin, VLC, GIMP

Two questions to ask of anything

1. Who else can see this?
2. Does it need to?