On privacy and cloud services

(Originally from a note on E14N.com 
<https://e14n.com/evan/note/h165pF-0S1yKE1ieelXACg>):

*On privacy and cloud services*

Like many Americans, I'm furious to find out that our government has 
been using massive data mining of cell phones 
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/confirmed-nsa-spying-millions-americans> 
and cloud services 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data> to 
spy on citizens. I encourage people to contact their representatives and 
let them know that it's unacceptable.

I think there are a few simple things that people can do today to 
mitigate the problems with data services and privacy.

 1. *Disconnect*. If you're like me, you check out new services when
    they come out, and maybe you never go back. It's a good idea to
    delete these old accounts to prevent misuse. I've found the "apps"
    pages on Twitter and Facebook a great way to find social apps I no
    longer use and easily disable them.
 2. *Minimize.* Take a look at your profile data on Facebook, Twitter,
    Google+ and LinkedIn. /What's the minimum amount of data that you
    can share and still have it be useful for friends?/ Remember,
    privacy settings only control what other users can see; the cloud
    service is still storing all that data.
 3. *Install.* If you haven't already, take a few minutes to set up your
    own social presence on the Web. I**of course recommend trying
    pump.io <http://pump.io/>, our great social networking software, but
    you can try anything from simple blog software to one of the social
    platforms
    <http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/Platforms>
    listed by the W3C Federated Social Web community group
    <http://www.w3.org/community/fedsocweb/>.**Storing data on a system
    you control means spooks can't requisition it from a big cloud provider.
 4. *Share.* Let your friends and family know that they should be
    careful with cloud data. (After all, the data they share is
    /usually/ going to include something about you.)

I think that if we take this opportunity to do some basic data hygiene, 
the privacy catastrophe that we're only just learning about can lead to 
something healthy for the Internet and for society.*


*