Data Autonomy Course
We are actively developing and presenting installments in this course. Our next session will be on email.
Email
Thursday November 19, 5:30 PM
Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch Library
Email is one of the earliest and most widely used technologies on the internet. It also provides a great example of openness and connectivity: anybody can write an email to anybody else, regardless of where your email accounts are hosted.
Nowadays, however, this model of openness is threatened by the fact that email is increasingly concentrated in a small handful of providers, who can then exert major influence on email traffic (as well as having the ability to read our emails). These platforms, like Google, are deeply invested in spying on our internet behavior, making email particularly vulnerable.
We will present an alternative platform, Protonmail, which makes encrypting email easy. We will walk through setting up accounts on Protonmail and how to use it, including how one would transition away from Big Tech platforms.
Why does our data matter?
Tech companies methodically harvest our personal data as we check our emails, browse the internet, scroll through social media, or get directions. Who we talk to, where we’re going, our algorithmically honed interests: all this information is used to build detailed profiles, which tech companies use to sell highly targeted ads. Now, ICE buys the very same information from data brokers to track targets for kidnapping1.
This data-fueled industry generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue per year across some of the largest companies in the world. These tech giants engage in anti-competitive behavior, trying to trap consumers into their platforms, where quality is sacrificed at the altar of profit. Within the very first moments of the second Trump presidency, the “tech bro” heads of these companies descended on DC to kiss the ring,2 removing any pretense as to their true motivations.
What can we do?
It doesn’t have to be this way! Alternative, privacy-respecting platforms already exist. We can exercise agency and participate in building a better internet by ditching invasive surveillance tech providers.
This task might seem daunting, and it’s certainly not as easy as flipping a switch. From “free” email to friend networks on social media, many of us have spent decades embedded in mainstream tech. Moving away from these platforms is a marathon, not a sprint, and it starts with a conscious decision to exert agency over your own data.
This Data Autonomy Course is designed to make this transition easier with guided, hands-on sessions that guide participants through how and where to start.
The Data Autonomy Course is designed with the following goals in mind:
- Explain how corporate tech platforms pose serious risks to our civil liberties by engaging in “surveillance capitalism.”
- Provide high level overviews of important technologies, and how privacy-respecting platforms offer substantive improvements over the mainstream.
- Most importantly, guide participants through setting getting started with privacy-respecting platforms as an important first step in the journey of ditching big tech.
Curriculum
The following list outlines the topics that span the main axes of our daily interaction with big tech and where we can choose to engage with alternative platforms. Those in bold are developed, while other sessions are still in development.
- Password Management
- Secure Messaging
- Social Media
- Internet Browsing
- VPNs
- Maps & Navigation
You can find and download materials associated with the course here: