Online etiquette is extremely important. Limitation of your activity on social media is key to being gray. Think of the things previously mentioned regarding how you start at home. You don’t want to expose yourself or your capabilities by talking to your neighbors and you definitely don’t want to post anything online. We live in a world where online communities are an everyday part of our lives, but how exposed do they make us? Just go look at Facebook or even a local forum you feel ‘safer’ on. How many people in EDC and preparedness groups post picture of them and their gear or pictures of their vehicles and talk about all the things they’re up to get “prepared”. Unfortunately they’re creating a library of metadata that outlines who they are, where they live in many cases, what their capabilities are and who they associate with. Let’s not forget how much Big Tech has leveraged cancel culture against those who have conservative views posted on many of these platforms and have gone after entire companies to get them out of the way. Not very gray, huh? Just think of the damage an individual or entity could do to you if they used anything you said/did online and went after you directly. Even the most benign thing can single you out in today’s world.
So, in short, we should treat our presence online just the same or more strict as we do our behavior in and around our homes. Despite the fact we have our families online in some capacity and we chat with them there, it’s definitely not safe to explain how much food storage you have or how well your security is setup, even if it’s “private” messaging. If there’s anything you take from this article it’s that there is no such thing as online privacy where personal information is concerned. Even if you’re having a one to one conversation with someone over unsecure text you at risk of *someone* having the ability to look at your conversations. Your best bet is to keep conversations like that to in person in your own home and if you have to communicate over long distances, make sure you’re using some type of good encryption products that are point to point communications and do not have items stored on servers that big tech companies have their hands on. It’s no secret they’re ready to sell you up the river to virtue signal or to take a supposed moral high ground. Don’t make it easy for them to find you and to use your words against you!
We’ll do some articles on specifics of some encrypted communications down the road as that’s a whole other can of worms in today’s world of Big Tech controlling the devices you are using. For starters, remember that you have agreed to sign your rights away in those terms of use that you agreed to when you fired up your iPhone or Android device. At any given point in time, Google and Apple have the ability to look into so many aspects of your life that you would never imagine and wouldn’t hesitate to use it against you. The data collected can be used to profile your movements and your behaviors and you won’t realize it until it’s too late. Now, there’s a lot you can do to mitigate these types of things but it starts with your behavior online. Adopting the same good habits here that you have adopted at home will get you started. As we dive more into personal data protection and behavioral changes, we’ll hit on a lot of these items in individual articles. Stay tuned!