We know that most of the time, our normal means of communications work fine. We pick up our cell phones and make calls, play games, and surf the web. We use our laptops or desktop PCs and connect to the internet. In fact, there are very few times this doesn’t happen.
WHen everything is working well, your privacy is still of utmost importance. Simply because you are using a network that thousands (or millions) of other people are using doesn’t mean you have to give up your right to privacy. It’s not about “not having something to hide.” It’s about the basic right of an expectation of privacy.
There some tools that you should be using, every day, to protect your online presence and information. The tools we highlight here are our favorites. That doesn’t mean that there are other options available for you to consider. These are simply the ones that we like best, and we will tell you why we like them and why we think you should consider using them.
We get no compensation for any of these recommendations.
Text Messaging
Signal
Signal is hands-down our favorite text messaging client. All communications are encrypted by default. No messages are stored on any server, anywhere. In fact, not even Signal can decrypt messages sent through their system. It is truly the pinnacle of private text communications.
Telegram and Whats App are sometimes touted as being encrypted and secure, but they are no match for signal. Telegram stores messages unencrypted on their servers by default, and What’s App is owned by Meta, so your personal information and how you use the app can be sent back to Meta.
Signal also allows you to make private, encrypted voice calls. You can also set messages to automatically disappear after a set period of time, further enhancing your privacy.
Signal is a “platform agnostic” application. It doesn’t matter if you use android, ios, Windows, Linux, Mac… Signal has you covered.
You can do much worse when it comes to protecting your online communications, but you can hardly do any better. If you are serious about protecting you text messaging, you need to be using signal.
EMail / Password Manager
VPN / cloud storage
proton suite
The tools offered by the Proton suite of products is second to none when it comes to protecting your privacy. Based in Switzerland, where privacy laws are very strict, proton offers users a level of privacy that simply cannot be matched by any other service, anywhere.
Unlike signal, however, proton is not free. when you stop to consider exactly why mail services like gmail, yahoo, and outlook mail are free, though, you understand. for the big companies, you are the commodity. your data is the commodity. they give you their mail services for free, but they scan your mail and offer you goods and services in exchange for your meta data and your eyeballs.
Proton does not do that. your information is secure, encrypted,and unable to be intercepted. not even by proton itself.
shielded signals uses the entire proton suite for the protection of our data and communications. you should too. it is well worth the expense to shield your data.
