If you have read many of my articles on this website, you will have no doubt discerned that
I have one foot in modern technology and the other foot in pre-computer age. I guess that
makes me analog and digital, but certainly not a “Luddite”. Thus, I still listen to old-school
radio on shortwave and high frequency amateur broadcasting (ham radio). One of the major differences between these two types of technologies is the loss of privacy that comes with the new digital devices. In analog technology, a person listening cannot be easily tracked. Personal information is not collected and stored for advertisers, governments, Internet providers, software companies, and third party data collectors. It still is true that ham radio and shortwave broadcasters can have their location tracked, but their listeners are anonymous. Indeed, shortwave broadcasters mail out QSL cards (QSL is old morse code for ”I received your transmission”) to listeners who write to them informing them of what they listened to, on what time and frequency, just to get a handle on their listening audience. For this reason, governments still use shortwave radio for communicating with their “spies” around the world through “numbers stations”. The “spy” is just an undetected listener to the encoded message of numbers. Here is a link that might interest you, as you can actually here these number stations transmitting. (Unfortunately, you don’t have the one-time number pad to decode it)
Perhaps you are old enough to remember that regular AM radio used to broadcast local
church services in your area on Sunday mornings. Well since 1924, Wesley United Church’s VOWR radio in St. John’s NL still does on its own radio station (Voice Of Wesley Radio). Here is a link.
http://www.vowr.org/schedule.htmlhttp://www.vowr.org/schedule.html
So, what can a person do to limit the amount of personal information that your computer
sends out? The truth is that it is almost impossible to completely be anonymous. Still, I
thought it beneficial to at least provide you with some guides to reduce the amount of
personal data that you give to these companies.
Here is a guide for users of Windows 10. (Yes, it is long)
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3622001/how-to-protect-privacy-windows-10.html
Here is a guide for users of Windows 11 (It’s even longer)
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3684413/how-to-protect-your-privacy-in-windows-11.html
Here is a guide for Apple operating systems
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3598254/how-to-stay-as-private-as-possible-on-the-mac.html
Please note that once you use a browser like Chrome, Edge, etc., they also gather
information. However, the “duckduckgo” browser is supposedly not storing data. Yes, this
privacy problem is still apparent, even when I use my Linux operating system on my own
computer.
Good luck! In the meantime, I am going to listen to my shortwave radio. UCRMN’s latest
podcast is going to be broadcast on 15770 kHz and 9395 kHz on station WRMI Shortwave
International, Miami,
Rev. Martin Dawson