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Privacy

Privacy in Technology, Related Information, How-To’s, Tips, Tools, and Guides

WINDOWS 10 REPLACE CHROME WITH FIREFOX

This is the continuation of a series of articles, that help you divorce your life from BIG TECH. With the recent events in American Politics, the need for these guides has become apparent. I hope this guide assists in your journey to protect yourself.

For many years, chrome was my go-to browser. Quick, Efficient, and able to handle everything that I could throw at it…It also allowed an attack against me, from a Threat Actor, who I personally knew. This Threat Actor logged into my google account from their corporate office Tewksbury MA, and also again at their residence in Beverly MA. Once in they had logged into my gmail account, synchronized all of my passwords and sites, then began logging into all of my business and personal accounts. I personally, was able to successfully track the Threat Actor, and worked with the State Police, Attorneys General, and the FBI in matter. Aside from that instance, BIG TECH has run amock, and my data needs, must be removed from them moving forward. For this I chose to deprecate Chrome and use Firefox (good old firefox)

As you can see, direct from the firefox website, they understood my reasons already: “No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers. Just a lightning fast browser that doesn’t sell you out.“

To install firefox on your Windows 10 computer
Open your browser and navigate to:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Click Download Now
Once the Firefox Installer downloads, Open the file and click Run
Click Next and the installtion will begin
Click Start Setup
Click Start Import
Select Chrome (or whatever other browser you use)
Click Next
Select Bookmarks
Don’t bring over Saved Logins and Passwords, use a password manager instead
Click Next
The import will run, and once completed click Finish
Select your Theme
Now click the Gear at the top right of your home page
Click Search
Change the Default Search Engine from Google to DuckDuckGo
And if you did not listen to me, and you brought over your Saved Logins and Passwords you will need to
Click Privacy & Security
Place a check mark in the box for Primary Password
Set a Primary Password, and Confirm it
Then click OK on the note that the password has been set

You are done! Happy and Safe Browsing!

EXPORT ICLOUD CALENDAR and IMPORT INTO OUTLOOK

The time has come to remove your information from BIG TECH. This guide will show you how to get your data off of APPLE’s iCloud, so you can move it to Microsoft (who has largely, and wisely, stayed out of American Politics as of late)

First you will want to log into your iCloud account.
On your computer, open a Browser (not Chrome) and navigate to https://www.icloud.com/
Sign in
Click Calendar
On the left side, select the calendar you want to export
Click on the bars next to it
Select Public
Copy the web address. it will look something like this:
webcal://p51-caldav.icloud.com/published/2/MTExMjE4tJ9gcpOId08zbH1z8S88F_Baxte8C1b-UiaqdDNsmFL5
Open another browser window on your computer (Not Chrome)
Paste the following into the window:
webcal://p51-caldav.icloud.com/published/2/MTExMjE4tJ9gcpOId08zbH1z8S88F_Baxte8C1b-UiaqdDNsmFL5
And change the webcal text to https, so it looks like this:

Press Enter, and it will take some time, however your entire calendar will now be downloaded as an ics file

Make sure you do this for each of your calendars

To Import the data into Outlook
Open Outlook
Click File
Select Open & Export
Click Import Export
Choose Import and iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs)
Click Next
Navigate to the directory where you downloaded the calendars to
Select a Calendar
Click OK
Choose Import
The calendar will import, and any errors that occur will be displayed
Once the import has completed, the dialog box will automatically close. So keep an eye on the success / failures during the import

Finally, it is time to clean up / delete your calendar from iCloud
Back to the iCloud Calendar page in your web browser
In the Calendar section to the left you will see the Edit link at the bottom
Select Edit
Then click the Red Circle next to each calendar that you want to delete, to remove it
Click Delete when prompted
Your calendar will now delete and your data will be safe from Apple moving forward

PREVENT SIRI FROM DATA MINING APPS ON YOUR IPAD / IPHONE

This is the continuation of a series of articles, that help you divorce your life from BIG TECH. With the recent events in American Politics, the need for these guides has become apparent. I hope this guide assists in your journey to protect yourself.

Each and every time you download an app to your iPad or your iPhone, Siri jumps in and attempts to mine data about you, your behaviors, and they send this data back to BIG TECH…. Here is how to protect yourself from it

After downloading an application onto your iPad or your iPhone
From the device’s “Desktop”
Open the Settings App
Scroll down to the Application section where the recently installed application shows up
Click on the Application
Select Siri & Search from the menu on the Right
In this sub menu, deselect (Change from Green to Grey) each item
Learn from this App
Show Suggestions from APP
Suggest App
Show App in Search
Show Content in Search

You will also have to do this for every single app that was installed prior. I also suggest after every major update, you double check to ensure your settings have not been changed


REPLACE SAFARI / CHROME BROWSERS ON IPAD / IPHONE

This is the continuation of a series of articles, that help you divorce your life from BIG TECH. With the recent events in American Politics, the need for these guides has become apparent. I hope this guide assists in your journey to protect yourself.

