Difference between revisions of "Complete manual/es"

From Gender and Tech Resources

(Created page with " Mantener múltiples identidades puede ser trabajoso, pero, como la mayoría de estas prácticas, requiere de un poco de curiosidad, paciencia y atención. Después de un rato...")
(Created page with " * Crear '''diferentes perfiles de navegación''' para que tus hábitos de navegación se capturen bajo diferentes identidades, en Firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US...")
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Mantener múltiples identidades puede ser trabajoso, pero, como la mayoría de estas prácticas, requiere de un poco de curiosidad, paciencia y atención. Después de un rato, es volverá habitual como todo lo demás que hacemos online (¡piensa cómo de complejos son nuestros hábitos en plataformas de redes sociales!). Lo fundamental es mantenerse atentas a separar nuestras identidades porque si no, se empezarán a mezclar unas con otras. Como punto de partida, puedes mantener anotaciones de tus identidades para ayudarte a evitar situaciones incómodas en las que confundas una identidad con otra (¡pero ojo con dónde vayas a guardar estas anotaciones!). También hay aspectos técnicos que puedes seguir y que se describen a continuación. De todas maneras, toma en cuenta que estas recomendaciones se centran en el manejo de identidades en computadoras de escritorio y puede que no apliquen siempre en caso de usar dispositivos móviles. Desafortunadamente, los dispositivos móviles tienen implicaciones a nivel de metadatos y seguridad que son más difíciles de controlar y manejar, lo cual se traduce, en parte, a que son descritos sistemáticamente como dispositivos intrínsicamente inseguros .
 
Mantener múltiples identidades puede ser trabajoso, pero, como la mayoría de estas prácticas, requiere de un poco de curiosidad, paciencia y atención. Después de un rato, es volverá habitual como todo lo demás que hacemos online (¡piensa cómo de complejos son nuestros hábitos en plataformas de redes sociales!). Lo fundamental es mantenerse atentas a separar nuestras identidades porque si no, se empezarán a mezclar unas con otras. Como punto de partida, puedes mantener anotaciones de tus identidades para ayudarte a evitar situaciones incómodas en las que confundas una identidad con otra (¡pero ojo con dónde vayas a guardar estas anotaciones!). También hay aspectos técnicos que puedes seguir y que se describen a continuación. De todas maneras, toma en cuenta que estas recomendaciones se centran en el manejo de identidades en computadoras de escritorio y puede que no apliquen siempre en caso de usar dispositivos móviles. Desafortunadamente, los dispositivos móviles tienen implicaciones a nivel de metadatos y seguridad que son más difíciles de controlar y manejar, lo cual se traduce, en parte, a que son descritos sistemáticamente como dispositivos intrínsicamente inseguros .
  
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* Create '''different browser profiles''' so that your browsing habits are captured under different identities, on Firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles) or Google Chrome (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824)  
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* When creating a new email account or social media account for an identity, it is a good idea to '''connect to the server’s website using Tor Browser''' or '''Orbot''' (for mobile devicesː  https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/orbot/android). If a contact email address is required, consider using a disposable email address, one that you only use for that account. But be mindful that the email provider you choose doesn’t also collect and reveal the connections between that new ‘disposable’ email account and your real identity – for example, this can be almost impossible when trying to create a disposable Gmail account via a Chrome browser when one of your main ‘real identity’ email accounts is already linked to it. Consider using other email providers you usually don’t use for your ‘real identity’ email accounts.
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* Crear '''diferentes perfiles de navegación''' para que tus hábitos de navegación se capturen bajo diferentes identidades, en Firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles) o Google Chrome (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824).                                                *Cuando creas una nueva cuenta de correo o cuenta en una plataforma de red social para una identidad, es buena idea '''conectarte a la página del servidor usando el navegador Tor''' o '''Orbot''' (dispositivos móviles: https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/orbot/android) Si se requiere de un mail de contacto, considera usar un correo desechable, uno que sólo uses para esa cuenta. Pero también ten en cuenta que el proveedor de mail que escojas no recolecte y revele las conexiones entre esa nueva cuenta 'desechable' y tu identidad real -por ejemplo, ésto es casi imposible cuando intentas crear una cuenta Gmail desechable con un navegador Chrome que ya está logueado a una de tus cuentas principales asociadas a tu 'identidad real'. Considera usar otros proveedores de correo que no sueles usar para tus cuentas de correo asociadas a tu 'identidad real'.
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* Write up and '''establish ‘basic house cleaning’ steps''' you take as you ‘enter in and out’ of the accounts for your different identities. This includes logging out of accounts, erasing cookies, not having your browser save your passwords, etc. Obviously you also need to manage different passwords for each one of those accounts so we strongly recommend you to have a look at tools such as '''Keepass''' (https://www.securityinabox.org/en/guide/keepass/windows) for instance which work for all OS.
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* Escribe y '''establece 'pasos básicos de limpieza' '' a seguir cuando 'entras y sales' de las cuentas de tus diferentes identidades'. Ésto incluye cerrar sesión, borrar cookies, no guardar tus contraseñas en el navegador, etc. Obviamente, necesitarás manejar diferentes contraseñas para cada una de estas cuentas, así que recomendamos que echen un vistazo a herramientas como '''Keepass''' (https://info.securityinabox.org/es/keepass_principal), por ejemplo, que funciona en todos los sistemas operativos .
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* If you have the resources and motivation you can '''separate your identities per device or operating system'''. This can include using virtual machines for instance, as explained at the end of this chapter.  This option can be an incredibly useful way to use and manage your various accounts.
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* Si  tienes los recursos y motivación  puedes '' eseparate vuestras identidades por dispositivo o sistema operativo'''. Puedes usar máquinas virtuales, por ejemplo, como se explica al final de este capítulo.  Esta opción puede ser una manera increíblemente útil de usar y manejar tus diferentes cuentas.
  
 
Whichever route you choose, try to make the processes as routine as possible so that it becomes something that you can manage as part of your workflow.
 
Whichever route you choose, try to make the processes as routine as possible so that it becomes something that you can manage as part of your workflow.

