---
title: "opinion: privacy, again"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2016/02/opinion-privacy-again/
last_updated: 2026-11-14
---


(Digital) life is always a battle between security (privacy) and convenience
(being practical). The line between these two opposing styles is becoming
subtler and subtler each day and it is more and more difficult to determine
which is the best behavior to adopt[^1].

In this (short)[^2] post I will compare my current opinion about this theme with
the one my alter ego had +/- a year ago. Please pay special attention to the
contrast (or fixation) between my opinions.

## Quick Introduction (overall)

Past: heavy user of {Arch,Gentoo} Linux, would use Firefox, would use adblock +
a half dozen of privacy-enhancing add-ons + keep the system up-to-date every
day, would sign up for mailing lists of his operating system.

Current: user of OS X[^warning1], light user of bloated Linux
distributions[^warning2], would use ublock (great!) in Google Chrome[^warning3]

+ one or two privacy-enhancing complements (okay) + keep the system up-to-date
on a weekly basis (okay, supposing you don't expose your computer to the wild
carelessly), does not care about the Apple community(overall).

[^warning1]: while OS X is okay, in the end you're sacrificing most of your
    privacy over convenience, and this remains the same if you opt to use
    Windows as your main OS. There is no force to stop lack of privacy if you
    use a proprietary software with access to the internet.

[^warning2]: the satisfaction of not using a KISS and/or do-it-yourself Linux
    distribution for desktop/personal computing/development purposes is simply
    sad. But what I am calling "bloated" won't hurt either; it is mostly a
    matter of pride (and comfort).

[^warning3]: Chrome has an awesome performance. However I would state that
    Chromium (or even [SrWare
    Iron](https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php)[^3]) offers more
    privacy but it is only easily available for Linux. Firefox offers even more
    privacy however Mozilla
    [sometimes](http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2015/06/12/my-frustration-with-mozilla/)
    makes bad decisions. Honestly, as an end-user they are mostly the same
    today; the only thing that I miss in Chrom{e,ium} is the Panorama view
    (Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + E) from Firefox.

## Software no one cares about

Past: would not install Java, only if extremely needed; would not install Flash,
only if wanted to play games in Kongregate...[^4].

Current: Java: mostly the same; Flash: the same however I have Flash in Chrome
(not in the whole system) since it is built-in.

## Add-ons you should care about

I won't provide links as they might become deprecated. Search for them:

+ get a good adblocker (nowadays: either ublock or adblock plus)
+ get a good https enforcer ('https everywhere')
+ get a good search engine (I like to use DuckDuckGo + Google[^5]. Another
  alternative is StartPage). Probably Google is the only company I don't
  care/mind as much being tracked by (as others).
+ (optional): get a "anti-tracker". Common options nowadays are ghostery and
  EFF's privacy badger. There is also lightbeam for Firefox but AFAIK it doesn't
  block – it merely collects stats.

## Social Networks

Aha. This is the most interesting (and the last) part of this post:

Past: too much careful about Facebook[^insanity1], hates Instagram (a network
for posers and humblebragging), has never heard of Snapchat (or has heard bad
    things about it), casual Twitter user[^twitter], light user of Telegram
    messaging.

Current: loosely careful about Facebook[^awareness1], casual Instagram
user[^whatthehell1], a common snapchat user[^awareness2], opens Twitter one time
per week or so[^twitter], heavy user of Telegram (great!).

[^insanity1]: Facebook privacy should be important, however you don't want to
    become insane by pretending it works like snapchat and (thus) deleting your
    old posts or events you attended. The better thing to do is: think twice
    before posting so you won't have to clea{r,n} your posts later. The way
    better thing is: don't share flood or cheap humor (aka 9gag, buzzfeed, and
    similar), at least not too often, as it pollutes your timeline and the
    timeline of your friends. There are better places and/or communities more
    suitable to share these kind of posts (I just cited two of them). Also,
    don't post all of your photos to Facebook. It you really want to post some
    photos, then just post a few ones. There are people that upload entire
    albums to Facebook as it were super cool. Not only it is lazy but it also
    permanently exposes every moment of your life/trip/whatever to every person
    with access to your feed, and there is no easy "undo" button – you can
    delete the photos later, but they will still be stored somewhere in Facebook
    servers.

