jan 28th, 2012 CE
when aumkar mentioned his concerns about the internet and lack of privacy, i was one of those who didnt take it so seriously. however two things in the recent past make me rethink (well, this in addition to india's Big Brother stuff, both from sibal and the radiamedia screaming to censor, and also from nilekani's UID project, which is a good way of identifying everybody you don't like and herding them into... well, let's not go too far down that path).
1. google has decided to consolidate the info it has on you from all its platforms. this is a little dangerous, because we use google mail, google chrome, google blogger, google android, google calendar, google youtube, google plus, google docs,....
this is precisely the reason i have been queasy about facebook and in fact i am not at all active on facebook. i don't want them to know more about me than i do myself.
2. twitter, which recently saw an investment of $300 million from the saudis -- i am not saying there's cause and effect, though one wonders -- has just declared that it will censor tweets by country.
so, aumkar, you were prescient.
so i took his advice, and first brought up ubuntu on an old machine. it was not so painful, and in fact i am writing this on ubuntu, which comes with firefox and libre office (which is the old openoffice) built in, and wifi as well.
second, i am moving away from chrome and to firefox
third, i will also look for a VPN. i was using tor on my old laptop (before it suffered a disk and CD drive crash, and so now i run it with ubuntu from an 8GB thumbdrive!), but i wonder if there's a need for anything more.
fourth, i will move off gmail slowly and get on some other platform
that's if for now, maybe you guys have some further thoughts on the matter.
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