Revision as of 14:21, 25 January 2016

Banner-wiki-gendersec.png Bienvenidas a la versión beta del manual "Zen y el arte de que la tecnología trabaje para ti". Entre los meses de Setiembre y Diciembre 2015 queremos entender mejor cuales son las necesidades de las personas que leen este manual en relación a su privacidad y seguridad. También nos gustaría identificar otras herramientas, procesos, casos de estudio que podrían ser añadidos en la versión finalizada de este manual.


Tabla de contenidos

Introducción

Esta guía es un recurso construido desde la base y pensado para nuestra creciente comunidad de mujeres y personas trans*, activistas, defensoras de derechos humanos y tecnólogas. Ha sido diseñada para aglutinar una colección creciente de informaciones y recomendaciones útiles que resuenen con nuestras necesidades, experiencias y activismos, cuando estamos conectadas pero también cuando no lo estamos. Los contenidos listados en esta guía han sido creados en respuesta a las demandas de nuestra comunidad por ideas y asesoramiento en relación a temas importantes pero que no podían encontrar documentados propiamente en otros lugares. Esta guía se encuentra en construcción y no contiene muchos temas de gran interés, no obstante esperamos poder incluirlos en el futuro gracias al apoyo y aportes de las personas que lo lean. La guía actual cubre esencialmente dos temas que se superponen:

  • Primero, como podemos “diseñar presencias apropiadas” (o una conjunto de ellas) que refuercen nuestra habilidad para comunicar y trabajar de manera segura cuando estamos conectadas?
  • Segundo, como podemos de manera colaborativa “crear espacios seguros” (conectados o físicos) que permitan a nuestras comunidades compartir, comunicar y crecer?

Esta guía surgió del Gender and Technology Institute [1], organizado por Tactical Technology Collective y la Association for Progressive Communications (APC) en 2014. El instituto brindó alrededor de 80 participantes y facilitadoras—en gran parte originarias del sur global—y se focalizo en los desafíos afrontados por las mujeres y personas trans* en espacios conectados, pero también fuera de ellos, y afín de compartir estrategias y herramientas para proteger mejor nuestra privacidad y seguridad, así como para mejorar el compartir conocimientos sobre esos temas dentro de nuestras comunidades y organizaciones. Desde esas fechas, nuestra red ha crecido, y esta guía se ha nutrido de los aportes y las revisiones de un gran numero de personas. Se basa en historias y practicas creativas por parte de activistas de la base, activistas de la privacidad, facilitadoras de seguridad digital y holistica, así como personas creando tecnologías alrededor del mundo.

Esta guía también es informado por el trabajo de abogacía de organizaciones como APC y otras que están trabajando en transformar los derechos a internet en derechos humanos. Esto significa ampliar el foco de las discusiones a nivel político centradas en proveer de acceso a las tecnologías a las mujeres y niñas para también incluir el uso de violencias basadas en las tecnologías como parte y prolongación de la violencia contra las mujeres así como basada en el genero. Fenómenos como el ciber-acoso, el discurso de odio y el chantaje violan el derecho de las mujeres y las personas tras* a la privacidad, el trabajo, la participación publica, la libertad de expresión y opinión, así como ser libres de cualquier tipo de violencia. Estos fenómenos también nos pueden causar que nos censuremos y nos abstengamos de hablar libremente. Todo ello refrena nuestra capacidad de ser y tomar parte de los varios movimientos y comunidades a los cuales contribuimos.

En un entorno de tal complejidad, las actividades que desarrollamos (en linea y fuera de internet), nuestras identidades y realidades pueden parecer separadas, pero resultan a menudo profundamente entrelazadas. Por todo ello, puede darse un alto nivel de confusión o incertidumbre acerca de las intenciones, identidades y acciones de los demás y todo ello puede volvernos fácilmente ansiosas o deseosas de retíranos de cualquier tipo de actividad en su conjunto.


¿ Cómo podemos como mujeres y personas trans * desarrollar niveles de confianza y una mayor sensación de seguridad cuando utilizamos tecnologías efímeras para crear contenidos, relacionarse con los demás, crecer redes de confianza, y crear espacios seguros para nosotras mismas? Esta guía explora algunos de los comportamientos que podemos adoptar, y adaptar, individualmente y colectivamente para desarrollar los niveles de confianza y de seguridad que necesitamos para seguir disfrutando de las libertades y el empoderamiento que Internet nos ofrece de forma única.

La primera parte del manual analiza los rastros de información (a menudo invisibles) que se crean y se registran cuando usamos la Internet, servicios en línea, y otros dispositivos digitales. Ofrece estrategias y herramientas libres diversas para recuperar el control de estas huellas/trazas digitales. Describe en que consisten estas huellas, cómo se crean, y que se puede "saber" gracias a ellas. En su conjunto, estas huellas digitales individuales pueden formar contornos nítidos de quienes somos, que hacemos, lo que nos gusta, y cómo actuamos.

Llamamos a estas agregaciones de huellas digitales "sombras digitales," y vamos a discutir por qué importan y cómo podemos minimizarlas. La minimización de nuestras “sombras digitales" implica poderosas, creativas y divertidas tácticas para la gestión de diferentes tipos de identidades en línea. Vamos a presentar sus distintas opciones y formas varias de gestionar estas identidades en línea, así como analizaremos que riesgos y beneficios pueden presentar el uso de identidades 'anónimas' ', seudónimos' ', nombres colectivos 'y' nombres reales '.

La primera parte del manual analiza los rastros de información (a menudo invisibles) que se crean y se registran cuando usamos la Internet, servicios en línea, y otros dispositivos digitales. Ofrece estrategias y herramientas libres diversas para recuperar el control de estas huellas/trazas digitales. Describe en que consisten estas huellas, cómo se crean, y que se puede "saber" gracias a ellas. En su conjunto, estas huellas digitales individuales pueden formar contornos nítidos de quienes somos, que hacemos, lo que nos gusta, y cómo actuamos.

