It's The First of The Month, Time to Run BlockParty

I believe this to be true:

1. Privacy is a fundamental human right; and it must be defended on behalf of all people, no matter where they reside on Earth.
2. When we talk about privacy, what we're really talking about is power. Information is power. That's because information can be abused by fascists and weirdos to control and suppress our brothers and sisters all over this planet.
3. At the start of every month — assuming you followed our advice and are using a MacBook Pro with the settings tweaked — you should run Task Explorer, KnockKnock, and BlockParty.

I know. I know.

We're going to talk about Task Explorer and KnockKnock in a future post.

And — if you're not using a MacBook Pro with the settings tweaked — that's ok too.

Because it doesn't matter what you're currently using, BlockParty will still work.

Privacy Tip: Get a Paper Calendar & Run BlockParty

BlockParty helps you secure your social media profiles and perform a deep clean of most of those profiles.

It costs about $30 for the year, but they often run sales, like right now, if you use the code JOINTHEPARTY.

Just an FYI: Outside of DuckDuckGo, we don't advertise other companies and businesses. This is not an advertisement for BlockParty.

They have no idea I'm writing this.

BlockParty is a tool we personally use and that we recommend you use.

Is BlockParty perfect? Nope.

Could you manually do all the things BlockParty offers? Yup.

We will show you how in future posts.

But time, like information, is power.

And right now, you should be using your time to volunteer, organize, and advocate.

So, if you have a couple of extra bucks, tools like BlockParty offer an efficient way to manage that time.

But remember: BlockParty doesn't cover everything, and it can be glitchy

For example, BlockParty suggests how to secure your LinkedIn Profile, but there isn't a bulk delete feature for your LinkedIn Posts.

BlockParty can also be glitchy with Facebook.

I've been able to use BlockParty to bulk delete a lot of old Facebook posts, but it's taken weeks to get this done. Expect to run into errors when cleaning up your Facebook presence.

When you do encounter an error, just wait a few days and try again.

While we prefer most people, in most cases, use the DuckDuckGo browser, BlockParty works best in Google Chrome.

So, I have Google Chrome installed and use it only for running BlockParty.

And I use LuLu to make sure Google Chrome doesn't get up to no good on my laptop.

We'll talk about LuLu later.

BlockParty is great to have, but it's easy to forget you have it.

It's also easy to forget to get the most out of it.

Luckily, there's a low tech solution to that problem

It's easy to find yourself a paper calendar.

If you're lucky — or, depending on your perspective, deeply unlucky — you might even get a free one mailed to you.

In our DuckDuckGo Podcast Studio, you can see I am using a free calendar PETA sent me.

PETA's July 2025 animal was a duck named Clyde.

I liked Clyde's photo so much that we made him a character in the Stupid Sexy Privacy podcast. You'll meet Clyde on August 28th.

If you prefer to use an online calendar, we recommend using the encrypted one Proton offers.

We push for everyone to have a ProtonMail account, so you might as well use their calendar too.

If you want to download your calendar for use in Thunderbird — Yes. We will talk about Mozilla's Thunderbird later — navigate to the calendar page, select the setting icon, select "Import/Export", select your calendar, then"Download ICS", and finally "Save ICS."

No matter what calendar you use, on the first of each month, make a reminder to run BlockParty.

This way, you can manually flush out all of last month's social media posts.

You can also perform a security check to make sure your settings are optimized for maximum safety on these platforms.

-BJ