Cambridge Analytica, WhatsApp metadata, snooping smartphone apps… almost every week there are new incidents involving the ‘oil of the 21st century’ and how it is being extracted without our consent.
It’s not just Zuckerberg1 and the odd IT nerd taping over their camera, paranoia has gone mainstream and the misappropriated Post-it is everywhere. In addition to the sticky note, there are now elegant solutions. Elegant here means practical, comfortable and built to last.
Spy-Fy is perhaps one of the first to cater to the average paranoid with Spyslide. But before Spy-Fy got its production chain together after successful Kickstarter funding, there were already knock-offs in the usual Far Eastern shops. The idea itself isn’t so new that you’d call the Spyslide the ultimate innovation, but it has been implemented brilliantly! Spy-Fy’s demand for quality also forced a delayed delivery, as the desired result could only be achieved with a new manufacturer.
The small sliders have been shipping since mid-June and make a good impression on the device.
If you want to take your privacy even more seriously, you can dig deeper into your bag of tricks. On a PC, the webcam and microphone can be disabled via the BIOS/UEFI settings. For Macs, a former NSA employee has developed software2 that monitors access to the camera and microphone and lets you know when Skype, for example, is trying to access them.
For smartphones, there are limited solutions of this kind. Either you know your way around Android custom ROMs or you root your Android smartphone and use Xposed and the XPrivacy plugin3 to protect yourself. Or you can go all the way with the Librem 5 from Purism4, which will be available in January 2019. This device lives privacy down to the last detail. The camera, microphone and modem can be completely deactivated by means of hardware switches, and the Linux-based operating system developed by Purism is also designed with privacy in mind.
The ultimate way is to switch off! You can find the Spyslide at the Spy-Fy shop from €10.
—
1 zeit.de “Kleb’s ab” (German article)
2 OverSight by Objective-See
3 XPrivacyLua
4 Purism Librem 5
This post is part of my Kickstarter page.
Leave a Reply