Whether you care about the government spying on you or not, it’s real and it’s happening. The NSA says that PRISM’s all about keeping you safe from potential terrorist attacks, but nevertheless it’s not quite right that people’s privacy counts for nothing.

Are we supposed to just sit back and let them do this?  Just sit in front of our computers, go about our business and not care that someone could be looking into every little thing we do online?  I think not.

If the government has some tricks up its sleeves, it’s only fair that everyone else should be given some kind of “weapon” to fight back and keep their data private.

PRISM Detoxification

When news of the NSAgate surfaced, big tech names were stringed as accomplices.  Some of the giants mentioned were Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Verizon and Yahoo! Others, such as Dropbox, soon followed.

There are ways to dodge the government’s watchful eye, but you need to be prepared to purge services from the aforementioned companies out of your system.  It’s hard, but it can be done.  You won’t have to go offline if that’s what you’re worried about.  You just need to replace the allegedly compromised services with something more secured.

PRISM Break

Twitter user and self-proclaimed digital nomad Peng Zhong was quick to come up with a site that provides a list of alternatives to the compromised tools and services.  The site is dubbed PRISM Break, a name that might remind you of the popular TV show Prison Break — suitable because if you’re addicted to said services, it will feel like breaking out of their shackles when you transition to other services that were previously unfamiliar.

So what services can you use to purge yourself from Facebook, Google Chrome, Gmail, and others that are said to have backdoors easily accessible to the government?

Browser

Firefox

It may be hard to believe but Mozilla is not a part of the whole data mining and spying scandal.  To prove this, the company has teamed up with Reddit, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, the Internet Archive, and others who launched the online petition StopWatching.Us that demands “a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored.”  Mozilla also has a range of add-ons that protect users, such as DoNotTrackMe, Google Privacy, Privacy Protector and many others.

GNUzilla and IceCat

These two are the GNU versions of Mozilla and Firefox, hence the names, and both are free software, unlike Mozilla, which offers free software but paid add-ons.  GNU IceCat provides security by blocking cookies from sites hosting zero-length image files, and when a user is being redirected to sites that spy, IceCat alerts the user of this.  These are just some of the security benefits of IceCat.

Tor Browser Bundle

The Tor Browser Bundle may be the best browser for you if you do not want to leave any tracks behind.  When you download TBB, you can choose to save the file either on your computer or a USB stick, then follow the instructions found here to run the program and make sure your web browsing is secure from prying eyes.

Email

Hushmail

This email service provides private email accounts with no ads and unlimited email aliases. The problem is if you’re used to using free email services, you might back out of this one as it costs $35 a year for the premium version that offers 1GB of space and $50 a year for 10GB of storage with IMAP/POP.

Rise.net

Rise.net provides secure and private email accounts accessible via the web, shell, IMAP, or POP. It scans all mail for viruses and provides three layers of defense against spam.  The problem with this is that it’s invite only (like when GMail first got started), and has a 25 megabyte quota that can increase over time.

Yandex

This one is recommended by our very own Mike Wheatley for the simple reason that it’s Russian.  That may sound absurd, but he has a point: it’s highly unlikely that Russian companies would give access to the U.S. government.

Social media

Diaspora*

This open source, community based social networking service lets you grab the code and host your data wherever you want.  It features hashtags, reshare, mentions, love (similar to Facebook’s Like), and sharing content to only a few people or certain groups. If you can’t completely abandon the other services, you can link your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts to Diaspora*.

GNU Social

GNU Social is a decentralized social network that allows you to install in on your own server so you can control the amount of information you want to share with others on other sites.

Movim

A private, decentralized social network server, Movim manages messages between users without selling them to advertisers to make money.  Because it’s open source, you can get the code and create your account wherever you want.

For more tips and tricks on how to protect yourself from government spying, check out How To Get Out Of PRISM and Avoid NSA Spying by Mike Wheatley.