Hey.

This newsletter will, eventually, evolve into something more. But first: How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos is out next month, and we have to get a lot of stuff ready for launch.

So, for now... Courage.

I'm kidding.

But enjoy this week's episode.

-BJ

Privacy Tips #5

[Reader Note: After manually reviewing the transcript and making some tweaks, I ran it through Claude to help catch any compliance errors, as I like to keep anything I post online in Associated Press style.

So, just an FYI. If you spot any weird errors below, let me know on Signal: BJMendelson.32.

BJ: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Privacy Tips, the sister podcast for Stupid Sexy Privacy. I'm your host, BJ Mendelson.

Today's show is made possible by our friends at DuckDuckGo. So if you enjoy what we do, check out their DuckDuckGo subscription. It comes with a simple and easy-to-use VPN, identity theft protection, data removal service and more. Additional information can be found at DuckDuckGo/subscribe.

(Some features and offerings will vary based on your location.)

Now my friends, Stupid Sexy Privacy has wrapped and you can find all the episodes online at stupidsexyprivacy.com. All you have to do is click on that episodes page. And as I mentioned, in the coming weeks and months ahead, we'll be making some tweaks to those episodes.

So if you've already heard them, I encourage you to go back because there will be brand new content for you in a lot of those episodes in the not too distant future. For now, the purpose of Privacy Tips is to give me an opportunity to read from my version of "How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos." The full book will be available soon to purchase wherever you buy your audiobooks.

As we go through the book, I'm going to take some time to explain how to do certain things and cover certain concepts that are covered. We'll also share a few occasional interviews with experts in fighting fascists and weirdos.

And so next week we're going to have an interview with the authors of "How to Survive Authoritarianism, a Russian Phrase Book for Everyday Life in America" by Maria Kuznetsov and Dan Storyev. So that'll be next week on Thursday. That won't be this episode; it'll be next week.

This week's episode is a little short because I was finishing some of the last-minute production details for my book's October debut.

So if the September episodes are a little short, then that's why. The book is coming out soon and we have to get all the stuff in place for it. So we're going to get right into the reading of our next book excerpt. And just so you know, because of this week's specific book excerpt, it's going to get a little technical since we're talking about how to use VPNs and how to browse the web securely. Of course, the most secure way to browse the web is Tor. Period. Like, that's it, or don't browse the web at all. But we'll get to Tor later. That's not something we're going to get to in this particular section, but I just want to put that out there: the only secure way to browse anything on the web is Tor.

So I'm going to ask for your patience. Some of you may know the stuff we're going to talk about in this section already, but remember our goal is to get all of us equipped with the right information to protect ourselves from fascists and weirdos.

So if you do find that you already know some of the stuff I share in these excerpts, I'm encouraging you to teach what you know to as many people as you can, because what is obvious to you and me, I promise you, is not at all obvious to millions and millions of people out there who need our help.

Book Excerpt

(You can read the whole book here)

BJ: Welcome back everybody. We're going to go right into the book excerpt for this week. And if you want to follow along, you can read the book anytime. It's all free on stupidsexyprivacy.com. All you have to do is click or tap on the word "book," and you'll have to create a sign-in. You'll get our newsletter every Thursday, which is basically these episodes. You'll have to sign up to get the whole book, but it's free — it doesn't cost you anything. And the entire text of the book is available for free right now on stupidsexyprivacy.com. So you can always match up these excerpts with the actual text if you like.

"There are few data points more sensitive than our search and browsing history, our chat history with large language models and our exact location. These are things a VPN can help disguise. VPN stands for virtual private network. This is a method used around the world to evade fascists and their efforts to spy on you. VPNs disguise your internet activity from your Internet Service Provider, also known as your ISP.

If you've ever seen an Atlantic City magician do their thing, that's what a VPN does. It's all misdirection. Your internet service provider is not your friend. And like an Atlantic City magician, you get what you pay for. So don't use free VPNs — that's what we're saying here. Free VPNs often share your data with the exact people we're trying to hide it from. Do support politicians who advocate for municipal broadband and a federal corporate income tax rate of at least 50 percent.

Since most American corporations are not our friends, there's no reason for us to pay more in taxes than they do or be forced to suffer from terrible customer service and price gouging from those ISPs.

We can, and I believe must, use that corporate income tax revenue to fund universally accessible health care, elder care and child care. Additionally, municipal broadband provides alternatives to corporate internet monopolies, protects your data from the federal government and data brokers and may even prove to be a revenue source for your municipality after the initial hardware investment. Because instead of paying a company like Optimum Communications for your internet every month, you'd be paying the town instead.

I believe everyone should use a VPN. And the best VPNs for most people in most cases is DuckDuckGo's VPN. That's specifically why we partnered with them for the first edition of this book. Their browser is privacy-focused and simple to use, with a VPN built right in. That means people don't have to take any extra steps to secure themselves. After spending hundreds of hours teaching people how to protect themselves from fascists and weirdos, we learned that simple works. And the fewer steps people need to take, the better. Because you can never assume people know how to use their devices — many don't. Which is a point we'll repeat later in this book. So a browser that someone can download and then press a button to turn on a VPN — that's perfect. Like, believe me, that would save so many hours. I can't tell you the number of hours that would save me.

But recommending DuckDuckGo's VPN also means recommending their browser. So we have a few thoughts to share there, one of which is technical, so hang with me as I walk you through it. First, if you're using DuckDuckGo's VPN, you may need to turn it off when accessing certain government websites, such as the Social Security Administration or the Internal Revenue Service, or your bank account.

