You’re Not A Person, You’re A Data Point: A Christmas Story

Are you browsing for flight tickets to Hawaii? You’re shown ads of the hotels that paid the most money for those ads - not necessarily in your best interests

Are you looking to buy that new 4K tv? Your YouTube ads are now ads of 4K televisions to help sway your decision, instead of helping you make an informed decision

Are you looking to buy insurance? Companies pay $60 per click, just be at the top when you search for ‘buy insurance’. Does the search engine serve you better or the advertiser?

How Can You Stop Being A Data Point and Reclaim your Humanity?

Brave Browser - Replace Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (R.I.P Internet Explorer) with the Brave Browser. It is open-sourced and blocks all website trackers and ads served on websites. The look and feel is similar to that of Chrome so that the learning curve is negligible. Download here

Proton Mail - Developed by CERN scientists in 2014, it has amassed over 10 million users since then. Using client-side encryption, it anonymizes your data before it hits their servers (which are located outside the US and the EU jurisdictions). This is in stark contrast to email services like Gmail that have robots reading your email for advertising purposes. Sign Up here.

NordVPN - Making your privacy essentially a 1-click thing is this newsletter’s sponsor. Simply install the app, flick a switch, and browse anonymously. Grab it at 68% off with 3 FREE months here.

DuckDuckGo - By not storing IP addresses, not logging user information, and suppressing low-quality content from search results, it is miles ahead of Google when it comes to privacy-friendliness. Try it out here.

Learn More About Privacy with Hacker Noon

Internet Privacy Under Continued Attack by the US Government by @freddym

Is Data Sovereignty Possible? In The European Union, It Soon Could Be by @therealsjr

Israeli Ministry of Communications Might Be Inadvertently Exposing … by @joshhorowitz

Why Google Entering The VPN Marketplace Means it’s Time to Take Mob… by @peter-jobes

Deciphering Pesticide Resistance in the Digital Currency Space by @evdmitriev

Coming Full Circle to Christmas