Internet security tutorial

This tutorial will help you stay safe when using the Internet, and avoid hackers, viruses, and accidentally giving out your private information to strangers. The first section assume that you're using Microsoft Windows (the most popular operating system for PCs). But even if Windows is the most popular operating system for PCs, does not mean that it is the most reliable. It is better to install an open source system like GNU/Linux, LinuxMint is suitable for beginners, advanced users paranoid about security can use Qubes OS. Because Microsoft is intercepting your data and sending it to the NSA (and the CIA and the FBI).

On Windows

Browser security

Windows ships with a web browser called Microsoft Edge, this is the program you use to 'surf the web' and view web pages. As Windows is a popular operating system, a large percentage of web surfers and companies use it but it doesn't mean that it is the only Internet browser out there, you can download a different one and install it.

In fact, it is strongly advisable to use another web browser instead of Microsoft Edge. Here's why:

• Windows makes money with your data, and the same company owns an advertisement business and a search engine called Bing, the default in Microsoft Edge, it is not in their interest to look after your privacy.

• Microsoft Edge will try to push you towards other products Windows owns, like their non private search engine or their cloud service.

Chrome is the most popular browser but it has the same downfalls of Windows, it is owned by Google, another company that owns an advertisement business and they have no interest whatsoever in your privacy, they make money by mining your data and selling it, you will be better off with a privacy focused browser such as Brave or Firefox, you can get them at zero cost, both are simple to download and install and they are available for mobile phones as well as desktop computers.

Firewall/Anti-virus

A firewall monitors your internet connection and allows you to only let through the programs you want and block out potential hackers. Windows comes with a built-in firewall turned on by default and invisible to the user unless you dig into settings. Businesses deploy hardware firewalls that are far more complex, like a library that wants to stop users from accessing gambling and pornography websites, a hardware firewall will do that for them and log all policy violations and which user did what, including the visited websites, each business decides its own IT policy and what the firewall does. They can do whatever they want since it is their network and not yours.

Anti-virus software will prevent computer viruses from spreading to your computer monitoring the behaviour of downloaded files, sometimes they include a webshield and when visiting a page that is known to distribute malware it will block access and warn you. Windows comes with a free tool called Microsoft Defender that analyses malware, the tool has good ratings at detecting malware but Microsoft is not known respect user privacy, if you decide you don´t wish to trust Microsoft Defender you can install a free antivirus like Avira or Avast, installing an antivirus in Windows will automatically disable Microsoft Defender, an operating system can not run two antivirus at the same time because it would cause incompatibilities.

On GNU/Linux

GNU/Linux is the combination of the Linux kernel, with the GNU operating system created by Richard Stallman. The GNU/Linux operating system is often called, simply Linux. This operating system is free software. Free software does not mean zero cost software although most Linux distributions are free of charge. It means that respect your freedom to study, share, modify, etc the software. It is generally safer to use free software instead of proprietary software. Because you have the right to study it and find out what it is really doing. Becoming less vulnerable to malicious code and spyware. Some examples of spyware in proprietary software are Windows Media Player and RealPlayer that reports what each user watches or listens.

Why you should not use Windows?

Windows is proprietary software, the operating system's source code is not available for review and Microsoft makes money with your data, they use dark patterns to force you to give up your privacy or get you to use unwanted services like OneDrive, Microsoft own cloud service that scans all of the files you upload with PhotoDNA a technology to detect child porn that could lead to false positives as well as illegal spying from three letter agencies, CIA, NSA, etc.

Migrating to GNU/Linux

If you use Windows and want to try the GNU/Linux operating system the easiest way to do this is with a tool such as UNetbootin that will automatically download the Linux distribution of your choice into a USB thumbdrive and make it bootable, you will only have to make sure that your computer UEFI will start booting from the USB thumbdrive when you start the computer.

Beginners should start by trying LinuxMint or similar beginner friendly distributions, advanced users will want to download Tails a Linux distribution focused on user privacy that comes comes with Tor already configured.

Encryption

It doesn´t matter that you are a law abiding citizen are, due to prejudices in society being a boylover makes you a target, if anybody finds out you will be treated like an outcast, marginalised, fired from your job and perhaps even physically attacked, boylovers should take privacy seriously. The best way to stop having your personal computer files and Internet browsing history exposed if your laptop gets lost or stolen or accessed without authorization by somebody at your home, you should use full disk encryption, this will render every single byte in your hard drive unreadable without the correct password. Encryption software has been known to be unbreakable by even law enforcement. There are many encryption programs out there, focus on those that can fully encrypt the whole operating system because if you encrypt individual files there is the risk that temporary unencrypted copies could still be recovered from other parts of the operating system.

