Will Dove 00:14 Many of us have become rightfully very concerned about our privacy and our communications and our online activities. And in response to that Oliver Ross of Liberty Lives who has been on my show twice before, he's very kindly agreed to this 9 Part Series on Protecting Your Privacy. Today, Oliver is here to talk about protecting your privacy when using your web browsers. Oliver, thank you very much for joining us and giving us your time for this 9 Part Series. Oliver Ross 00:41 Thank you for having me back. Will Dove 00:43 So I wanted to start out with something I know I'm no expert in internet privacy myself. But I do know that there's a lot of people out there who were under the false impression that when they open a private window, an incognito window, that now they're protected. And of course, that's not true at all. So why don't you start with that? Oliver Ross 00:59 The obvious issue in that regard is if you're still using Google Chrome, it's still Google Chrome, no matter how you're using it. You might think your data is being more private when it's in a private incognito tab. But it's only an appearance to you, or whoever else might be using the computer, the history is still going to be logged. So it's still going to be captured. And it will still be used in the AI system to map out exactly who you are and what you search. Will Dove 01:28 So Google knows where you've gone, your internet provider knows where you've gone, if you're doing this through a work computer, they know where you've gone, because it's going through their servers. So obviously, that's not an answer, or at least if it is, it's only part of the answer. So please walk us through the steps people would need to follow to truly have their activities online, be private? Oliver Ross 01:50 Absolute privacy, again, as I've mentioned in our the first interview is going to be impossible. But there are lots of better techniques that we can do. So the first an obvious thing, hopefully, to most of your viewers and I - we did mention it in the first interview is get off of the big browsers that Google Chrome, the Microsoft Edge. They're all the ones that are sponsored by big tech, don't be on those platforms, they're there to make it easy for you and make it easy for them to gather data on you, there's the first thing you'd always want to do is change your browser to an alternative. And we mentioned Brave before, there are other options. It's all based on what permissions are enabled in the browsers. Because by default, we have if we're using Google Chrome, all the permissions about who you are, you have to give them a lot of information to use, and you won't even know because it's just by default, it's put on it same way with your fonts just by default it's put on. So it's really important that be the first step is switch up to something maybe like Brave or there's D Google Chromium is out there. There's other browsers that are more respectful of your privacy. Will Dove 03:13 And under your recommendations a couple weeks ago, I myself switched over to the Brave browser as my default, I find it works just fine. There's a couple of because I search for a lot of images and videos, sometimes I have to flip over to Chrome to do that search. But everything else I'm finding I can do quite well in Brave. Oliver Ross 03:28 Wow, there's something important that we have to make a big distinction of again, and it's the browser versus the search engine. Right? Will Dove 03:36 Right. Oliver Ross 03:36 So that's - you could change the browser and you can also change the search engine in the browser. If you're using Brave browser with Google search, you're still going to be using Google search, and there's still going to be data capture there. Everything has to be changed to be using the more 'decentralized' or smaller tech people that are companies that you have done research on and that you would want your date - you would be more happy with using. Will Dove 04:06 Yes. And this is what I found is that, for the most part, research that I do in the Brave browser with their default search engine are fine every once in a while have to go over to Google Chrome to search there. But as you're saying, if you go in and you install the - or use the Google search engine in the Brave browser, well now you're still giving Google your information, and I think something else that we should probably mention that is obviously - it's gonna be obvious to you. And even to me, because I was a web developer. If you're trying to stay anonymous, even if you're saved, switched over to the Brave browser in their search engine, we don't want to be logging into your accounts. Because as soon as you get one now they're tracking you again. Oliver Ross 04:47 Exactly. If you have your, if you're still using a Gmail account, primarily, keep that in your Chrome. You can you can use multiple browsers simultaneously. It's not like somebody comes up to your computer deletes every other browser when you install Brave or any other alternative. So it's important to compartmentalize your searches and making sure that if you're going to be accessing your Google data, it's not like you're trying to be private when you're using Google stuff anyway. So you might as well, if you're, if you already have it set up in your Chrome, you might as well use your Chrome with your Gmail. If you have, if you're using it in Microsoft Edge, keep using it in Edge, but have that alternative where you're not signing in so that when you're accessing alternatives, they're not linking what you're searching to your account. Will Dove 05:35 And that's exactly what I've been doing since I installed the Brave browser. And as you say, I still have Chrome on my system, heck, I still have Firefox on my system, because there's a couple of things, I find that, for example, we do these interviews on Zoom. And I find Zoom is much more stable in Firefox, so I tend to run it from there. But now I'm doing 95% of my online activity through Brave and I'm only flipping over to Chrome for the things that either Brave can't do, or I have to log into my account. Here's a question that even I'm not sure of. And I'm sure it will occur to our viewers. Let's say I've got both browsers open at the same time. And on Chrome, I'm logged into my Google account. If I go and do searches on Brave at that point in time, is there any cross communication between those? Oliver Ross 06:15 There shouldn't be, I'm not going to say 100% that if somebody really wanted to, or if some AI want, if they were doing a lot of digging, that they could dig through and connect to but it's not wouldn't be a strong