Reset The Net – A Much Needed Cause
Around this time last year, Edward Snowden rocked the entire United States with his jaw dropping revelation. Our own government had been illegally spying on us, wiretapping our phone calls and monitoring much of our activity online. Reset The Net is a program which has picked up a ton of momentum with online organizations which have all pledged to do their part to secure our internet activity. While some targeted attacks cannot be accounted for, much of our online activity can be secured through tools such as SSL (secure socket layer) as well as a few other tactics.
That’s why I am excited for Reset the Net – it will mark the moment when we turn political expression into practical action, and protect ourselves on a large scale.
– Edward Snowden
Who Has Decided To Back Reset The Net?
Surprisingly many major online organizations are behind the movement. Mozilla, Reddit, WordPress.org, Tumblr, DropBox, BitTorrent and even Google joined the ranks to show support of this cause. Google, we are a little skeptical about however, since they are so neglectful with our information to begin with. Not surprising, Facebook is nowhere to be found. I personally left Facebook as a individual user after I had realized that their face recognition software was getting out of hand. I’m incredibly thankful that in this day and age, that we have major organizations that are on the side of the people. It seems as though the citizens of this country are facing an all out alienation of our rights and I’m happy that we don’t have to face it alone anymore.
Do Your Part
The website https://www.resetthenet.org/, notice it uses a secure domain, has many options for organizations looking to join the fight. You can add your company logo and a short description of what you wish to do to secure your own website. If you run a blog, website or tumblr you can add the Reset The Net splash screen to your site. Also don’t forget to participate on Twitter and other social media with the hashtag #resetthenet.
Aside from the above mentioned things you can do to join the movement, don’t forget to do your part to protect your activities online. AdBlockPlus which is a highly recommended app for Firefox and Chrome is also a participant in the movement. I personally use it in Firefox, as I’ve mentioned above I’m skeptical of Google. Firefox has been more vocal with their stance on online privacy so I’ve been using them ever since. AdBlockPlus is great because it stops annoying Youtube ads as well as ads on other websites. Not to mention the fact that they guarantee to never collect any of your personal information.
In Addition To That You Can Also:
- For Your Phone. Download secure apps such as ChatSecure, TextSecure & RedPhone. All are available for both Android and iPhone.
- Your Passwords. Make sure to use unique passwords on all of your online accounts and if possible protect your passwords with a 2-factor authentication.
- For Mac. You can download apps such as Adium and Tor to protect your online privacy.
- For Windows and Linux. You can download apps such as Pidgin and Tor to protect your online privacy.