3 Privacy Fixes Most People Never Make

A video from Naomi Brockwell, host of Naomi Brockwell TV, on the three privacy switches with the biggest payoff for the least effort: moving off a surveilling email provider, moving to an end-to-end encrypted messenger, and replacing a tracking browser. Her argument is that privacy is incremental, and that you do not have to change everything at once to meaningfully shrink what you leak.

Naomi Brockwell TV's educational videos are produced by the Ludlow Institute (নতুন ট্যাবে খোলে), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation working to help people use modern technology without surrendering their privacy and autonomy.

This transcript is an accessible copy of the original video transcript (নতুন ট্যাবে খোলে) published by Naomi Brockwell TV. It has been lightly edited for readability.

A New Year, A New Start (0:00)

It's a new year and a perfect time for fresh starts, especially when it comes to privacy. Now, you might have made your way to our channel because you care about privacy, but you're not sure where to begin. And maybe you've been waiting for courage or inspiration to take your first steps.

Well, this video is for you, or for anyone in your life who could use a helping hand when it comes to fighting for their privacy. I want to give everyone a boost entering the New Year by laying out three small steps that you can take to reclaim privacy right now.

Email (0:33)

Let's start with email, because it's an essential tool in basically everyone's lives and it's a really easy one to make more private. I know, I know, switching emails might seem like a daunting and massive step, but stick with me. You don't have to move everything at once. Today is just about taking small steps.

Now, statistically speaking, about three quarters of the people watching this video are using Gmail. You probably got it set up a long time ago, and now you're just using it out of habit. The problem is that it's absolutely horrible for privacy. Gmail is scanning and analyzing the contents of every private message. That includes personal conversations, work correspondence, health-related messages, financial information, and everything else that passes through your inbox. Advertising is, after all, Google's core business model.

So email is one of the first things I recommend changing because the impact it has on your privacy is huge. There are many private email services you could use instead, like Tuta, Startmail, and Proton. I personally use Proton. They have a button that allows you to automatically import your entire history of emails into Proton from your existing Gmail account.

If you've had your old email for decades, you don't need to immediately abandon it. Just take the first small step. Create a new email address on Proton, for free to start with, and just get it set up. Your new email account will be waiting for you whenever you're ready to start using it. And when that time comes, you can slowly transition people over to it, responding to emails from your new address and letting people know that you have a new address. But take that first step and get the account set up ready to go.

Messaging (2:19)

The next thing that is easy to tackle right away this new year is messaging. Most people still rely heavily on SMS or social media DMs to talk to family, friends, coworkers. And it's largely because it's what everyone else is using.

The problem is that SMS wasn't designed to be private. In fact, it was specifically designed to be not private. It runs through telecom infrastructure that is built for monitoring and interception, and most social media messaging platforms are tied to advertising business models, and they log and analyze every communication to serve better ads, but also potentially to just sell that data to others.

A much better messaging platform is Signal, which is an end-to-end encrypted messenger. This means that even Signal can't read your messages. It takes about 30 seconds to set up. Seriously. You download the app, confirm the number you want attached, and you're good to go.

What surprises most people when they install Signal is how many of their contacts are already there. Almost everyone I've helped sign up already had a long list of people using it, often without realizing it. To find these people, click compose and it will show you all your contacts already on there.

Once again, you don't need to entirely switch to Signal overnight or even convince all your friends to move there, but you can immediately start talking with all of your contacts already there. If you simply choose Signal whenever it's an option, you're already taking a huge step to improve your privacy.

But your impact goes even further than just protecting your own privacy. Think about it. Those contacts of yours who are already on Signal are probably there because they care about privacy too. So every time you opt to talk with them via Signal instead of another platform, you're also helping them protect their own privacy. You're protecting both of you, and each message you send or receive is data that you're not feeding to telecom companies, advertising systems and governments.

Browser (4:23)

The third easy place to start this new year is your browser, and this might be the easiest step of all. Your browser is the main gateway between you and the internet. It sees where you go, what you search for, how you interact with websites. It reveals your innermost preferences and interests and opinions. So the choice of browser matters a lot more than people realize.

About 70% of the world uses Google Chrome, which is horrendous for privacy. Chrome gives Google deep visibility into you. I mean, Chrome still allows third-party cookies by default, while every other mainstream browser has blocked them for years. Google spent years promising the world that they would eventually block third-party cookies. And then they kept delaying, and eventually they reversed the decision completely, because third-party cookies are central to their advertising business.

Switching browsers is a really simple shift. You just download a new browser and start using it. I personally like to use Brave because out of the box it has really strong privacy defaults. If you want to compare privacy on some of the most popular options to choose one that you'd prefer, privacytests.org (নতুন ট্যাবে খোলে) provides a great comparison.

It's super easy to import your bookmarks if you're worried about leaving those behind. In Chrome, you go to Bookmarks Manager, click the three dots on the side and export bookmarks. And in Brave you go to Bookmark Manager, click the three dots on the side and import that same bookmark file. You can even import your saved passwords if you want, by going to Password Settings and selecting the password file to import.

Brave blocks all kinds of trackers by default, protects you against bounce tracking, reduces fingerprinting, and warns you before you load a lot of known malicious sites, without you having to install a bunch of extensions. It's a really solid choice that will immediately beef up your privacy this new year.

Disclaimer (6:18)

Also, my usual disclaimer: we don't do show sponsors on this channel. These are simply examples of tools that I personally use. But if you have suggestions for people, things that you love, please let everyone know in the comments.

There are many reasons why you might have decided to improve your privacy this new year. Maybe it was because of a data breach, or a headline about governments buying all your data, including location data. Or perhaps it was just the slow realization that almost everything digital now comes with constant monitoring baked in, and you have no control over who will eventually get access to that data.

Privacy Does Not Have to be Extreme (6:56)

When people start thinking about privacy, they often assume the solution is extreme, but luckily this isn't true. The three steps we've talked about are really easy ways to get started in the new year. And even if these are the only things that you change for the whole year, the impact on your day-to-day privacy will be huge.

If you're just starting your privacy journey, there's no need to feel overwhelmed or think that you have to do everything at once. Just choose something from this list, either email, messaging, or browser, and make a change today.

It's only with your participation, supporting tools that protect people instead of fueling surveillance ecosystems, that we have the hope of writing a better future.

Happy New Year, everyone! This is the year that we get serious about fighting for privacy. Let's go!