In a previous Stream article I wrote on “Digital Privacy and the Christian,” and made a case for why, “I have nothing to hide” is not your best answer to digital privacy concerns. I delved into ideas of “turnkey tyranny” and how digital systems can (and have) been co-opted to engage in tyranny. I also talked briefly about first-century believers hiding themselves during persecution, in the hopes of living to pass the gospel message to more people.

What I didn’t talk about is how to do it, how to live in a digital age with privacy on your mind.

Laying the Foundation

Between 2008 and 2010 a radical change impacted the digital world. Three technologies merged with synergist effect, feeding off one another, and leading to the current technology addiction our world now experiences. Those technologies were the expansion of broadband internet, the mass adoption of mobile devices (phones and tablets), and the creation of social media.

Prior to 2008, the internet was slow. DSL and cable came rushing into society in affordable ways around 2008. At the same time, the Android and iPhone made waves. Prices dropped, allowing the average person to afford one. Then Mark Zuckerberg opened up Facebook to all email addresses. (Originally it was only available on select college campuses).

Perpetually Connected and Distracted

These three technologies opened the way to be perpetually connected to the internet for the first time. People stopped bringing their Bibles to church: Their mobile device had an app with every possible translation. Of course these devices also had every possible game and social network, so it became far easier to be distracted during the sermon.

People now rely more on their phones for digital needs, email, web searches, than they do computers. The companies that rule the internet realize this, and they have conscripted your phone against you.

How Your Phone Spies On You

Your cell phone’s apps, whether on Android or iPhone, are created with “libraries,” sets of code with specific functions. One of their functions is to connect with sensors on the device such as the gyroscope, GPS, microphones, and camera. With these they determine your location, your movements, what you’re saying, and more.

Apps routinely package up all this information and send it along to the companies that collect and analyze data. Apps can also access a code on each device called an Advertiser ID, which links that specific device to the data it collects.

These collected data points are sent back to companies most of us have never heard of, whose business it is to profile our behaviors and interests. They augment this with extra data purchased from other companies with more data points. Then they sell access to your data for scientific studies, marketing, and sometimes more nefarious purposes.

Protections? Not Much

Here in the United States, we have absolutely no protections against any of this, with the exception of a new law that has recently passed in California. The result is, people in the know can say in all seriousness, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple may know you better than you know yourself.

I hope I have just made you terrified of your phone, because fear is the beginning of wisdom! Not that you should never use a smartphone. Our lives might be better if we lay off the addiction, but that’s not the main point of where I’m heading here.

Phone Best Practices

My first point is, smart phones are digitally dangerous. But there are ways to protect yourself.

The best thing is to use a phone built for privacy. You can do it on Android-based phones with custom ROMs (operating systems) like Lineage or GrapheneOS. It means wiping out the phone’s original operating system to install one that doesn’t use Google services to map virtually everything you do with or on your phone. This requires some technical confidence and the right model phone.

If that’s too much for you, there are other steps to protect online privacy. First, follow basic privacy protocols. Both iPhone and Android allow you to reset your advertising ID and opt out of interest-based ads (the ones that target you based on the data they have about you). Do this often, once a week at least.

Phone Sensors

Next, as much as possible, keep those sensors off! WiFi, Bluetooth, and Location should always be disabled unless you are actively using them. Do not keep them on for your convenience. Beacon-based advertising is a new type of marketing that uses the probing function of Bluetooth to follow customers around stores. Similar tracking is done with WiFi and GPS data. On the iPhone, disable them in the settings, not on the control center, so the iPhone doesn’t turn them back on every morning!

The next line of defense is your choice of apps. Every app is an extra data hog that is potentially betraying us to our future tyrants. Minimize the apps you use. Stay off privacy-dangerous ones like Facebook, TikTok, and the various Google apps. If you must use Facebook, use it on a computer where the environment can be better controlled. This will help you ward off distractions while keeping you private online.

Phone Apps — Even Bible Apps

Regularly remove apps you haven’t used in a while. Also, minimize your use of apps that require a login, as logins directly tie all that data back to contact information they need for the account.

Finally, look for open source apps instead of proprietary ones. “Open source” means “open for anyone to inspect and see what the app actually is doing.” Android gives you more options for this than iPhone. It is not safe to download and install apps from any random website. Use F-Droid instead, for an easy-to-use, safe source for apps that have been checked and cleared for privacy.

As a Christian, you’ll probably want to have a Bible app on your phone, but you’d be astonished at the data harvesting some of the most popular Bible apps commit. I use AndBible: Bible Study, which makes no connections to the internet except when you want to download a Bible translation or study resource.

As for general use apps, K-9 Mail is a private email client that allows you to check all your email without deep phone integration. Media players, podcast tools, and many more applications on F-Droid can help to replace data harvesting versions of apps you might enjoy using.

Computer Best Practices: Avoiding Big Tech Altogether

Computers are progressively becoming more like smartphones, constantly requiring an internet connection, and passing data up to the company running the operating system. On this front, the best thing you can do for privacy is to switch your personal computer to Linux. My Switched To Linux channel has lots of resources on why you need to switch, and how to best do that.

For work you may need to use a Windows or Mac computer. In most uses for a personal computer — hobbies, internet, email, entertainment — Linux is by far the wiser choice. Virtually all of the software — all that most home users would use — is absolutely free.

If the change sounds intimidating, worry not: Today’s Linux desktops are at least as user-friendly as Windows or Mac, probably even more so. And the Linux operating system never collects a bit of your data, it never sends it to companies, and it never uses that data to target you with marketing. In fact, unlike the shiny new Windows 11, Linux will not market to you at all!

Windows and Mac: Block Your Sensors

If you must stay on Windows or Mac, we should heed some basic steps for privacy. First, know that both operating systems have privacy settings allowing you to block access to sending more data. Dig through those settings. The same goes for components like microphones and cameras. Dig through those settings and have a look. Note that in Windows 10 and beyond, you cannot disable data sharing entirely. Like it or not, these operating systems force some of your usage data back to Microsoft.

If you have a laptop, you should cover the camera and block the microphone. You could use tape or buy a sliding cover for the camera. A little piece of tape on the microphone hole on a laptop will help. You could try a microphone blocker, though they don’t work on all devices.

Watch Your Apps

Also, like the phone, consider what programs you have installed. The most important program on your computer is the web browser. Avoid Chrome and Edge. I prefer Firefox since it is fully open source and it can be hardened for privacy. If you want one that’s simple out of the box, consider the privacy browsers Brave, LibreWolf or Mullvad Browser.

Whichever browser you use, go into the settings and make sure it doesn’t use Google as its default search engine. Google collects every search you make and stores it along with your IP address (the number that identifies where you’re connecting to the internet from). Use Startpage, Brave, or DuckDuckGo instead.

These tips are just the basic foundation of what it takes to keep digital privacy at bay. Start here and consider how you might take more steps toward privacy in the future.

 

Tom Murosky is the creator of Switched to Linux, a Free and Open Source Software teaching channel with over 12 million views. He also teaches on Christian living at Our Walk in Christ, and has published several books including Hezekiah’s Prayer. Tom has a B.S. in biochemistry from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and his doctorate in molecular toxicology from Penn State University.