 So as you know, if you've watched the channel for the last few months since the beginning of the year, I've been trying to Aggressively tackle the idea of protecting my privacy and data Now there are some areas where I'm still kind of working on that or thinking about it I suppose so I have to use Google Docs for work So obviously I still have to have Google account and of course I run a YouTube channel So I have to have a Google account So Google's gonna have some of my data whether I like it or not unfortunately But I've thought about this for months prior to this year and as I've gone along in this journal journey of ways that I can still Protect my privacy and my data in ways even if I can't completely divorce myself away from Google So I've made several videos in this series so far and they have not always been the most popular but I've Hardened myself to those failures basically when it comes to YouTube views and considerate this is a very important subject And I want to continue on with it even if the videos themselves aren't all that popular So today I'm gonna be talking about the biggest step that I'm taken so far in terms of protecting my data and privacy And that is virtualizing everything now the idea behind this is fairly simple Everything that you do on the internet goes through a virtual machine instead of your main machine now The general idea of course is the same as what you'd expect from something like cubes OS cubes OS is a very virtualized operating system where everything Including like the printer service runs in its own VM. So everything's very compartmentalized and can only talk with each other in very controlled circumstances now I'm not going that far I'm not running cubes Although I'm thinking about trying it instead what I've done is just create a couple VMs in KVM And I've been using them for most of my browsing when I don't need to be signed into something so While this doesn't always protect my data like there are more steps that I'm going to take so like I'm going to always enable of VPN while I'm in certain Virtual machines and I'm going to make sure that my Browsers are as hardened as possible in terms of avoiding trackers and all that stuff It's still not going to be perfect. But the idea here is to separate out as much as possible my data That I don't want sent to Google based on my own personal Google account to Into its own like little silos. So let me show you what I've done so far. So this is a Debian virtual machine now first of all, I've chosen Debian for two reasons one I wanted to use Nala again Nala's fantastic. So I decided to use that The other one is that and the main one really is that Debian is super stable I want to have all my virtual machines to be as stable as possible Mainly because I don't want to have to go through and do a ton of maintenance on them I don't want to have to go through every single one of them and update them constantly like I would have to do if I Chose, you know, Gen 2 or Arch Linux or Fedora or something like that. Instead. I've chosen Debian which if I don't update this for a month, it's not going to be that big of a deal It's also Debian stable. So it's even more so I don't have to worry about updating this for a long period of time And that just means that the maintenance costs for me go way down Also, again, it's very very stable. So I don't have to worry about it crashing or breaking or whatever if I don't do a ton of stupid things to it So the idea here is that I can have a hardened browser So in this case, I'm going to be using LibreWolf eventually. I still got to get it on Debian first But I think I can install the flat pack of it So we'll worry about that as I go along But the idea is to use a browser that is hardened as possible that doesn't have trackers I'm going to use as many extensions as I need to in order to prevent myself from being tracked I'm going to install MaldVad through WireGuard. So I have my VPN here set to run all the time So the basic idea here is to create a container that I can do the vast majority of my browsing in Without having to be signed into anything. So if I wanted to go to YouTube, I could go to YouTube here and do as much Surfing on YouTube as I want to and well, yes, Google's still going to get some data They're not going to have it associated with my actual YouTube account now There are other things that I can do. So there's a YouTube front end that uses you can access Google But without sending any of that data, I'm probably going to look into using that I can't remember the name of it. It's like NVIDIAs and maybe it is NVIDIAs something like that. I'm not Yeah, NVIDIAs. Yeah, I knew that I knew that so there are different instances that people host that you can You can use and that will get you to all of YouTube But without having to deal with any of the nonsense YouTube, you know, is going to be Offering you in terms of data collection and all that stuff So I'm going to be using that if I wanted to access things from my TikTok There's a front-end version of TikTok that I can use that is open source There's a front-end version for Reddit that I can use so I don't have to get you know Sign in to my Reddit account or any of that stuff as much of that stuff as I can is going to be happening right here in this