I like lists, I often am presented with a list of things to choose from, prioritize, sort elements of it without necessarily the right to reject the inclusion of something in the list I am given.

So here is an unfiltered list of tools and systems you can use to improve your privacy starting by decentralized communications and cryptography.

1) http://sci-hub.tw/

If you are ever stuck with academic research, want to avoid running into plagiarism or read useful material to take your research one step further this website will charm you.

Founded by an academic in search for the right material and became a gold mine for researchers around the globe.

Peer to peer piracy killed the black market, where academic papers used to be sold 30 dollars a piece through shady deals.

Now they are given for free without anyone benefiting from it. A cyber Robin Hood platform redistributing knowledge.

Years ago I handed over an organic chemistry encyclopedia to my doctor friend, to complete his work leading to composing a successful Alzheimer drug.

I found this encyclopedia, solving a catch 22 problem for him.

My friend did not have the time, to travel for several hours to Paris during the libraries opening hours. If he took that time then he could get the wonderful opportunity to pay a fee of a few hundred dollars to borrow any books that were available from that collection for a period of seven days.

Considering he planned to work for another 2 years on his research that would have drained all resources from him as the university he worked for did not have such detailed reference material for him to read.

Through E-Mule a generic peer to peer software somewhat similar to the torrent systems used today I was able found the material in a blink of an eye , as soon as he first described me his problem.

Unfortunately, we also stumbled upon some videos of Syrian beheading leading my friend to an outburst of laughter as he happened to be Syrian himself.

My friend then realized how clueless he was about the Internet and how useful, but also how troubled the Internet was Users promoting knowledge, while others promoted hate in the same cyberspace.

The deep web is more or less associated with dark web, but the separation of concerns allowed for true gems of websites offering the right kind of information to the community.

Sci-hub is a brilliant example of the power that the Internet enables people to have.

The power of knowledge, The knowledge that is not indexed by Google, where only brave navigators can find their way.

2) Asymmetric email encryption is known as S/MIME

Your cloud email including Office 365 cloud email allows for a personal cachet, a wax seal you can add on top of your message.

For your Google system or local good old desktop email client Acquiring a digital certificate is easy and free, launching Certbot can be done in many ways. The easiest is in a container on your laptop (assuming you installed docker which is a cross-platform container system) go to your command shell and type:

docker run -it —rm —name certbot \ -v “/etc/letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt” \ -v “/var/lib/letsencrypt:/var/lib/letsencrypt” \ certbot/certbot certonly

If you want more control and need to generate millions of them for your IoT network, the kit is very extensive.

https://letsencrypt.org/docs/client-options/

Now you can always purchase a ready-made one, but the principle remains the same.

I would not be surprised if there is not already a smartphone app on the Apple store that does it for you.

Long story short, you create a file and load into your email system. Pretty straightforward, and all your emails are now encrypted with your own additional encryption key.

3) Anonymity hardware such as the Anonabox

https://www.anonabox.com/

In today's world, software is not strong enough to safeguard information, hardware offers additional compute power, ease of use and little need for configuration.

In the previous post I pointed out how using Linux software one can have a personal cloud platform with secure data.

The plug and play box is a simpler way to access sensitive information Like the one, I shared in my very first post around the NSA leaked documents published by the Washington Post and filtered by the European Union.

With thousands of accidental interceptions, no matter how diligent can anyone be for you to simply give up your right to anonymity.

With this solution, you can protect your loved ones so that years in the future no government will have a record of the books you browsed on Amazon, or where did you last fly for a vacation.

Oh and you can pay and view the latest “Who is America” show on ShowTime which is also mysteriously filtered out.

In Europe lot of digital TV content is filtered seemingly favoring the good old cable and local taxes applied despite the decrease of the audience hooked on the airwaves watching the local public TV service.

In Ireland the tax man taxes your TV screens, not the content displayed on them so why would the content be filtered?

This brings me to the last link,

4) Be crazy but get paid for doing so. https://www.yours.org/

Claim back the Internet, focus on the content, not distractions.

Own your content.

You can run it on your own infrastructure like mentioned with Freedom boxes in hardware or software mode.

With yours.org or similar services, you can simply hook up on the existing network allowing to monetize your own data getting directly paid based on its quality.

No need to make the 0.01% even richer thanks to your data stored in their data-centers feeding in their advertising partners.

Don't simply give out the dollar worth photograph of your breakfast to a social advertising platform for free.

A few years ago people still believed that protesting on Facebook about Facebook selling or owning their data would prevent that from happening. Ignorance can be amusing to observe.

The market of personal data is very aggressive.

So aggressive it gave space to personal information poachers like Zuckerberg to monetize your life. Reconsider your understanding of the “Terms and conditions” that applied with sharing your data, knowing that 3rd party apps would read your data bypassing those agreements.

Zuckerberg never lost any money, not even after the scandal, his net value actually grew.

It is the people who trusted and invested in Facebook that started losing money following this scandal.

For the general public, you and me, Mary Sue and Bobby Lee there is only one simple economic model.

Online presence on traditional social networks makes any individual a de facto product for sale.

Don't be a target for advertisement, or a cash cow for Facebook.

Move on to new networks, discover the real value of your online activity by taking control of it.