Solution - Steps To Digital Freedom

There are as many approaches to data privacy as there are technologies.  It's ultimately your choice as it's really a cost/benefit or effort/impact decision on your part.  Do not take the following as verbatim, only as a generalized approach.  We suggest you do your own homework on the Internet, then we think you'll agree.  A staged or phased solution, tailored to your goals and budget, is preferred.

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THE DO's - Assuming you're not actually in the espionage business, but are interested in data privacy, and as a result do not want to share your personal information (inc. your demographics, likes/dislikes, buying history, contact info or whereabouts) with strangers, you need to minimize your digital footprint or exhaust, avoiding leaving things that can be traced back to you, or that serve to develop or contribute to entities that build, manage or broker a profile on you. 

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100% SOLUTION - If you are fully committed to digital hygiene you should consider ditching all your Big Tech tools, deleting any social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), purging your profiles first, deleting cloud storage service accounts (iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive) and deleting any un-encrypted email accounts.  After you do this, don't forget to notify vendors or service providers that you now need to communicate via new anonymous surface addresses or email account(s) you open.  You will need to build a new, private, confidential identity.  Use only encrypted email and storage service, preferably with operations in Switzerland.  Put your whole house or at least you PC and phone of interest on a VPN - not a free service, but one that works and scales well without compromising your identity.  ProtonMail has a good email, storage and VPN service , for example, but there are many good ones out there.  See Rob Braxston's thoughts here as another good point of reference.   

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80% SOLUTION - Instead of deleting accounts and resetting your life so much, consider the option of maintaining two distinct identities; continuing the public one you have already established, and launching a new one one that intentionally minimizes your trail.  Keep in mind the two can never cross as some simple relationship mapping and a few well-placed subpoenas or network sniffers from 3rd parties will find where you have mentioned one identity (such as email address or social media handle) on the other.  This makes you easier to be marketed to, monitored, sanctioned or worse.  For the private identity, access it with only a Linux-based platform(s).  Microsoft, Apple and Google operating system user agreements give them great latitude with your data.  Also, be strategic about and limit the use of cloud services (such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Apple iCloud, Google, Microsoft accounts) as these capture identification information and/or cookies that can expose your identity.  Also, avoid search engines that capture and leverage your search history such as Google, Yahoo, etc.

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We see this as the most practical alternative. To make it more actionable and specific, here's a plan:

1. Linux - Buy one of our Mint Linux laptops to make securing the privacy of that new identity easier. There are plenty of good, free Mint video tutorials for new users.  Once up and running, do as many of steps 2-6 as possible.

2. Avoid Search Tracking - Be sure the default search engine in Firefox is DuckDuckGo.com to avoid being marketed-to. 

3.  Private Browsing - Consider using the tor browser as installed on the laptop to encrypt and obfuscate your browsing identity.

4. Consider removing your social media presence all together.  Keep in mind folks like FB continue to garden a profile on you after you are gone.  At least turn off their harvesting of picture metadata (leaving that only for your cloud provider:-).

5. Encrypt Email - Create a free account on ProtonMail or use another selectively-encrypted email service.  Without this, your emails should be treated as easily discoverable and available to any marketing firm or agency.  An alternative is to start using OpenPGP-encrypted emails in Thunderbird from your current account.

6. Encrypt Storage - Add an encrypted cloud storage provider next to get similar protections on files. Consider off-shore (esp. Switzerland) storage locations that are more difficult to gain legal access to. 

7. Encrypt All Network Traffic - Move to a VPN.  Not a free one - our experiences there have been they are slow and can be just another marketing data gatherer anyway.  We recommend running it on dedicated hardware or use your home router to keep performance up - especially useful if you are convincing a streaming service that you are domiciled in another country.

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Email, storage and VPN services should cost you something as they are a service with a cost, otherwise you're probably being exploited.  You can find elements bundled by some service providers such as ProtonMail and TorGuard, making them a bit easier to manage.

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DON'TS - We recommend never installing these on your new identity Patriot PC laptop:

1. Google, Microsoft or Apple shared drive,

2. Free email account like Google, Microsoft or Apple, into Thunderbird or  

3. Microsoft (including Office), Google or Apple (esp. iTunes) products.

Each of these could lead to leaking personal information​.