[^awareness1]: I think the best way to use Facebook is to be flexible and
    maximize your (induced) serendipity of getting good events to go to and good
    connections to interact with (a.k.a. 'friends' in the Facebook terminology)
    without being too much restrictive, but without being too much open either.
    Finding the right balance is tricky and it is a matter of experience and
    personal choice. Anyway, regardless of how you use the network, it is
    *really* bad to be too much closed (why bother having an account then? I
    know some people who have not. They are perfectly normal and sane. Yes, they
    are real too!) and also to be too much *open* (you don't want all of your
    posts or photos indexed by search engines or way too much addressable.
    Right? Specially, you don't want your new friends (maybe your future boss,
    who knows?) to see things you don't want them to see).

[^twitter]: in 2009 I would be super enthusiastic about twitter (or even
    'identica', for that matter). Today I simply lost almost all of my
    attraction for it. It is still cool, but it is not for me, neither as a
    follower or as a tweeter. However, for those of you who still like it (which
    is okay), I would recommend deleting old tweets periodically (there are
    several services which do that) or protecting your tweets, as they quickly
    become deprecated in relation to what you tend to think.

[^whatthehell1]: Instagram is tricky. Yeah, I find out its design awesome
    (congrats engineers!) from the technical point of view. But I find out its
    users either (i)way too much open (and sometimes unaware of that) or (ii)way
    too much 'I want to be pop, and brag all the time' or (iii)'I want to
    document all of my trips every day or so, even if these trips are from weeks
    or months ago' or (iv)whatever. The point is: it is really hard to pick a
    subset of its users who try to use the site/app as a place to share good
    moments and feelings for a true and pure purpose (what is true or pure
    anyway?) other than just trying to appear. Well, people do what they wanna
    do and whatever, but still if you have to define a metric to determine what
        is a good community, the items I discussed here will inevitably be
        discussed. I am still unsure whether I identify myself with the overall
        Instagram community, however I learned that if the app is well designed
        (it is indeed!) and if it was made for the purpose of sharing occasional
        photos (not posting entire albums, please!), then it is a good fit for a
        person who wants do to exactly that: "share occasional photos".
        Regardless of how other people use it. And period. Oh, and about
        privacy: keep photos private. I think I won't change my mind about that
        point.

[^awareness2]: almost finally: snapchat. It is a very original and nice app
    IMHO. First, photos are temporary, which is greeeeeeaat (no digital traces,
    at least theoretically); second, you share small moments of your life with
    people you (theoretically) care about, and you get a snapshot of the life of
    people who (again – theoretically) you care about. It is private by nature
    and there is no way of accessing its photos from the web (I mean, unlike
    Instagram; of course you could try to scrape the origin of the photos by
    debugging/tracing the web requests from the app but let's focus on the
    overall end-user). The "small" moment concept is great and probably
    inherited or influenced by Twitter at some point (and maybe this is the
    reason why people don't seem to use Twitter anymore as much as in the past).
    And well, I think if it is used wisely and/or with attention, then it is the
    best social network out there today. Less superficial than twitter /
    facebook and less bragging-wise than Instagram (well, at least people can't
    post old photos/videos in there). And, the most important: it feels personal
    and interactive – exactly what a social network aims to be (usually).

And, finally, Telegram is an amazing app for messaging. It is open source, has
groups, and it supports encryption should you need it.

## Conclusion

Do whatever you want, I don't care[^6]. But please, please, please: be aware and
conscious of your surroundings. The web is becoming more and more ubiquitous and
public. When in doubt, prefer to be private. However if you are being way too
much private to the extent of not enjoying all of the capabilities and/or
opportunities you could have with a given platform or social network, then
consider being slightly more open. And live on. *Life is all about finding the
right balance*.

[^1]: is there 'the best'? What is right and what is wrong? Who defines that?
    Everything is just a placebo and a mere set of conventions and imitation...

[^2]: I am not posting much to this blog mostly because the posts I want to
    write are *long* and I don't have much time to write + review them. So,
    writing shorter posts while transmitting the message I want should be a good
    exercise for the next couple of posts...

[^3]: my browser of choice when Windows used to be my main operating system
    circa 2010--11.

[^4]: deprecated. Oh, where are my badges? :/

[^5]: mostly Google. DuckDuckGo is just for the
    [bangs](https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=).

[^6]: 'unfollow' is always a great concept for stop caring should you need to