Llamamos a estas agregaciones de huellas digitales "sombras digitales," y vamos a discutir por qué importan y cómo podemos minimizarlas. La minimización de nuestras “sombras digitales" implica poderosas, creativas y divertidas tácticas para la gestión de diferentes tipos de identidades en línea. Vamos a presentar sus distintas opciones y formas varias de gestionar estas identidades en línea, así como analizaremos que riesgos y beneficios pueden presentar el uso de identidades 'anónimas' ', seudónimos' ', nombres colectivos 'y' nombres reales '.

Esta guía se ha desarrollado en el transcurso del primer año del programa “Securing Online and Offline Freedoms for Women: Expression, Privacy and Digital Inclusion”, y fue escrita para las personas y colectivos que quieren mejorar sus practicas en cuanto a seguridad y privacidad, así como para las personas que ya están facilitando y ayudando a otras en mejorar su capacidad de auto-defensa, incluyendo una perspectiva de género a todo ello. Por favor, háganos saber lo que opinan de este contenido y ayúdenos en mejorarlo [2]. También le invitamos a participar en el diseño y creacion de futuros capítulos que le resulten de ayuda, dentro de su trabajo y sus comunidades.

Incluyendo el género en la privacidad y la seguridad digital

Mientras te encuentres leyendo este manual (y poniendo en practica elementos que contiene), resulta importante tener algunas ideas en mente. Incluir el género en la privacidad y la seguridad nos obliga a adoptar un enfoque interseccional - uno que se relaciona con la diversidad de culturas, condiciones sociales, identificaciones de género, orientaciones sexuales, razas, etnias, creencias y otras estructuras de poder que pueden crear desigualdades para los individuos y las comunidades en cuanto a su acceso a las herramientas y prácticas de privacidad y seguridad digital. También nos obliga a mirar a la privacidad y la seguridad desde una perspectiva de género, en el cual se tenga una visión amplia de la tecnología, incluyendo las condiciones bajos las cuales se fabrican o como operan las leyes para relacionadas con la gobernanza de internet. Todo ello incluye:

  • 'Reconocer que las brechas de género, la discriminación y la violencia de género son a la vez estructurales y discursivas 'ya que están profundamente arraigadas en el lenguaje, las narrativas, las definiciones, las estructuras sociales y las leyes. Todas ellas influyen profundamente en las condiciones en las cuales las mujeres y las personas trans * acceden y experimentan con la tecnología e internet.
  • 'Entender cómo las mujeres y personas trans * en diferentes condiciones encuentran formas de acceder a las tecnologías ', y una consideración hacia cómo pueden protegerse a sí mismas y a otros en ese proceso.
  • 'Compartir habilidades y conocimientos en la base 'para que las mujeres y las personas trans* pueden fortalecer su libertad de opinión y de expresión.
  • Recordar que es importante 'hacer visible las experiencias de las mujeres y personas trans * en la gestión y desarrollo de las tecnologías' (no sólo las digitales, sino también las tecnologías de la salud, por ejemplo).
  • Trabajar para 'permitir una mayor participación de las mujeres y las personas trans * en las instituciones que contribuyen a la gobernanza de internet' , así como dentro de las empresas y organizaciones que proveen servicios que apoyan nuestro trabajo en red e identidades en línea.
  • ̈'Imaginar tecnologías liberadoras que permitan la plena realización y el ejercicio de los derechos humanos, y que se muestren inclusivas de la diversidad' , es la responsabilidad de cualquier persona involucrada en la creación de un Internet inclusivo accesible, descentralizado y neutral, no sólo de las mujeres y las personas trans *.


Liberatingfeministtech.png


Como prolongación de todo ello, cuando elegimos utilizar algún tipo de tecnología, sistema o servicio digital, deberíamos preguntarnos: ¿Se trata de una tecnología liberadora o esta basada en la enajenación de ciertas personas o grupos sociales? Las tecnologías liberadoras pueden ser definidas como aquellas que han sido diseñadas para ser producidas y distribuidas de manera justa, basándose en los principios del software libre y el código abierto, oponiéndose a su 'obsolescencia programada', e incorporando la privacidad y la seguridad en su centro. En el mismo espíritu, pero siempre determinado en ultima instancia por lo que las usuarias hacen con las tecnologías, podrían tratarse de sistemas y servicios digitales que se muestran resistentes o refractarios a la vigilancia y la violencia de género.[3]

Muchas de estas cuestiones se plantean en los Principios Feministas de Internet [4] desarrollados por APC en 2014, cuando reunieron un grupo de defensoras de los derechos de la mujer y activistas feministas a una reunión mundial sobre Género, Sexualidad e Internet. Los principios miran las formas en las cuales internet puede ser un espacio público y político transformador para las mujeres, las personas trans * y las feministas. También colocan la violencia relacionada con la tecnología, en la continuidad de la violencia de género, dejando claro el aspecto estructural de la violencia y mostrando como se vinculan, amplían o reproducen prejuicios y estereotipos en actitudes en linea.

Valentina pelizzer hvale de One World Platform nos explica que los principios "deben ser parte de la agenda de cualquier activista feminista, grupo u organización y deben ser consistentes y por defecto parte de la estrategia de las Defensores de Derechos de la Mujer, porque el feminismo por el cual abogamos es una extensión, un reflejo y una prolongación de nuestros movimientos y resistencia en otros espacios, públicos y privados ... un espacio de agitación y de construcción de las prácticas políticas para que internet facilite nuevas formas de ciudadanía que permitan a las personas reclamar, construir y expresarnos nosotras mismos, nuestros géneros y sexualidades ". [5]

Esto es un proceso: Permanezca centrada, cultive la paciencia, y practique el auto-cuidado

Lo primero que hay que recordar cuando usemos esta guía, es que hemos utilizado el concepto "zen" en su título para poner de relieve que cuando usemos tecnologías debemos aceptar con filosofia que esta no funciona siempre a la perfección. A veces puede que tenga que tomarse un tiempo para ponderar la importancia y significado de estas tecnologías en su vida, en su comunidad y en su mundo en general. Otras veces puede que tenga que tomar un descanso y volver a ella.

Hemos escrito el manual de tal forma que recoge la sabiduría y el consejo de mujeres y trans* activistas, con una especial atención para las problemáticas para las cuales nuestra comunidad no ha encontrado soluciones o documentación satisfactoria. También esperamos que genere nuevas preguntas, ideas, y resulte inspiradora. La mayor parte de los contenidos aquí tratados son estrategias y tácticas, que invita al ingenio y la creatividad, y puede ser resultar divertidos de explorar y aprender.

