+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                             |
|                           They Know. Shut It Down!                          |
|                                                                             |
|                                by D!99y Dud3                                |
|                                                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Greetz,  and welcome to  another phresh  installment of  the D!99y Philes (TM)!
I've been promising to do a piece on today's topic for awhile, first on Gab and
then on sectual.com,  but I didn't find the audiences particularly receptive in
either venue.  The folks on Gab are  certainly all for  curtailing the power of
the so-called tech giants - Goolag, Faecesbook, Twatter, ScrewYouTube, et all -
to conduct surveillance on an  unwitting populace,  but they sadly seem to have
acquired a case  of  groupthink in  their monomaniacal  pursuit of an "Internet
Bill of Rights" such that  they're openly hostile  to alternate ideas on how to
deal with the problem. It so happens that I have an acute aversion to the lock-
step cult  mentality,  regardless  of whether  the cult  victims  and  I  agree
philosophically.  As for  Sectual, it has  of late  become  faux pas  there  to
attempt to elevate discourse above the level of juvenile bathroom humor.

So what irks me about the proposed Internet Bill of Rights, exactly?

First of all,  we already have  a Bill of Rights that the  corporations hold in
utter contempt.  You know,  that document that lays out the essential liberties
upon which  our Republic is founded?  Seems to me that,  since common  carriers
such as the phone company, Greyhound, and Disneyland are bound to obey ordinary
civil rights laws,  let alone the Constitution, near-monopolies  such as Goolag
ought to be subject to at least the same regulations.

Which isn't  to say I'm  all that keen on more  regulations either.  Every time
government intervenes in the public sector, it comes with strings attached. You
and I both know  those conniving  lawyers in  Washington never do anything from
purely  altruistic  or  patriotic  motives.  Most of  the sons  of  bitches are
corporate lap dogs who hold the Constitution in contempt their damned selves.

No, sir, as a staunch conservative and capitalist,  it would be hypocritical of
me to  recommend  any strategy or tactic  for dealing with  uppity corporations
that isn't centered on hitting the assfucks right in the pocketbook.  Therefore
I shall briefly list a few simple, practical ways of achieving that end.

First  off,  Faecesbook tracks  you  everywhere  you go on the  World Wide Web,
regardless of whether you have a  Faecesbook  account or have ever laid eyes on
Faecesbook.  All of  those  "like" buttons  and Faecesbook  comments you see on
damned near every single website you visit?  Those aren't mere link buttons, my
phriends.  There's actually quite a bit of sophisticated  software behind those
innocuous-looking little phuckers.  I won't go into all of the different sneaky
tricks employed to track you.  Instead, I'll tell you what to do about it.  For
this part,  you only need  to install two  plugins on  your  desktop or  mobile
browser: uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. Make sure you get uBlock Origin, not
just uBlock, which is no longer maintained by the original authors.

Believe it or not,  your own ISP also logs all of your  Web activity  and sells
that information to marketers. What can you do about that? Simple. Set your DNS
servers to 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. Read more about it at https://1.1.1.1/

If you absolutely must use social media,  why give your personal information to
a corporation?  There's a  little-known  global  social  network out there that
takes a page directly from old school BBSes  by letting  independent  operators
host their own network nodes.  When you host your own node, you keep control of
your private information. Check out Diaspora at https://diasporafoundation.org/

And, of course,  the truly  paranoid may want to  look into Tor or some kind of
VPN service.  For those who don't  trust sysops or Webmasters not to read their
private messages,  a free public/private key-based encryption  application like
GnuPG is the way to go.

That's about  all I can think of in the way of ensuring  your Internet privacy.
There are undoubtedly many other things you can do,  but the measures mentioned
here will go a long phucking way towards getting the job done.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  This has been another riveting communique from D!99y Dud3 at the Department
  of Demented Development. You can find all premium D!99y Philes (TM) on these
  fine, scholarly BBSes. Feel free to copy and distribute this phile to all
  other boards with this notice intact!

    Agency BBS       Sysop: Avon        telnet://agency.bbs.nz
    Borderline BBS   Sysop: Balzabaar   telnet://borderlinebbs.dyndns.org:6400
    Particles! BBS   Sysop: Paradroyd   telnet://particlesbbs.dyndns.org:6400

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------