MyLaptop

Projects
Participants	Narya
Skills	Software, Social Networking, Common sense, Cryptography, Learning
Status	Active
Niche	Software
Purpose	Education

Goal

• Make my laptop more MY laptop (and my e-mail.. my calendar... backup... social networks... and well, anything really)
• Document it. A summary will be placed somewhere on this wiki including relevant links. I'll document it as a sort of diary on my own blog (http://www.van-schaik.org/)
• Achieve more privacy in my virtual environment and that of my friends/family

Blog

• Do not track 08-09-2013
• e-Mail encryption 08-09-2013
• Hey, how are you doing 01-10-2013

How

• Attend/contribute to the Privacy_Software_Workshop_Series
• Read what others have written (Bit of freedom, Crypto party for example)
• Find (open source) alternatives for all-the-stuff I use now
• Make my laptop more mine, step by step
• Write and/or point to tutorials

Some of the things I did so far

Several things below were/are new to me, so if you have suggestions please let me know.

Laptop / phone

• OS
  • Encryption of my home directory (checked the tickbox to encrypt my home directory in Ubuntu)
  • Ubuntu sends searches to Amazon, disabled this
  • Probably am going to install another OS on my laptop
• Changed browser: using firefox now i.s.o. chrome
• Installed [several browser plugins, e.g.
  • HTTPSeverywhere - make use of https as much as possible
  • Better privacy - remove super cookies
  • DoNotTrack - block advertisement, trackers, web stat trackers
  • Ghostery - comparable with DoNotTrack, but works better
  • NoScript - block JavaScript and Java stuff
• Alternatives for Google stuff
  • Use DuckDuckGo in stead of google search
  • Removed the mail forwarding to google mail and switched back to my own provider. Actually, it would be better to install your own mail server or perhaps use a peer2peer mail system with e-mail encryption built-in
  • Using a paper agenda now - couldn't find a could portable electronic alternative yet. This works just fine
  • Replaced analytics with Piwik
  • OpenStreetMap i.s.o. google maps
• Removed mail and online banking from my mobile phone (can perhaps be put back after I changed the OS)
• SSH tunnel to encrypt internet traffic from another network (e.g. a public wifi spot) to a place I trust more
• Tomboy notes with rsync in stead of Evernote
• Created a PGP key and set the default settings to "encrypt mail" for the people who are already in my list (key ring)
• Social media
  • Played around with Diaspora (as alternative to Facebook)
  • Checked out Retroshare - it's retro... and you can share things (chat, forum, mail, file, all friend2friend), uses PGP

Server

• Installed Debian
• Encrypted disk (option during setup)
• Have set firewall rules (with Shorewall)
• Have installed ownCloud - can be used ala dropbox, and it has apps for calendar and contacts
  • This is not really a cloud solution, but it might become one when doing the following:
    • Want to figure out how to set up a virtual encrypted disk which is synchronized with another location
    • If possible synchronize the user database too, so that I can run mirrored ownCloud instances
    • Relevant thread: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/owncloud/2012-June/003918.html
  • Need to investigate how to make use of this more secure (info here)
• Now working on setting up https (some explanation, example 1, example 2)

To do

• A lot
• Have fun and not become too paranoid ;)
• Be realistic: if you have a secret, don't put it on the interweb or on your computer