Hay que apuntar que el contenido de esta guía no es la de una guía técnica o de seguridad tradicional y al uso; no está escrita para una orientación, configuración e implementación detallada de las herramientas presentadas. Si se proporcionan enlaces hacia recursos técnicos más intermediarios y avanzados de este tipo, pero el enfoque actual se orienta mas hacia la toma de conciencia, el desarrollo de estrategias y de tácticas implicando que no dividimos las secciones entre niveles de conocimiento "básico" o "avanzado". Invitamos una amplia diversidad de niveles y habilidades a entrar, salir y explorar esta guía conforme a sus propios intereses y necesidades.

El contenido de esta guía debe ser interpretado como una conjunto de estrategias y tácticas contextuadas que complementan el conocimiento de base presentado dentro de la Caja de Herramientas de Seguridad desarrollado por Tactical Tech y Frontline Defenders [6]. No obstante, el deseo de una accesibilidad amplia a esta guía nos ha forzado a no exigir o asumir que las personas lectoras tengan un nivel básico de conocimientos y experiencias con la privacidad y seguridad digital. Las personas con estos conocimientos tendrán un sentido más detallado de los matices técnicos y los diversos contextos al leer esta guía, y posiblemente se encontraran en una mejor situación para absorber y aplicar este primer conjunto de contenidos.

El aprendizaje y la aplicación de cualquier tipo de conocimientos complejos se vuelve un proceso, y todas nosotras, desde la técnica más experta hasta la mas inexperta- nos encontramos en nuestros propios puntos de desarrollo en ese proceso. No puede ser apresurado, cuanto más aprendemos y ponemos en practica, cuanto mas fácil y divertido se vuelve. Si en algún momento se siente frustrada o bloqueada (y eso nos pasa a la mayoría), recuerde de ser amable con usted misma y pensar en lo mucho que ya ha aprendido hasta ahora y en cuantos temas resulta ya excelente. En cualquier caso no dude en hacer preguntas y buscar ayuda, tanto en linea como fuera de ella.

Por último, ya que estamos todas en diferentes momentos en el proceso de aprendizaje y uso de herramientas de seguridad digital, la mayoría de nosotros contamos con áreas que podríamos aprender acerca o profundizar mas. En la sección de esta guía intitulada 'Estableciendo una base en relación a privacidad y seguridad digital', encontrará descripciones y enlaces hacia una lista de temas básicos e intermedios en relación a privacidad y seguridad que le permitirán amplificar sus tácticas y estrategias digitales. Algunos de los temas incluidos se refieren a: cómo funciona Internet, diferentes tipos de cifrado y cómo usarlos, cómo evaluar sus niveles de riesgo, cómo configurar y utilizar diferentes tipos de canales de comunicación seguros, y más. A medida que esta guía evolucione y se expanda en los próximos años, esperamos poder incluir cada vez mas temas que respondan a nuestra comunidad y sus necesidades.

Referencias

[1] https://tacticaltech.org/gender-tech-institute

[2] https://archive2015.tacticaltech.org/feedback-form

[3] Una versión mas amplia de los aspectos metodológicos de esta introducción puede leerse aquí en ingles (https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Introduction)

[4] Los principios feministas para internet se pueden consultar aquí: (http://www.genderit.org/es/articles/principios-feministas-para-internet)

[5] A feminist internet and its reflection on privacy, security, policy and violence against Women by valentina pelizzer hvale from One World Platformː (https://gendersec.tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/A_feminist_internet_and_its_reflection_on_privacy,_security,_policy_and_violence_against_Women)

[6] Caja de herramientas de seguridad (https://securityinabox.org/es)


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‘Rastros digitales’ y ‘Sombras Digitales’

¿Cuánta información digital (o "datos") crees que existen acerca de ti? ¿Qué tipo de datos se han creado acerca de tu identidad, redes sociales y hábitos cuando utilizas plataformas digitales - como Facebook o Google- y dispositivos digitales, como el celular y la computadora? ¿Cómo se relacionan y reflejan lo que eres y lo que haces cuando estas conectada o fuera de línea? Si alguien quisiera investigarte, ¿qué podrían averiguar acerca de ti con los datos digitales que existen?

Resulta útil pensar en todos los datos digitales que existen acerca de ti como tus rastros digitales - una información que puede contar una historia muy detallada de ti y tus actividades. Compone una especia de "sombra digital" que creamos y a la cual vamos agregando más datos cuando usamos herramientas y servicios digitales. El concepto de rastros digitales incluye datos que creas y ves de manera intencional - como los tuits que compartes públicamente o una entrada de blog en tu sitio web, lo que comúnmente llamamos como "contenido". Los rastros digitales son creados por ti y también por otras personas publicando activamente información, todo ello incluye lo que escribes, publicas y compartes, así como el contenido que otras personas crean acerca tuyo cuando te etiquetan en fotos, te mencionan en tweets, o simplemente se comunican contigo a través de un correo electrónico o una sesión de chat.

Los rastros digitales también incluye piezas de datos que se crean acerca de tu contenido y que en su mayoría resultan invisibles, comúnmente llamados 'metadatos'. Estos rastros son casi siempre creados de forma pasiva, sin que te des cuenta necesariamente, o sin que consientas a ello. Por ejemplo, tus hábitos de navegación y dirección IP son compartidas entre los sitios web que visitas y los servicios que utilizas para poder realizar un seguimiento de tu comportamiento y tratar de venderte productos a través de la publicidad. Junto con el contenido que creas tales como mensajes de texto, actualizaciones de redes sociales, fotos, también se encuentran miles de millones de trozos de metadatos relativamente pequeños que se van creando y almacenando dentro del mundo digital cada vez que envías un correo electrónico, navegas por la web, o cuando tu celular o cualquier otro dispositivo digital se conecta y envía información a Internet. Estos "rastros digitales" pueden incluir tu nombre, ubicación, contactos, fotos, mensajes, tuits y similares, pero también puede tratarse de la marca de tu computadora, la duración de tus llamadas telefónicas o información acerca de las paginas web que visitas.