link from like, by a default position, it wouldn't be a strong link to go after. Will Dove 06:35 And so another question that I want to just clarify, based upon that is when I set up the Brave browser, it did give me the opportunity to import all of my passwords from Google Chrome. Oliver Ross 06:46 No need to do that. Will Dove 06:47 So you don't want to do that. Oliver Ross 06:49 No. So you want to keep it clean, relatively speaking, you want to keep yourself that you're using Brave as your alternative. So think of it as you have a public browser and you have a private, more private browser that you're using. So you want to keep the two worlds separate. That's the point of it. And then you can always add in more browsers depending on what you're doing. And it could increase complexity, depending on the position that you're at with your computer and what you think of as important and what you don't. So there's a lot of different layers to that. But it's important that you don't start importing all your data that you've already given to Google and put it in Brave, just making it easier for an AI to probably find everything out about you and figure out who what you are, who you are, what you believe, et cetera. Will Dove 07:46 And of course, the point that that we made earlier, is if you go logging into your accounts, well, now it's not private anymore. So you know, yes, Brave gives you that opportunity. But you don't want to do that, because you shouldn't be logging into your accounts through Brave. Oliver Ross 07:59 This is trying to make it easier for you to use, easier for a Normie to use, right? Think about it like that. Every browser is meant to be built like unless you're really digging and there are other recommendations for browsers that I have, you have to - Brave is easy for people. An easy, and it's an easy first step. And that's always the best approach for making changes, make that first step as simple as possible. And then think about what you're doing there. So that if you wanted to keep going down that road, now, you're already in the right mindset for it. Will Dove 08:33 And I'm just gonna use myself as an illustration, I think I'm a good illustration, because I know the government's watching me, I've been investigated by the RCMP, they don't like what I'm doing, and they don't like what I'm saying. So I use Brave when I'm searching for information, you know, then if I have to log into an account, which I often do to upload to Dropbox or things like that, I'll go do that through Chrome. So now I'm in a situation where, okay, yeah, this certain amount of my activity is visible to the algorithms. But most of the stuff I'm searching for most of the information I'm getting, they don't know about that, because I'm doing that through Brave. And of course, we'll get into this in another talk, I run a VPN all the time as well. Oliver Ross 09:11 That's a big component on top of everything with data capture and your internet service provider. But yeah, so we'll talk we'll be talking about that more later. Will Dove 09:19 And we'll get into that one. So is there anything else that people should know about browsers? Oliver Ross 09:23 The big thing with browsers is you have to look at the permissions that are given in the settings. Some browsers are built, and Brave is built like this as well. So for some things, like if you're, if you're going to use Brave for a video chat on an alternative video chat software, which will also probably be mentioned in the other later interviews, but if you're going to be using Brave for that type of thing. It's alright, but you can't for some of the other browsers. Microphone permissions and camera permissions are by default, turned off and you can't really undo that because they're built to protect your privacy. So the big thing that's important with the browser is you have to look at the settings and you have to look through what permissions are enabled, disabled, you might want to see what extensions are inbuilt. But we would, that's a lot of detail that we could definitely go through one on one discussing how it would, what you'd want to do in that regard, because there's a lot there. But important, it's important to look at the permissions that what you're giving permission to. Will Dove 10:31 Right. And of course, you'll find that folks in the settings in any of the browsers that you've got, if it's Chrome, or it's Brave, or its Edge, whatever, just look at the settings, and there will be a section in there that talks about permissions. And you can go through and it's pretty self explanatory of what you're giving it permission to do. But you did mention one thing I think we should address because I've just realized in our 9 Part Series, we don't really have something in here, but I don't think it would be a full interview on its own, and that's cameras. Because if you're a computer, like all laptops pretty much have a built in camera. And the moment you connect that to the internet, they can turn that camera on, and they can watch what you're doing. So -- Oliver Ross 11:04 -- I've heard different stories about them even being able to turn it on when you're, when the computer is off. So there's a lot of I'm not sure what you're probably not that interesting, anybody to be quite honest. But it could be something to think about like, Yes, keep going with your question, Will Dove 11:20 Right. But it's not even necessarily in that case, the government we're concerned about. You know, for example, I have a very attractive 20 year old daughter. And like most young ladies, she keeps a piece of tape overtop of that camera, unless she's using it. And this is a good idea for anybody who is - you don't know who might be able to turn your camera on and be watching what's going on in your office, your house, your office, whatever. So it's always a good idea to keep that camera covered. I do tend to use external cameras, but when they're not in use, I unplug them. Oliver Ross 11:48 Yeah, there's no reason to keep them plugged in when you're not using them. Will Dove 11:51 Not at all. All right, so Oliver, thank you so much for educating us on browsers. So folks do think about that because if you're logging into your accounts, or if you're on your Chrome or Firefox or Microsoft Edge, the browser use all the time where you've given it permission to log you in and store your passwords. Algorithms from the government and corporations can track what you're doing and they are tracking what you're doing. And of course, this is very, very bad because they're using that information against us. Oliver, thank you. Oliver Ross 12:19 Thank you