for a 17 year young, that seems like a miracle.

thanks for taking the time to write this

Thanks for creating your own post!

I also have a graphing calculator that can generate these.

This is a unique solution that I will add to my toolbelt for the future! Which calculator is it?

However, I fear that the cat’s already out of the bag.

Data gets stale! It’s never too late to start, and it’s always better to prevent future disaster than to dwell on old ones. I used to use Instagram + as my main chat platform, and now I have no worries because what’s done is done and I learned better.

However, my sixth form cafeteria only accepts two forms of payment: biometric (handled internally) and debit card.

Dystopia… Have you asked if you can explicitly use cash? If you’re up for it, push for the use of it in your school. I know plenty of students that use cash religiously for lunch.

Some shows I enjoy (i.e. Helluva Boss)

Hazbin Hotel is one of my favorites

My local timezone just happens to be the same as UTC

That is truly a lucky thing, as it reduces a lot of fingerprinting.

I’m still salty about Apple removing the headphone jack and then every other phone company following suit.

Me too, but fret not, as there are adapters and (most likely, I haven’t checked) non-disposable USB-C earphones.

I will never use Amazon Echo or Google Home.

I will never use Alexa. Or really anything that turns my home automated.

“Alexa, open the door.”

“I’m sorry, your voice is not recognized and your plan has been cancelled. Please contact support and we will respond within 3-5 business days.”

Obviously that will never happen, but it’s not so unreal…

Start using multiple browsers

I used to stick to only one, but found out that it’s easier to be as private as I can and “move down the assembly line” until something works.

Use cash more often

I withdrew almost all my funds from my bank and only used my card if I ran out of cash on a run.

Anonymise social media

No helping you there. I found out that even the smallest details I put out collectively could be used to uniquely identify me, after making only two posts.

Try to get family to ditch Meta

If you can, great. Otherwise, just try not to get posted on their socials.

Look into BIOS and UEFI hardening

Really just use an open source BIOS and slap a password on it (with Heads if you want) and you’re all set. Careful not to brick your PC.

Buy a privacy screen protector and faraday equipment

One note about privacy screen protectors: If your brightness (specifically white point) is too high, people can see it. You can enable “reduce white point” on iOS, and set it to 100%, and that works well even on max brightness. Smudges can also let people see. Turn your phone horizontal (if you’re testing in public) and tilt it slightly to see how much people can see in your current environment.

Good luck! You have a pretty good setup! I hope you make the improvements you want, and learn along the way!

Absolutely fantastic, considering your age! I was far, far worse than you are right now on this path to better privacy. Truly exceptional.

I commented in the post you reference, and I’d like to comment here too since I do see some things that can be improved (some of them, I employ for myself, whilst the others are still on my list to implement).

1. What made you use FreeBSD over everything else? I assume you have some experience using *nix-like operating systems, and the slightly more pro-user distributions like Gentoo and Void do seem BSD-like in operation. I’m just curious.
2. About Wireguard: it’s a very good solution, however unlike other VPN projects, it doesn’t have a way to natively hide its trace; i.e. OpenVPN and the like employ certain mechanisms to appear like HTTPS traffic to firewalls, which allows for better obscurity when using a VPN. Certainly useful for special cases, I remember seeing a comment somewhere that a school had disallowed VPNs on its campus network and the only way was to use a specific proxy that made it appear like HTTPS.
3. Ever tried a Blocky DNS + Unbound + Wireguard combo? The first is a DNS server with nice features, the second can be a DNS resolver, and the VPN is to obfuscate the IP from where you resolve your DNS queries.
4. I found a very nifty thing on the WhatsApp website the other day: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1299035810920553 - might be worth a look!
5. About the webcam and microphone on your device: if it’s an older laptop, you can simply take the front cover of the screen off and disconnect the cable to it. It’s pretty easy with the older Thinkpads and with some newer laptops too, just needs some practice.
6. Time to nuke your online accounts and (if possible) use stylometry analysis to measure certain triggers in your writing. I have yet to implement this myself but the idea is to have an LLM rewrite my answer whilst removing said bias and write in a generic tone.
7. I’ll club payments and online shopping together: learn more about XMR. It is possible to use LocalMonero to exchange fiat to Monero directly, and once it reaches your wallet you can go through a generic churning process (not sure what it’s called in Monero or if this is required, I need to look into it too) and finally, purchase gift cards using the Monero you have now. If the cafeteria accepts debit cards I think they’ll accept gift cards too, but you might want to check. You can purchase Amazon gift cards, gift cards for ISPs/mobile network providers too.
8. Glad to have found another that likes to collect physical media! If I had the space I would have invested in a few CDs myself, but alas; FLAC it is (not complaining!). Which CD transport do you use?
9. I don’t use office tools these days but I’d learn latex if I really needed to create PDFs.
10. I probably don’t need to tell you this but RF hacking is really fun, I’m only really starting to look into it. When I get time!

I came across a few tools which I hadn’t heard of before; thanks for the effort in creating your post. I hope you have a great time pursuing this path!

I don’t have a car, as I’m 17.

Try not to get one at all. You should have good enough public transport in the UK to get you around. Living in a place where everything you need is in easy walking distance is ideal, though not easily achievable for some. Also, (insert urbanism propaganda here).

I’m proud of you. It’s challenging to convince the younger generation about the importance of digital privacy. Keep up the great work.

Not listened to Kerrang for a good many years. Well thought out post though! Lots of details.

Good work youngun!

My setup is broadly similar, the main difference being CalyxOS on a second-hand Pixel phone. I’m quite impressed with it actually - it allows VPN sharing via the hotspot, so I can essentially use it as a VPN router for WiFi connections as well as mobile data.

I also self-host a few things on a VPS, like email, website, file transfer and push notifications, all to varying degrees of success! If you’re interested in self-hosting have a look at YUNOhost. These days I’m mostly looking to connect to the internet as little as possible though!

Well done for using cash - it needs to be kept alive for many reasons, including privacy .

I actually really liked this. I’m gonna have to do my own now ;) . What is your threat model ?

Interesting man. I like your setup. My is a little less private (using social media for friends sometimes and in my case as a 20 years old gamer, I’m gaming a lot on my steam deck so different accounts. Also I need to purchase online, hahaha, I live in a little remote place without good physical stores). But very nice setup. I would maybe recommend using KeePassXC. Nothing against Bitwarden, but I learned in this journey that you always need to have a encrypted local backup. You never know when a service is going to shut down. Maybe use cryptomator with a cloud service to sync to different devices.