Protecting Your Privacy In The Age Trump, Especially if you’re LGBTQIA+

On March 28th, Congress passed a law, which Trump is expected to sign, that will allow your ISP to collect your data and sell it to literally anyone. For many people, this is more than a staggering invasion of privacy. For people in the LGBTQIA+ community, and for activists, this can severely and negatively impact their lives. In February of 2012, a Target customer was sent coupons for diapers, baby formula, and other baby necessities because their data mining suggested that she was pregnant. However, the customer was a 17 year old girl who hadn’t told her father or family. While this use of applied customer data metrics was really inconvenient, her life wasn’t in any kind of risk. However, keep in mind that in this day and age, a large number of LGBTQIA+ children have to hide their true selves from their parents, schools… and in many cases adults from their family and jobs… and this kind of privacy invasion and data mining could out them in dangerous ways.

Activists could get outed and not only lose jobs, but become targets of hate groups. And for a moment, let’s talk about the specific impact this would have on trans women. Trans women are murdered at twice the national average, despite being 1.5% of the US population. Worse than that, black trans women are murdered at eight times that rate, despite being less than 15$ of that population*.

So it’s supremely important to protect your privacy on the internet not only from your ISP but also from casual snooping of the U.S. Government. And the first go to for that kind of security is a VPN, or Virtual Private Network. A Virtual Private Network is basically an external network that you can “dial into” and operate from as if that network was your own native network. Companies who have folks that occasionally or frequently work from home or around the country issue VPN software and credentials so they can get on the company network and do company business. It’s a proven technology, as long as the provider is trustworthy. But when it comes to security, just any VPN will not do. You have to be *very* selective. You need a VPN that is not based in the United States, because they can just compel the VPN company to hand over your data. In an age of Global Fascism, you need a VPN that does more. In addition, you need a VPN that is not based in a country that will readily hand over your data to the US if pressured. Also, you need a VPN that is encrypted and does not keep server logs.

This comparison chart will help you decide what kind of VPN you would need. Keep in mind that the best VPN’s will have “No” under the Fourteen Eyes Jurisdiction (coalition of countries willing to turn over data to the US), “No” under Enemy of the Internet, doesn’t log traffic, doesn’t log dns information, doesn’t log IP addresses, and so forth. The VPN that I keep seeing as the most popular among those who are this discriminating is Trust Zone. I personally do not use it, nor have I been compensated to plug it. It costs money, but it is cheap.

However, many people in these vulnerable communities cannot afford a VPN. Trans women, according to recent census data, have the life expectancy of the middle ages and the average wages of The Great Depression. While this sounds like hyperbole, it really isn’t. As such, these people, in addition to many activists, need a free technology to help protect their privacy. And thankfully, there’s TorBrowser.

TorBrowser is a free web browser made from FireFox source code that was redesigned from the ground up to connect to TOR networks with perfect security. The version of FireFox used in TorBrowser no longer leaks DNS information. With a properly configured TOR client, like TorBrowser, the only way to compromise it is *if you’re already under investigation* and they’re monitoring your local IP traffic and comparing it with a destination IP address. Best of all TorBrowser is free, perfectly configured by the people who created TOR, and it will provide every bit as much protection as a VPN.

If you’re an activist or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, get a VPN, and if you can’t afford that, get TorBrowser. Under a fascist regime, this could save your life.

*Statistics were compiled in 2014 from readily available sources on the number of deaths of trans women, the overall trans population, the current murder rate in the US, the number of deaths of black trans women, and the population percentage of black people in the us. All numbers were easily found by authoritative sources on the internet. No single citation source.

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