Tips for living a very private life?

[mortgageboss]

I don't think you can go totally dark in today's society. It will drive you crazy, alienate your friends and family and suck up so much time and effort that you do little other than obsess with security.

Instead, I do what many previous posters have said. Go with the gray man approach in life, don't draw attention to yourself, limit the number of people in your house, and don't post stupid stuff on social media.

I do use cash sometimes, mostly to tip bartenders and servers. If they report it or not, its not my concern.

[moxiegal]

Unfortunately, ALL of our information is now posted in online websites. Whether we give our approval or not.

I am living two different lives. Personal safety as well as peace of mind.

There are now websites that glean any and all public personal information and post it. Then there are those things we must have, just to live our daily lives. Drivers licenses, auto ownership, utilities, tax information, court records.
Optional things are -google, FB, internet usage, and on and on.

I refuse to use google+, or Linkdin, and limit my own www posting and exposure.

I don't like having to live like this. I used to live a normal American life. 20 years ago.

[ognend]

Originally Posted by ognend

Of all search engines Google is #1 when it comes to a user base. There is a large swath of the Internet not covered (or not served to you) via the search engines though - this is more of a dark zone.

I too like duckduckgo and to me it is a better search engine than Google. Unfortunately, Google captures the vast majority of the market and most people go to it as their default search engine.

While it may not be a secret (how Google operates) it is one ignored by most people for convenience. Connect your Amazon, your bank, your utilities and other online accounts to Google and all your private email too and all of a sudden they know everything, your utility providers, shopping habits, who you bank with, what you bought on Amazon. In addition to that, I would venture to say that 90% of Android phone users couple their phone with their Google+ account and then EVERYTHING is up for grabs for Google, the phone's location, searches, phone numbers, contacts, all apps installed, texts, so on and so on.

It is a perfect example of how you can put all your private and sensitive information in the hands of a private entity - I would say you should be more afraid of them than of an intrusive government...

What I was saying about knowledge vs information was that up and coming generations of imbeciles are surrendering their ability to remember the details of things (information) and thus eroding their knowledge of things for the simple fact that they can "google up" a piece of information at will. Soon it becomes a habit and the brain slowly stops remembering and you get what you got today - if you can google anything up, why remember ANYTHING?

Ah, there is a study now to support my theories
Digital dependence 'eroding human memory' - BBC News

[Nonesuch]

Tumblr is awful, but I find it amusing that Paranoids Bible is a tumblr telling how to wipe all traces of your real identiy from social media, including tumblr: The Paranoid's Bible: An anti-dox effort.