El 'Contenido' son los datos que produces de forma activa: tus correos electrónicos, mensajes de texto, entrada de blog, tuits, llamadas telefónicas, compras en línea, fotos, y vídeos.

Los 'Metadatos' son datos acerca de tus datos, incluyendo cómo y cuando se crearon, donde se han almacenado, desde donde se han enviado, o cuándo y dónde te conectaste para subirlos a internet. La mayoría de los metadatos es información necesaria para que funcione la infraestructura básica sobre la cual se rigen nuestros sistemas digitales, incluyendo Internet y nuestros celulares. Los metadatos también permiten que se entreguen sus correo electrónicos correctamente, que tu computadora encuentre tus archivos donde los dejaste, y en general que puedas recibir mensajes de texto y llamadas telefónicas desde todo el mundo de forma casi instantánea.

El 'ruido' son los datos que se generan ya sea por el proceso de fabricación de dispositivos y hardware físicos, ya sea por como operan y se mueven físicamente, por ejemplo como gira el disco en disco duro. Un ejemplo de ruido es la tarjeta SD común que utilizamos para grabar y almacenar fotografías digitales en nuestras cámaras. Cada tarjeta SD tiene "arañazos" únicos que son producidas por las máquinas que los fabrican, y son similares a las huellas digitales. Éstos hacen cambios microscópicos que no son visibles para el ojo, pero pueden ser reconocidos por las computadoras.


Quien puede colectar nuestros ‘rastros digitales’?

Puedes preguntarte acerca de cuanto relevante puede resultar una imagen, un mensaje o una llamada telefónica. También es común pensar que hay tantos datos por ahí que nadie sabe qué hacer con ellos, o que nadie se preocupa demasiado acerca de ellos. Sin embargo, hay muchas partes interesadas en esos datos por una variedad de razones, y los avances en el análisis de datos significa que podemos analizar hoy en día grandes cantidades de datos como que nunca antes.

Las empresas los colectan con la finalidad de analizar tu comportamiento y hábitos con la finalidad de venderte productos y servicios, así como para hacer que lo que venden sea "mejor". También venden sus datos y análisis acerca de ti a otras empresas e incluso a gobiernos con fines de lucro. Como vimos en los documentos de Snowden, los gobiernos quieren tener acceso a la mayor cantidad de información acerca de ti como puedan conseguir, incluso si esto significa romper las leyes nacionales e internacionales. Los gobiernos quieren un nivel de acceso total a fin de controlar y gestionar las sociedades, y ello puede incluir elegir como blanco grupos marginados, censurar la actividad en línea de ciertos medios y, o incluso “vallar” su país del resto del mundo conectado. Los individuos pueden desear esta información para acosar, chantajear, o espiar a miembros de su familia, cónyuges, ex parejas o simplemente personas cuyo estilo de vida no están de acuerdo con. Algunos individuos y redes criminales también pueden querer robar datos de las empresas y los gobiernos para poder vender esa información financiera con fines de lucro, o agregar información en la cual estan interesados acerca de ciertos individuos y grupos.

La recopilación y análisis de datos es cada vez más sofisticada. Vemos los resultados de esta agregación y su análisis en la forma en que se comercializan y se nos proporcionan servicios cada vez más convenientes, no obstante muy pocas personas vemos o entendemos hasta qze punto las corporaciones, gobiernos e individuos conocen los detalles íntimos de la vida de millones de personas a través de la recopilación de datos y su análisis. El modelo de negocio de estos datos se da para la mayor parte de las aplicaciones y servicios gratuitos, para los cuales estamos regalando nuestros datos a cambio de servicios gratuitos. Esto significa que si no estas pagando es que eres el producto.

Los diferentes tipos de rastros digitales que creamos van siendo registrados y almacenados. Esos rastros son constantemente recogidos, ordenados y analizados por diversas partes a fin de crear o completar perfiles tuyos. Rutinariamente, cada vez que se crea una nueva pieza de información o metadato, este es grabado y agregado junto con otros datos para su análisis, y luego estos se agregan a tu perfil. Estos perfiles están en constante expansión y van variando según los diferentes proveedores de servicios. Proveen a los que crean o tienen acceso a ellos una perspectiva muy detallada de quien eres (o como te presentas), lo que te gusta, lo que sabes, lo que haces, tus hábitos diarios y tus interacciones con los demás. Frecuentemente, una recolección y análisis en profundidad de estos datos puede incluso hacerte realizar cosas acerca tuyo que no sabias. Un ejemplo de ello son las numerosas aplicaciones de "salud" y otros dispositivos de rastreo que son usados por la gente para controlar su ejercicio, ingesta de alimentos, movimiento físico a fin de realizar un seguimiento y analizar de que manera una esta o no mejorando sus hábitos de salud, permitiendo a la app formularte consejos individualizados sobre los pasos que tienes que ir tomando. Aparte de un pequeño puñado de excepciones, todos estos datos son recopilan y almacenados por los cientos de empresas que proveen estas aplicaciones y dispositivos de rastreo.

Los datos generados por nuestras acciones digitales pueden ser comprados y vendidos a los anunciantes y los gobiernos, y pueden ser usados de diversas maneras para controlar, suprimir o silenciar activistas, parejas u organizaciones nacionales. Los datos agregados y analizados pueden ser utilizados para crear estrategias de acoso que dañen tu reputación o para atacar tus opiniones o creencias. Todos los actores antes mencionados pueden tener acceso a tus datos y pueden acceder a ellos de diferentes maneras, incluyendo a través de la vigilancia de tus actividades, el acceso físico a tus dispositivos no cifrados, explotando el compartimiento de datos entre aplicaciones, o por medio de la investigación de fuentes de datos públicamente disponibles acerca tuyo. También pueden usar algunos de estos datos para localizar nuevas fuentes de datos acerca tuyo y a través de la agregación y análisis de datos inferir cosas sobre su vida y tu comportamiento.

