Let's start small.
In this session, we start with a conversation about why we want to protect our privacy before jumping into the easiest and free-est steps you can take. You're guided to make a digital privacy plan, review best practices, take a look at tracker-free internet browsers, and an intro to VPNs.
I love the Electronic Frontier Foundation's guide to making a privacy plan (or click here for their guide to community privacy plans):
- What do I want to protect?
- Who do I want to protect it from?
- How bad are the consequences if I fail?
- How likely is it that I will need to protect it?
- How much trouble am I willing to go through to try to prevent potential consequences?
Who are my allies?
It asks some major questions about online existence while acknowledging that we all only have so much time in the day. This work isn't about perfection; if you're just trying to schedule an interdepartmental meeting, you might not need Fort Knox-level security. But artmaking can be a sensitive thing, and you deserve to be able to explore the creative process without external influences—whether they're unsolicited opinions, snap judgements, or ads working to sway you towards whichever productivity tool or cool jacket will solve all your latest problems.
While we look at some technical solutions, we also build personal tools for approaching online spaces. As we live more of our lives online, more of our worldview is shaped by the information we get from the internet. We all know we're being inundated with narratives on social media, but with growth in Artificial Intelligence and data collection it can be harder to track how the algorithm is feeding us stories through our feeds and search results.
The goal is to make it easy for you to choose what you share on the internet, and make it harder for external forces to harvest you.
Do you have a digital privacy practice that you love, that you'd like to share with the class? Email [email protected] to suggest tools or best practices.
About the Series
Need a step-by-step worksheet to follow along? Keep an eye on this space for more resources and how-to guides.
Whether you're emailing about your upcoming season choices or sending tasteful nudes to that special someone, you deserve to know that your chats, emails, and digital identity are free from prying eyes. But when the biggest Peeping Toms these days are the platforms we use, it can be hard to feel like we have agency over our online existences, let alone take it.
It's an overwhelming task, especially if you—like me—have been weaving your online identity into these platforms for over a decade. But if you—like me—have a petty streak, it may be motivating to remember: these companies profit when you believe that protecting your privacy is an impossible task.
It's not. I'm here to help you break this overwhelming task into little steps, and give you the motivation and space to reclaim your online identity.
In this series, we'll talk about why it's important to protect our right to privacy for ourselves and our community, and also give you space and time to take immediate actions. Have you been meaning to install a VPN or set up a password manager? We'll make space for that. Do you keep forgetting to change the passwords on your online bank accounts? Do it while we're on this call. Don't leave the tab open in the background for months—join the party and get it done.
Some of the solutions will be easy, and some will take a little more investment. But each little action you take becomes a part of your commitment to a better future.
About Thea
Thea Rodgers (she/her) is a writer, actor, space nerd, and HowlRound TV Producer. She grew up in the Bay Area through the tech boom-and-bust of the early 2000s and, before joining the team at HowlRound, worked as tech support at her college's IT Desk. These experiences gave her a superficial interest in how technology works and a deep, deep interest in the ways it's used to shape and change society—some ways that feel beautiful and exciting, and other ways that feel driven by an insatiable desire for profit. Thea is a proud union member of the WGA-West. She is not a coder, programmer, hacker, or console cowboy. She's just a girl, standing in front of her computer, asking it to stop updating every five minutes and help her build a better future.
Comments
The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here.