At first blush it can seem as if staying offline entirely is safer. But I have found that reality doesn’t work quite that predictably.
Being careful is key.
I have decided to start a new experiment. Anyway I am trying a private behavioral experiment starting from Oct 31, 2025. I have been slowly starting to organize my memory and fix my issues with concentration etc.
Unlike these creep types I like things to be non-chaotic.
I have two phones-a newer one that is only a year old and this one I have had for about a decade.
I am going to shift most of my bank work to my newer phone (over the next month) and mostly only browse science from that one (PubMed, wiki, science mags etc). On this one I’ll use my credit card (since there is an upper limit to the amount of damage you can do using my card alone) but do no other bank work. And browse DU, salon mag (on which I saw something a bit off today..a twitter link embedded) etc.
I don’t use those foul LLMs. But I do chat with an old and obscure European chatbot. I’ll be very formal and literal with it on my “non-trashy” phone.
And less formal (though not shitpost) on my “trashy” phone ie this one.
It isn’t that trashy but these tech creeps..technically one should just not use the web at all except for work. And I would be fine with that, but that’s too ocd. Best to separate the two out. I have relatively few apps on my phone compared to most people. Merlin the birding app, PlantNet, a puzzle game, DeepL, Protonmail and my banking apps. That’s about it.
With the license paragon, that foul NSO group and that creepy BlackCube get, I am surprised nothing has broken yet.
It will be interesting to see how it goes. I have always been strict about not tolerating privacy violations and today I back that even more. It’s why I use DDG.
Otoh again, it’s a mix. Nothing really guarantees safety online, but you do your best. Shrug.
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