How To Give Love To The Privacy Community This Valentine's Day
Show some love to the privacy community❤️
Whether you adore or despise Valentine's Day, use today as a way to share what I dub, “the privacy love.” There are several ways to show some love to the privacy community, and here are five ways that you can do it to celebrate the day of love!
1.) Share privacy information with others
Privacy awareness is the best way to defend and protect your privacy rights. However, to maximize the impact of the information, sharing it with others is essential. This includes sharing it in both online and offline communities. This ensures that the information can reach different channels throughout the world, and more will understand their right to privacy.
2.) Donate to a privacy advocacy organization(s)
Many privacy advocacy organizations depend on donations to achieve the vital mission of protecting the right to privacy. If you have any spare change, consider donating to an organization. Any donation that you can offer helps them continue their mission and benefits everyone. The Tor Project, which is responsible for both the Tor browser and Tails, tools that help millions around the world bypass surveillance and censorship, is an example of an organization that is always seeking donations.
3.) Buy paid plans to privacy-focused services
Purchasing paid plans from privacy-focused services allows them to have a consistent source of revenue coming in to continue funding their operations. Not only that, but buying paid plans gives you additional perks than what is offered in their free tier.
4.) Help out a open source project
Open source projects play a valuable role in privacy-focused software. One of the advantages of open source over closed source is you can examine the underlying code. It can create trust and transparency, key elements when it comes to privacy. However, there are many projects that need support.
There are several ways you can support a project. One way is to make a financial contribution, so the developers have revenue supporting the project. Alternatively, you could assist them with any coding, documentation, or translation support they need; check out the projects GitHub, GitLab, or Codeberg page. If you aren't able to either of those options, simply spreading the word about the project is helpful.
5.) Break up with Big Tech
It should be apparent by this point that when it comes to privacy, Big Tech does not respect it, and the chances of that ever-changing are 0. Take this time to break up with Big Tech and switch to companies and services that better respect your privacy.
Until Next Time and Happy Valentine's Day!
Monique 🥰
Additional Reads:
✨From February 14-28, if you donate a minimum of $5, you will receive a PDF file containing a checklist of simple privacy tips. These tips, which were featured both in this newsletter and my blog, are now on a simple yet creative checklist I made. It’s a great way to ensure your privacy protection while also supporting my work!