Translations

Complete manual/93/en

From Gender and Tech Resources

  • You can switch off the GPS tracker in your phone or camera. You can also limit various apps’ access to your location data, contacts, and pictures in your phone settings. You can also read more about alternative tools that offer encrypted mobile communication on mobiles (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/smartphones) such as Text Secure for text messaging (https://whispersystems.org/#) and Ostel (https://ostel.co/).
  • When registering a device or software such as Microsoft Office, Libre Office, Adobe Acrobat and others, you don't need to use your real name. This prevents the metadata created when using this device or software from being connected to your name.
  • When publishing content online you can change files from ones that contain a lot of metadata (such as .doc and .jpeg) to ones that use less metadata (such as .txt and .png), or you can use plain text.
  • You can use tools to remove metadata from certain files. For images there is Metanull for Windows (https://securityinabox.org/en/lgbti-africa/metanull/windows). For PDFs, Windows or MAC OSX users can use programs such as Adobe Acrobat XI Pro (for which a trial version is available). GNU/Linux users can use PDF MOD, a free and open source tool. (Note: this tool doesn’t remove the creation or modification timestamp, and it also doesn’t remove the information about the type of device used to create the PDF.) You can also review MAT (Metadata Anonymisation Toolkit), a toolbox to anonymize/remove metadata used by TAILS for instance. For a full guide to removing metadata from different file formats, see Tactical Tech's resource: https://securityinabox.org/en/lgbti-mena/remove-metadata.