I will consider this partially a rant, but also an open letter to the European Parliament (profanity included).

One thing you should do to maximize your personal privacy is to “change coats,” i.e. burning identities, burning bridges, not keeping a permanent record as often as possible.

I finally did it. I bought a Google phone and installed GrapheneOS (https://grapheneos.org). So far, after a month of usage, it’s not that bad!

Last week, I found out a fun thing. My country has not one credit bureau, but four.

Well, I feel like I need to let off a bit of steam and vent about things I learned in the past week, month, in the regular, stream-of-consciousness fashion.

Unplugged Phone pre-review

This is going to be fun. I have no stake in this, I am going to just yell at the clouds in this one. But I will also try to share what is available about the UP Phone (UnPlugged Phone) and the services underneath it.

What the hell happened?

In short, Roe v Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court.

I know I am late for the show (World Password Day was yesterday), but I had no access to the machine I usually write on, so I’ll get this off my chest now. I will illustrate my complaints about the proposed system, as well as potential solutions.

UPDATE

I moved to the “prepaid” card, and now every month, I get about $13 per month taken from my debit card. Sure, it’s still botnet, but it’s less of a botnet, since a virtual card number won’t lead attackers to everything I am.

You may not feel like you need privacy. I know I felt the same way quite a while ago. Maybe you really know why you don’t want people in your private space, but don’t know feel comfortable enough defending your decisions (the question of do you have something to hide? is difficult to answer). This post will hopefully give you at least some ammunition for people who only have the idea of privacy in their subconscious.