Con frecuencia oímos que empresas y servicios (e incluso algunos investigadores y organizaciones sin animo de lucro) argumentan que protegen a los usuarios porque anonimizan los datos que recogen, implicando que con ello su "privacidad" está a salvo. No obstante se ha demostrado que nuestros rastros de datos son tan únicos, al igual que nuestras huellas digitales, que si los analistas de datos cuentan con un pequeño conjunto de muestras de datos acerca de nosotros, pueden conseguir identificarnos de forma única y revelar los individuos de acuerdo a los tipos distintivos de rastros digitales que conforman nuestras 'sombras digitales'.

Dependiendo de quien eres y lo que haces, es probable que tengas inquietudes diferentes acerca de que tipo de datos o "rastros digitales" pueden resultar los más sensibles para ti, así como acerca de quien te preocupa que pueda acceder a ellos. Todo ello puede hacerte sentir muy incomoda. Pero piensa que no estas sola, y hay una serie de cosas que usted puede hacer para reducir la creación y captura de sus huellas digitales. También puedes preguntarte cómo los datos que crea hoy pueden ser utilizados así como preguntarte en comparativa como anos de producción de datos por tu parte podrían ser usados en el futuro. A nivel mundial, hay muy pocas leyes que regulan eficazmente la recolección de datos o nos protejan en ese nivel aunque estemos en un contesto sin precedentes históricos en cuanto a la magnitud de recopilación de datos que se lleva a cabo. Esto hace que sea aún más importante para nosotros apoyar leyes y normas para proteger nuestra privacidad manteniendo la vista puesta en el presente así como en el futuro. También resulta importante que seamos conscientes de que este problema sigue siendo relativamente "invisible", en beneficio de las empresas y los gobiernos, y que podamos encontrar maneras de compartir con otras personas acerca de estas preocupaciones. Al fin y al cabo, también podemos preguntarnos si realmente necesitamos mandar ese tuit, registrar y transmitir todas las cosas que hacemos en la vida. Y, por último, también podemos luchar por recuperar el control de nuestros rastros y sombras digitales limitando el quién puede recoger y usarlos, y podemos ayudar nuestras amigas, redes y familiares en hacerlo también.

Enlaces de interés:

  • Trackography: (https://trackography.org/) es un mapa interactivo que explora como la industria global te rastrea mientras navegas por internet.
  • What is Metadata?ː (https://www.privacyinternational.org/?q=node/573) Un video por Privacy international explicando que son los metadatos y porque tenemos que preocuparnos de ellos.
  • Do not track: (https://donottrack-doc.com/en/about/) un documental personalizable acerca de la privacidad y la economía de la web.
  • In Limbo: (http://inlimbo.tv/en/) es un documental que trata acerca de la privacidad, la identidad y las comunicaciones en internet en el cual puedes entrar tus datos propios para ver aparecer tu identidad digital durante el transcurso del vídeo.



Lecturas para profundizar:

Explorar

No podemos saber exactamente lo que sucede con nuestros rastros digitales cuando son creados, ni quién tiene exactamente acceso a ellos. Esto en sí ya es un problema. Aunque esta situación puede parecer desesperanzadora, existen maneras sencillas para que sepas mas acerca de los rastros digitales que vas generando, reducir su cantidad e incluso borrar cierto tipo de rastros. Algunas empresas y gobiernos se benefician enormemente del entorno de recopilación y análisis de datos habilitada por el sector de la tecnología y quieren por lo tanto que nos demos por vencidas y creamos que “así deberían ser las cosas". Sin embargo puedes controlar mejor lo que se conoce o lo que se da a ver acerca de ti sin tener que renunciar por completo al uso de los celulares, ordenadores, correo electrónico y redes sociales. El truco reside en entender que se trata de un proceso de aprendizaje y en implementar pequeños cambios en tu forma de utilizar la tecnología y los varios servicios digitales. Mucho de ellos resultan divertidos y se vuelven cada vez mas interesantes a medida que aprendes más acerca de como funciona la tecnología, y como volverte juguetona con los rastros digitales que generas.

Te animamos a desmitificar estos temas por ti misma y con tus amigas. Explora tácticas para reducir y recuperar el control de tus rastros digitales, y creativamente fabrica tu propia "sombra digital" alterando la que las empresas han utilizado para construir perfiles acerca de ti. Una de los cambios más importantes que puedes hacer es volverte consciente de los datos que vas regalando. Algunos ejemplos de cómo puede minimizar tus rastros y recuperar algo de control incluirá desde la reducción de la cantidad de datos que regalas; retirar conscientemente información valiosa de los contenidos que creas y compartes; practicar el arte de 'auto-doxearte (self-doxing)' manteniéndote al tanto de lo que otros pueden saber de ti, y desarrollar maneras de alterar, separar, o re-crear nuevas presencias e identidades en línea.

Las estrategias y herramientas que se detallan a continuación pueden aumentar tu privacidad, y te ayudarán a ser más segura tanto en línea, como fuera de línea, sin obligarte a ser menos visible o a reducir tus actividades en línea. A medida que avanzamos hacia la recuperación del control sobre nuestros datos, algunos buenos lugares te ayudan a visualizar a que se parecen esos datos, explorar su tamaño, historial, espesor y en general mostrarte las características de nuestros 'sombras' digitales. A continuación se presentan algunas herramientas para todo ello.

Enlaces de interés:

  • Trace My Shadowː (https://myshadow.org/trace-my-shadow) is a tool produced by Tactical Tech that allows you to see some of the traces you are leaving online, and it offers a lot of tips on how to protect your privacy.
  • What is My IP Address?: (http://whatismyipaddress.com/w3c-geolocation) The W3C consortium enable you to test and understand how geolocalisation happens when you connect to internet.
  • Google location history: (https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0) is a good complement to understand how much information about your movements Google holds.
  • Digital Shadowː (http://digitalshadow.com/) is a Facebook app developed by Ubisoft which illustrates what third parties can know about you through your Facebook profile.
  • Panopticlickː (https://panopticlick.eff.org/) tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits. By using this application, your browser will be given a uniqueness score, letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.
  • Lightbeam: (https://myshadow.org/lightbeam) is a browser add-on that visualises the relationships between the sites you visit and the third party sites that are active on those pages.
  • Immersion: (https://immersion.media.mit.edu/) is an invitation to dive into the history of your email life in a platform that offers you the safety of knowing that you can always delete your data.
  • OpenPaths.ccː (https://openpaths.cc/) is a tool that allows you to track your location history over time with your smartphone. You can then visualise this data and see what kind of story it tells about you.