Some countries like the United Kingdom and Australia make it a criminal offense not to reveal your encryption password when required by law enforcement, in the United States there is no such law and you have no legal obligation to reveal your passwords to the authorities. However, there was a case where a person in the USA was jailed for refusing to unencrypt his drives.. If you live in a repressive country like China, and do no want to be found out using encryption, then use a live USB like Tails where creating an encrypted partition for your files are settings is optional, a live USB like Tails runs in volatile RAM memory, when you switch off the computer, there will be nothing left to recover, but not all live USBs work the same way, Tails does because it has been designed for privacy.

Using secure passwords

The weakness of most encryption systems is the password, the most common way to guess somebody´s password is by having a computer to try common dictionary words and passwords that the user is known to have used somewhere else, you should not be using the same password everywhere and remember that if your password is a dictionary word, sooner or later it will be found. The best way to protect you form password guessing is by using a password manager like KeePassXC where you can store different passwords and only remember the main one for the password manager, which should be a long passphrase with numbers and special signs.

Cloud Services

Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, all try to get users to use their embedded cloud service to back up and store personal data, many users are uploading their personal data to the cloud, which is monitored by those companies, without even knowing about it, if you don´t configure your settings right, specially in smartphones, it is possible that the pictures you take or download from the Internet get automatically uploaded to the cloud, this is extremely dangerous because on top of Microsoft and Google (Google drive) staff being able to access your files, the account could also be hacked and your data stolen like one incident where dozens of celebrities had their naked selfies leaked onto the Internet after their iCloud was hacked.

A cloud computer is another´s person or company computer, if you care about privacy you should avoid at all costs uploading your personal files to the cloud but if for whatever reason this is not possible you can pick a zero-knowledge encryption cloud provider, which are rarely free and you can´t know for sure how real their claims but one good bet would be Proton Drive because they have been around for many years and so far they haven´t had any significant data leaks, or ideally you should encrypt the data yourself before encrypting it to the cloud service of your choice. Cryptomator is one of the best tools to encrypt data destined for the cloud because it can sync it and doesn´t need you to open and close the container continuously as you update your files.

Virtual Private Network

All computers that are connected to the Internet have their own identifiable IP address, your Internet Service Provider will keep a record of the person who is using that Internet connection and it can be used to identify you as an individual, many countries also censor the websites you can visit and VPN can bypass that censorship as well as encrypting your connection and thwart your ISP spying on your activities. A VPN can help you stay anonymous on the Internet by masking your IP address, because of the hatred against boylovers using a VPN is recommended when visiting boylover sites.

If you're serious about Internet security, you should consider using Tor. It is an advanced proxy, and is better at protecting your privacy than web-based proxies. Tor is also considered more secure, as it is based on open source code and dynamic traffic routing, because of the layered approach Tor has, even if one administrator turns to be rogue, it will not be enough to deanonimize you.

MAC addresses

Each network card, wired and wireless, has a MAC address. This address is unique and it is used to communicate with other computers or routers on the same network, the websites you visit will not have access to your MAC address but software you have installed could leak it, there are many ways to sneakily get hold of a MAC address, diagnostic software often record the MAC address because it is a way to uniquely identify that machine, you can use software to change your MAC address but this can lead to incompatibilities when your computer tries to communicate in the internal network. The main danger of your MAC address being leaked is that it identifies your computer specially by public wifi access points that do not require login, they might use this piece of information to limit how long for you can connect to the network and multiple of other restrictions or monitoring. When you connect to your library´s Wifi your smartphone MAC address will be logged and it could be used to identify you. Apple randomizes the MAC address when it scans for open access points to avoid user profiling.

Securely deleting files

When you delete a file from your operating system it isn´t really gone for ever, only marked as invisible by your operating system so that it is not visible to you but the file can be recovered easily with specialist software, to make sure that you permanently delete a file beyond recovery, in Windows you must install specialist wiping software like Eraser, the program will overwrite the indicated document, image, etc to make sure that it not be unmarked as undeleted, and in Linux you can use the terminal and use shred -u <file_name> or shred <file_name> instead of rm.

See also

• How not to accidentally out yourself
• Email security
• Police

External links

• Brave browser
• Surveillance Self-Defense
• Eraser
• Cryptomator