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Educational Resources on Privacy
Privacy is the beginning of free-speech. It's not about secrecy, but it is the ability to selectively display the best version of ourselves. Within speech and communication in general, context plays a major role. The only way to get positive results from the efforts of communicating is by having the liberty to choose what to transmit and when to do it. Without privacy, communication is dead, there's no suspense and nothing to say.
All activity communicates something to an audience, even if no words are used. That is why curtains are a great symbol of privacy, closing curtains and opening curtains differentiate the occasion. For example, suring some Easter Catholic Rites, the Consecration happens behind closed curtains, but the faithful can hear the words of the Consecration, whilst in the West the priest whispers but he and his gestures can be seen.
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God loves each one of us uniquely, and through baptism gave us a spiritual life and a life of thought which conatins several "curtains" of privacy. God sees everything and keeps to himself the power of seeing our most intimate intentions and thoughts. Not even our Holy Guardian Angel (and fallen enemy angels) can see this intimacy and communication we have directly with the Creator. We have the spiritual privacy to keep to ourselves some good we wish to do from the Holy Intercessors we decide to ask for help. "But when thou givest alms, thou shalt not so much as let thy left hand know what thy right hand is doing" Mt, 6:3 (Te autem faciente eleemosynam, nesciat sinistra tua quid faciat dextera tua).
As the world became shorter with the telegraph and telecommunications that followed, as our livelihoods became more and more dependent on the internet, the subject and importance of privacy has ever increased. There can be no security in the cyber-world without a minimum level of privacy. People must trust a provider, and many times the Internet Service Provider (ISP) or men-in-the-middle can't be trusted. Please choose CruxVPN as your friend in this battle.
What goes on online
To live soundly and morally, integrity and security is required, but this is a challenge in today's world as contemporary society grow asymmetric and disproportional. We face gigantic powerful organisations that do not carry our best interests, and we face day-to-day threats from small actors and criminals. The need to learn about privacy in our current world is major. Our practical life depends on digital means, easily exploitable. When attacked, our life suffers deep harm with can include financial and civil losses.
It is important to defend our privacy when online from both small and close threats and large threat actors alike. CruxVPN provides a service that helps in all these cases. We invite you to educate yourself, your loved ones and your community on privacy, what results it brings and how it can be lost when under attack.
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When a hacker or a predator threatens a victim online, the likelihood of success is certain and unfortunately it is very difficult to protect oneself. Instead, it is important to lessen your appeal as potential target to criminals, before the threat arises. Targeted attacks can use a myriad of tools and techniques, many of which are easily available even to small threat actors. Besides targeted attacks, we are constantly under attack in a non-directed way. Predators online will constantly spread attack vectors to harvest profits from the weaker and unprotected. The devices and networks we use should be protected.
Through proximity, a hacker can find its way inside our digital systems. Public Wi-fi networks and public computer networks, when used without a VPN are subject to package sniffing and traffic interception. It is very easy to set up man in the middle attacks for users of public networks. If no trustworthy VPN is available, we strongly recommend that you either avoid public networks or do not use any of your passwords and accounts. If your device is already logged on to online services (such as a smartphone that constantly checks emails, receives push notifications or is connected to social media), please consider avoiding public networks or using a trusted VPN such as CruxVPN.
Threat actors also constantly spread phishing messages to gain personal data, login credentials and full access to devices. Protection from phishing requires constant vigilance when receiving messages. Scams will also use messages as vectors and the interaction with the criminals can continue through other means of communication.
The same damage done by phishing can be done by adware, unwanted ads displayed whilst accessing web content. It is more difficult to protect oneself from adware, but navigating with a trusted VPN can filter out many of these attacks, and this is a good reason to use a CruxVPN even when navigating through your own ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Malware (a.k.a. computer viruses, trojans and worms) are malicious software that seek profit from getting into your devices. Malware uses a series of techniques to hide itself in the system. Once in the system, malware can leak data and gain further access and privileges into the system, install more software, and gain access to other devices. Malware sends out beacons and make use of C2 (Command-and-Control instructions). This technique, as well as the previously mentioned are extremely common and easy to use by naive and experienced actors.
Ransomware are common malicious software that cryptograph data in a system with its own keys, so that the legitimate owner is unable to access it. Criminals will often ask for payment as ransom for the keys to the data.
This plethora of attacks make all individuals businesses and supply chains susceptible to cyber attack. The many steps that manufacturers of hardware and software take to produce the devices used by us are threatened by malicious actors seeking to jeopardise the security of what is being used as the devices and software is being produced.
In addition to the techniques mentioned above, large threat actors have other sophisticated means of damaging us. Large threat actors include state or state-sponsored groups who perform attack campaigns called Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) remaining undetected by the whole security community for long periods of time on a large scale.
State departments and very large companies also participate in mass surveillance, cancellations and censorship. Trusted VPN Services, such as CruxVPN, can be useful to mitigate the damage done by these large predators, as we offer exits to internet traffic in several different countries and hide the original IP address that is given by the ISP. Following this system, large corporations collect less user metadata and have less leverage on their advertisement systems and AI training. Governments doing open surveillance, on international collaboration (in alliances such as the Five Eyes) or covertly also receive less data on their surveillance mechanisms.
We hope this panoramic vision raised initial awareness and generated curiosity in privacy education. We face threats from small actors and very large actors, and our devices and network are not protected enough. It is essential to improve our cyber defences to enable a sound and moral life in today's reality.
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Further reading:
What is a VPN?
Values matter when choosing service providers
Our Futuristic Vision Document
External resources:
Star of the Sea Academy
Star of the Sea Academy is our non-profit which hosts a website and conferences to educate people on digital threats and defence mechanisms. Star of the Sea is one of the honorifics to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
The EFF is a non-profit group founded in San Francisco in 1990. It is an activist collective fighting against governments and corporations to preserve privacy and individual freedom on the internet.
Brave
"Brave is on a mission to protect privacy online, by providing a suite of internet privacy tools—including our browser and search engine—that shield you from the ads, trackers, and other creepy stuff trying to follow you across the web."
Privacy Guides dot org
Privacy Guides is a socially motivated website that provides information for protecting people's data security and privacy. Their mission is to inform the public about the value of digital privacy, and global government initiatives which aim to monitor people's online activity.
Privacy Tools dot io
A website source for privacy tools. Privacy Tools dot io holds information on software, services and privacy guides to fight surveillance with encryption for improved internet privacy.
WireGuard
WireGuard is an open-source VPN protocol developed by Jason A. Donenfeld. WireGuard development is supported by donations from companies who deploy it to their networks. It's source code is open and free software, small in volume and can be easily read and audited by security experts. CruxVPN provides WireGuard VPN service.
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