Lecturas para profundizarː


Auto-doxeo

Otra estrategia para saber y explorar que informaciones existen acerca tuyo consiste en el auto-doxeo. Esta palabra proviene del anglicismo “doxing” que deriva de la palabra ‘documents’. El 'doxing' consiste en compilar información detallada acerca de alguien usando fuentes libremente disponibles, aunque también puede implicar usar métodos ilegales para tener acceso a ellas, especialmente cuando se practica para atacar a otros. Esta técnica es también usada por activistas, periodistas y hackers (los 'buenos' y los 'malos') para perfilar individuos y organizaciones de interés. Lógicamente, el doxing también es usado para perfilar individuos y organizaciones por sus adversarios a fin de detectar y aprovechar personas y redes con finalidades maliciosas. Criminales, espías, acosadores también hacen doxing de sus blancos. Esta practica presenta por lo tanto un doble filo y también puede ser usada para conocer mejor a una persona que ha conocido en linea antes de proveerle de mas grados de confianza.

Ten en cuenta que la palabra 'doxing' se usa mas comúnmente para definir el acto de recopilar datos personales sobre una persona para luego publicarlos con la finalidad de ponerla en peligro, acosar o amenazar. Aquí, sugerimos que te auto-doxees tu misma con la finalidad de entendr mehor lo que está disponible alli fuera acerca tuyo y poder asi prevenir e incluso tomar medidas para remover o hacer mas dificil la disponibilidad de algunos de esos datos. El éxito de un doxing depende de la capacidad de una persona para reconocer información valiosa sobre otra, y utilizar esta información en combinación con otros rastros digitales para construir un conjunto de datos lo mas completos y exhaustivos como sea posible.

El 'auto-doxeo', o la investigación de lo que resulta abiertamente disponible acerca de ti en línea, es una técnica que te puede ayudar a tomar decisiones informadas sobre lo que compartes en línea, y de que manera. Ten en cuenta que puedes resultar sorprendida o asustada por que puedes encontrar. Por ello puede resultar interesante hacer ese ejercicio con buenas amigas para poder ir compartiendo y elaborar estrategias para mitigar o cambiar esos resultados. Una vez hayas realizado el ejercicio, analiza lo que has encontrado y lo que un extraño podria averiguar o revelar acerca tuyo con lo que has encontrado. Si sientes que personas cercanas tuyas (como compañeras activistas, familiares, amigas) pueden estar en una situación de mayor riesgo, puede que quieras mirar las conexiones públicas entre tu y esa persona que se pueden encontrar en la red. Sin embargo recuerda que el doxing sólo muestra lo que está disponible públicamente acerca de ti. Esta representa sólo una fracción de lo que los proveedores de servicios y plataformas de redes sociales pueden ver.

Los metodos utilizados para doxing incluyen la exploración de archivos, imágenes, bases de datos gubernamentales, directorios de teléfono y otros recursos de información publica; buscar en motores de búsqueda orientados hacia la privacidad como Startpage (https://startpage.com) o DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com); mirar el perfil publico de alguien en plataformas de redes sociales; buscar por informacion en foros y listas de correo. El doxing tambien incluye buscar por informacion de la persona propietaria de una pagina web a traves de un sencillo "whois search" (en paginas webs como http://www.whois-search.com/ o similares).

Recuerda que si vas a hacerle doxing a alguien, que tus actividdaes de busqueda generan rastros digitales acerca de ti. Los servicios que uesas o las paginas que visitas pueden estar colectando rastros digitales identificables acerca de ti que puedes no querer compartir. En tal caso puede que te interese usar herramientas que ayuden a anonimizar tu direccion IP que te geolocalizan cuando accedes a internet.

Una de las mejores herramientas para ello es Tor usando su Navegador Tor (https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en), esta basado en Firefox y hace el uso de Tor muy sencillo. No obstante debemos recordar que resulta siempre mas seguro verificar que esta funcionando mirando cual es nuestra direccion IP, activando ciertas extensions como NoScript, y manteniendolo actualizado. Ahora Tor no garantiza el anonimato (https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#AmITotallyAnonymous) porque no puede protejerte de no hacer lo listado previamente, o de no cometer errores de privacidad basicos como usar el navegador Tor para poner tu nombre real o otra informacion sensible en un formulario en internet por ejemplo.

Por último, si encuentras información altamente sensible acerca tuyo, o si sencillamente quieres eliminar lo mas sistemáticamente posible los rastros digitales que te conciernen, hay varios procesos que puedes utilizar. En la siguiente sección nos adentraremos en como "Recuperar el control”, y presentamos consejos y enlaces para alterar o eliminar datos que has generado, así como para pedir a plataformas de eliminar datos tuyos.

Lecturas para profundizar:


Mapeo social

Hemos explicado qué medidas puedes tomar para explorar tus rastros y “sombras digitales”, ahora también tienes que ampliar esta exploración a las personas con quienes interactúas en línea a fin de entender mejor a que se parece tu identidad en línea así como tus varias redes sociales. La mayoría de nosotras nos hemos encontrado con decisiones difíciles acerca de cómo manejar nuestras identidades, personales, profesionales, activistas y su relación con nuestras cuentas e identidades en línea. Podemos tener sólo una identidad que usamos para conectar con todas nuestras diferentes redes sociales, o es posible que hayamos tomado medidas para 'separar' nuestras identidades en línea, a pesar de que esto pueda conllevar la creación y gestión de cuentas varias para interactuar con nuestros diversos "dominios sociales”. Estos temas representan un problema de seguridad cada vez mayor para muchas activistas, ya que sus redes sociales, su activismo, temas personales, y profesionales pueden solaparse en formas que pueden conducirlas a mayores niveles de riesgo, así como a poner en riesgo sus contactos y redes.