If you are an iPhone / iPad user, you rely heavily on either Safari, or Chrome for your daily browsing. This guide will show you how to replace it with DuckDuckGo, and below the reasons will become apparent as to why.

On your iPad
Open the App Store
Click Search
Type in DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser
Click GET
Enter your Apple Password
The Application will now install

Once it has installed
Open the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser
The welcome screen will appear, and it will explain the application to you.
Make sure you select Set as Default Browser
When selecting that, your Settings will open up
You will need to scroll down to DuckDuckGo and open the settings
Change Default Browser App from Safari, to DuckDuckGo
Once Done, you can Click DuckDuckGo at the top left corner of the screen to return to the app setup
Here you can now continue following the guide, which walks you through the user experience features
Key features to note are:
Your Searches ARE Anonymous
Your History is not stored after you close the app
The Fire Symbol will let you burn your browser data immediately
If Tracking cookies try to follow you, you will see the notification
Do not use google.com, as DuckDuckGo cannot stop it from tracking you, if you search from that site
You can search using the address bar instead

Enjoy safe browsing!

REMOVE GOOGLE AS IPAD SEARCH ENGINE

With the recent unrestful events, the need has arisen to migrate off BIG TECH platforms. This series of articles will assist you in that arena

Apple iPads, by default, Safari uses Google as the default search engine. To switch away from Google and over to DuckDuckGo, which does not store your personal information (see https://duckduckgo.com/?va=b&t=hc).

On the iPad:
Navigate to your “Desktop“
Open the Settings app
Scroll down to Safari and select it
In the Search Section, you will see the Search Engine is set to Google
Click the “>” next to Google
Select DuckDuckGo
Now you can close the setting app, and your settings will be saved

Google will no longer be your search engine for Safari

INSTALL NORDVPN ON PARROT OS

This is a guide on how I have installed and configured NordVPN to work on Parrot OS

Open a terminal
sudo bash
sh <(curl -sSf https://downloads.nordcdn.com/apps/linux/install.sh

After it installs type
nordvpn login
Enter your username
Enter your password

Once you are logged in type
nordvpn set killswitch on

Select the countries to vpn through by typing
nordvpn countries

Select the country
nordvpn cities Vietnam
Hanoi – will be listed

Now type:
nordvpn connect Vietnam Hanoi

Once you are done with Nord type:
nordvpn disconnect

CHANGING THE MAC ADDRESS IN PARROT OS

A simple way to prove who was attacking you, is to track their MAC address back to the hardware in their computer. This has helped prove case after case against malicious actors. One way to safeguard against this, is to change your mac address, and luckily this software is readily available in Parrot OS

To change your mac address:
Open a Terminal
Type:
sudo bash
Enter your password
ifconfig
Note the adapters you have, for this, we are going to change our WIreless adapter, named WLAN2
ifconfig WLAN2 down
macchanger -a WLAN2
ifconfig WLAN2 up

That’s it. Your mac address is now spoofed

PRIVACY4CARS – CLEAN YOUR VEHICLE’S SENSOR AND LOCATION DATA

  • Privacy

Your vehicle tracks you. It knows where you were, how fast you were driving, if your phone was in use, and a wealth of other information. Privacy in this digital age is paramount. Here is how you reset the data

From an iPhone (if you have an Android you can go to their website for instructions):
https://www.privacy4cars.com/home/default.aspx#section=privacy4cars

Download the Privacy4Cars App
Register in the App
Once you register, open the app
Enter your Vehicle’s VIN number
Select your Make / Model
Select your Radio type
Click Start Process

Follow the onscreen instructions, to reset your vehicle to the factory defaults

That’s it! Privacy unlocked

You only get 2 FREE wipes, so use them wisely

Display Wifi Passwords Stored on a Windows 10 Computer

Show All Stored Wireless Keys

Open a Command Prompt on the Windows 10 Computer and type:

netsh wlan show profiles

Identify the network you want to show the password for…Ex. HOME

netsh wlan show profile name=HOME key=clear

Look for the line that says Key Content and that will be your wireless password.

A tip for the masses. Once a user is done on your network, erase your network from their device….otherwise your password can be compromised and your privacy is at risk.

AND if you have the ability to have a guest network at your house, set it up. Keep your network secure.

ZMap and ZGrab Installation

Installing the packages on a Ubuntu 18.04 system

In the coming weeks I will be writing more about how to check the perimeter of your network, understand what data is leaking out from it, and how to safeguard your network, and especially your wallet from bad actors. These tools are the beginning, I will wrap it altogether piece by piece.

Log into your Ubuntu rig

Install zmap and zgrab

sudo bash

apt install zmap

apt install golang-go

go get github.com/zmap/zgrab

cd /home/USERNAME/go/src/github.com/zmap/zgrab

go build

Test it by running the following from a remote system, against your network

zmap -p 30303 (Your Public IP Here) –output-fields=* –output-file=results.csv | zgrab –port 30303 -banners –output-file=banners.json