These websites have security features that make accessing them with a VPN difficult. When that happens, simply turn off DuckDuckGo's VPN. When you're done, you can turn it back on. To access sensitive information like your bank account and health insurance, we recommend using Tor instead. It's very slow, but it's also the most secure way to view this information. Just an FYI about Tor though: While it's considered the most secure browser, you should still never download anything while using it. And just as an FYI, after I wrote this book, I found it to be faster than I recall. So for whatever that's worth, although Tor is still slow compared to other browsers, I have found that it's actually faster than I remember it.

Number 2: Avoid using Apple Safari and Google Chrome whenever possible. Enough said. If you need more advanced threat protection, use Firefox instead of DuckDuckGo. We'll explain how to figure out advanced threat detection later in this book. Mozilla's Firefox is customizable to meet your privacy and security needs. It also includes a built-in VPN like the DuckDuckGo browser.

Now this is where we get technical for a minute. So if you feel lost or confused, just read — well, I was going to say read through the following paragraph, but I'm actually reading this to you. So you can slow down the audio, you can pause it, you can rewind. I'm going to just try to go through this as quickly as I can, but all the information you need is here.

If you're using Firefox, go to settings and then select Privacy and Security. There, set your browser tracking protection to strict. Then select "Clear Your Browsing History" when you close Firefox. Next, turn on HTTPS only for all windows. Finally, turn on Max Protection for enable DNS over HTTPS. With me so far? OK, good.

Next you'll see a custom field available. Here you'll want to enter a link provided by NextDNS. You'll need to set up a free NextDNS account at my.nextdns.io/signup. Once you've done so, you'll see a link that says "DNS over HTTPS." You're going to copy that link. Now go back into Firefox's settings, back over to Privacy and Security, then down to "Enable DNS over HTTPS." And there you'll see that box again that says "custom." That box is where you're going to drop your NextDNS over HTTPS link.

Other configuration options are available, of course, for NextDNS, but they go beyond the scope of this book. Also keep in mind that certain websites may not work under this specific Firefox configuration. You may need to add exceptions or adjust these settings depending on your needs.

If you use Firefox over DuckDuckGo, we recommend the following add-ons: your password manager — we recommend Bitwarden or the free KeePassXC — Block Party, Clear URLs, Facebook Container, Firefox Multi-Account Containers and either Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin.

Facebook Container locks down Facebook to that specific tab. This keeps Meta from tracking anything you do outside of that tab, which is great. So please get that. Multi-Account Containers does the same thing for various websites that you use. It keeps everything locked down in that specific tab so they can't pull data from anywhere else. Clear URLs removes tracking elements from URLs. Privacy Badger we explained earlier, or uBlock Origin if you don't want to use Privacy Badger. Either of them will keep you from being stalked by advertising and other elements.

uBlock Origin is more powerful than Privacy Badger but more complicated to use. It also breaks websites. But uBlock Origin may be a way to get around certain media paywalls. If it's news outlets we recommend elsewhere in this book, we hope you'll subscribe or donate to them. If it's not, though, well, we can't tell you what to do with this information involving uBlock Origin.

We want to give you one more reason to try out DuckDuckGo's VPN. Considering Netflix charges about $108 a year for their basic plan with commercials at the time of publication, and they seem intent on raising their rates every six months or so, you can get DuckDuckGo's VPN for less and stream some great shows and movies instead of paying for Netflix. All available on services you can't access in the U.S., such as Canada's Crave and the CBC's Gem.

Later, you'll hear us recommend CBC as a source to get your news instead of any of America's cable news channels — they're all bad. You can access CBC news via Gem. So given that Netflix seems intent on raising its price every year while offering less and less in terms of original content, your money is better spent on the VPN and an international service that offers some, if not all, of those same films and TV shows that Netflix offers you. So it's a nice way to save some money and protect yourself from fascists and weirdos."

Outro

BJ: And that concludes our reading for the week. As mentioned, I'm trying to keep this episode a little short just because I have to do some other stuff to get the book ready for launch in October. Next week we will have an interview with the authors of "How to Survive Authoritarianism, a Russian Phrase Book for Everyday Life in America," which is by Maria Kuznetsov and Dan Storyev. I'm really excited to share that with you. That was a fun interview to conduct. I want to thank the publisher for sending us a copy of the book in advance so that we could read it prior to the interview.

So stay tuned for that. We'll be back next week. Until then I'm going to give you the outro, and these episodes will get longer. We'll get more detailed as we go along. But for right now, please hang with us. There's a lot happening behind the scenes and I am only one person.

We'll wrap up and say today's episode of Privacy Tips was recorded in Hollywood, California, and sponsored by DuckDuckGo. It was written, produced and hosted by me, BJ Mendelson.

Before we go, I want to give a shout-out to the production team at Stupid Sexy Privacy, which includes Andrew Van Vooris, Rosie Tran and Amanda King. And of course, our friends at DuckDuckGo.

If you enjoyed today's show, we hope you'll take a moment to leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you may be listening. This won't take more than two minutes of your time. You see, we have this crazy goal and we need your help to achieve it. We want 5 percent of Americans to be 1 percent better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdos. Leaving us a review can help make that happen. That's because your reviews will help other people find the show.

So please take a moment to leave us a review and we'll see you next week on Thursday with another edition of Privacy Tips.

-30-