virtual Machine as much as possible so that I don't that I can avoid as much as possible as I said Giving out that data now like I said nothing is perfect and it's going to be a continual process as I go along So I'm gonna I'm sure I'm going to be making mistakes They're like I just visited YouTube, but you know YouTube now knows that I visited it So it's going to have some data and it probably stored a cookie or 12,000 on my browser here But another thing that I'll probably do is they'll set it up so that every time I close the browser It deletes everything in terms of personal data. So that's one area there that can save you some Trackers and stuff like that as well. I believe LibreWolf when I get that installed does that automatically So that's another thing that I can do. So I'm doing this in multiple VMs So one of them is going to be where I spend all of my time working. So Any time that I need to do any browsing for my job, I'll go in there I'll have another one for just general internet use where I don't need to be signed into anything and can use invidious or whatever to do my browsing on YouTube and watch my cat videos and Watch my train videos and things like that that I spend an inordinate amount of time on YouTube actually doing so I can do all That stuff in as private a manner as possible Another thing that this allows me to do is kind of segment my workflow in a way that I haven't really been able to do before When I just used a regular like Firefox or whatever was in My Firefox with all my tabs and stuff like that keeping my attention on the things that I was supposed to do is kind of hard Because I have all of my tabs opening. I you know, I have a whole bunch of fan fiction open or I have all the ideas for videos I have open and you know, I have like a hundred tabs open Everybody knows that I'm a tab hoarder by doing this while I'm not saying I'm not going to hoard tabs Which I probably will end up doing they'll be on their own virtual machine So all of my tabs for work will be hoarded in one place all my tabs for pleasure and leisure will be in another So it'll allow me to segment my workflow and my daily use of the computer of just a little bit more now Like I said at the beginning, I'm not sure how this will end up. It's going to be something that I'm going to have to actively Do to begin with so I'm so used to being able to turn my computer on in the morning and just open up Firefox and Start right where I left off the previous day. I'm so used to being able to do that now Instead I'll have to get into the habit of opening up vert manager and opening up the appropriate virtual machine and then starting off from there And it's going to take a little bit of time for me to establish those habits and get everything customized the way that I Want it to be customized because I can't use a desktop environment that is not customized in some form of fashion I'm going to try to leave them as vanilla as possible. Believe it or not But there are some things like key bindings and stuff like that that I'll have to Make mine in order for me to be comfortable using them. So we'll see how that goes chances are I mean you guys don't know me I'm gonna race the crap out of these things or not supposed to use the word rice I'm gonna theme the crap out of these things As much as possible probably I mean, it's just almost inevitable But again, that's for later on down the road This is more of an experiment to see if this makes any, you know difference or if it's just a placebo effect It's possible that I do all this work and stuff like that and I give away just as much data as I always have In fact, it's probably likely but I'm hoping that over time I come up with more that I can do inside of these VMs That will continue to protect to my privacy and data as much as possible as I go along because I'm still a noob when it comes to This kind of stuff. So I want it's going to be a learning process and as usual. I'll take you guys along for the ride I'm sure that they're going to be more Videos on this type of thing Over the course of this year because this year was the year where I'm going to start Caring about my data privacy and stuff like that. So the journey is long and hard but We're on our way. So that's it for this video if you have thoughts on this whole process You can leave those in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you You can follow me on masses on our odyssey those links will be in a video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the Linux cast links for libera pay and YouTube will be in the video description as well. Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon YouTube You guys are all absolutely amazing without you the channel just not be anywhere near where it is right now So thank you very very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. You guys are awesome I've had some people ask me about Alternative ways to support me right now the bear pays really the only other option and honestly I don't really care for libera pay all that much. That's probably gonna go away So if anybody has an alternative to patreon that I can use or that you'd be interested in supporting me through Let me know in the comment section below. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you You