Todo el mundo pertenece a varios dominios sociales - tus redes de trabajo o de activismo, tus redes familiares, de amigos o colegas, etc. Algunas redes pueden hacerte sentir más seguras que otras. Por ejemplo, puede que te muestres más vigilante acerca de lo que compartes cuando se trata de tus actividades de trabajo o de activismo, pero que te muestres mucho mas confiada y relajada cuando interactúas con tus amigas en una plataforma de redes sociales como Facebook.

Si utilizas una sola identidad para todos tus dominios sociales, o si siempre utilizas tu nombre real (por ejemplo el que aparece en tus documentos oficiales) cuando estas en linea, resulta más fácil recopilar información acerca tuyo e identificar tus vulnerabilidades. Por ejemplo, si revelas en un sitio para citas en línea que te gusta un tipo particular de persona, un atacante podría probar de engañarte con un perfil falso que se parece a tus gustos personas y luego chantajear-te o arruinar tus actividades profesionales o publicas dando a conocer tus preferencias. Otro ejemplo consistiría en un posible empleador que encuentra mensajes potencialmente embarazosos o información acerca tuyo en relación con tus dominios sociales personales y que no querías forzosamente compartir.

Estos ejemplos, sin embargo, se hacen más difíciles si tu identidad profesional, personal, activista se mantienen separadas en varios dominios sociales. Para separarlas, resulta útil mapear primero cuales son tus dominios sociales y cuales podrían potencialmente exponerte más. Puedes por ejemplo pensar en todas tus diferentes actividades y redes personales, y reflexionar acerca de cada una de ellas afín de ir separando los dominios sensibles de los que lo son menos. Puedes hacer ese ejercicio por ejemplo preguntándote para cada dominio de tu vida: ¿Qué pasaría si estos datos en particular desaparecieran de repente, o si fueran vistos, copiados, y distribuidos por un adversario o alguien que te es hostil?

A modo de ejemplo, la experta en seguridad informática Joanna Rutkowska ha desarrollado una distribución Gnu/Linux basada en el concepto de "seguridad por aislamiento" llamada Qubes OS. En este sistema, cada dominio social está aislado en una máquina virtual independiente. Los tres dominios básicos que Rutkowska identifica para ella misma son:

  • El dominio profesionalː Este incluye su correos de trabajo, llaves GPG relacionadas con su trabajo, reportes y artículos, etc. También cuenta con una área profesional menos “segura” en el cual aceptar por ejemplo invitaciones a LinkedIn o donde descarga imágenes de la internet para preparar sus presentaciones.
  • El dominio personalː Este incluye su correo personal, calendario, fotografías de vacaciones, vídeos, etc. Tiene también una sub-sección llamada “muy personal” que usa para intercambiar mensajes encriptados con su pareja.
  • El dominio inseguro (o rojo)ː Este contiene las actividades que considera mas arriesgadas. Para ella eso significa por ejemplo navegar por la web, usar apps que no conoce, etc. Cuando se encuentra en ese dominio nunca comparte ningún tipo de información sensible o que permita identificarla personalmente.

Este ejemplo ilustra cómo Rutkowska usa el aislamiento entre sus diferentes dominios sociales como una estrategia de seguridad. Como ella reconoce que las medidas de seguridad siempre pueden presentar vulnerabilidades, prefiere reducir posibles riesgos al no tenerlo todo en un mismo lugar que pueda ser objeto de ataque. Puedes adaptar esta estrategia a tus propios dominios sociales: mediante la separación de tus varias identidades y dominios, conseguirás fragmentar tus puntos de información impidiendo que una persona puede averiguarlo todo acerca tuyo, o que esa persona no pueda relacionarte con tu “nombre real”. Podrás leer más acerca de las maneras que puedes diseñar y gestionar diferentes tipos de identidades en línea para tus diferentes "dominios sociales en las siguientes secciones .

Lecturas para profundizarː


Retomando el control

Descubrir que datos existen acerca tuyo y pueden ser accedidos por terceros es una primera fase de empoderamiento. También existen medidas que puedes tomar para controlar qué contenidos y metadatos generas. Una buena idea cuando publicas contenidos en Internet, consiste en siempre preguntarte si lo que mandas es público o personal y quien puede tener acceso a ello. Incluso si la información que publicas tiene que ver con un evento público y no con tu vida personal, tienes que recordar que los nombres que mencionas o las imágenes que subas pueden contribuir a una visión más completa acerca de quién eres, lo que estas haciendo, donde lo estas haciendo y con quien.

Esto no significa que debas silenciarte, o no participar en eventos públicos, si no mas bien se trata de tomar unas medidas básicas que limiten los riesgos a los cuales podrías exponerte. Una forma útil para decidir qué pasos deberías tomar para mejorar tu privacidad y seguridad consiste en pensar en cómo estos pasos podrían aumentar el costo o la cantidad de esfuerzo que se necesitaría para que alguien pueda vigilarte o atacarte.

Medidas básicas para reducir el acceso a tus contenidos y datos:

  • Cuando provees una pagina web o servicio en linea con información, asegúrate que este provee una conexión encriptada (el enlace tiene que empezar con https://). Puedes usar el complemento HTTPS Everywhere para navegadores Firefox, Chrome y Opera, desarrollado por la Electronic Frontier Foundation que permite forzar conexiones https:// con las paginas que ofrecen conexiones encriptadas (https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere).
  • Si lo usas correctamente, el navegador Tor puede ofuscar tu dirección IP, aumentando tus posibilidades de navegar anónimamente (https://info.securityinabox.org/es/chapter-8).
  • Puedes instalar en Firefox, Chrome y Safari, extensiones que mejoran tu privacidad como por ejemplo Privacy Badger que bloquea rastreadores espías y publicitarios, Adblock Plus que bloquea ventanas emergentes desagradables o Ghostery que bloquea rastreadores de actores terceros que buscan perfilar tus hábitos en linea. Puedes también revisar las opciones de configuración de tu navegador y mejorar los que tienen que ver con privacidad y seguridad, como por ejemplo borrar con regularidad los cookies (https://info.securityinabox.org/es/firefox_principal y https://help.riseup.net/en/better-web-browsing).
  • Deberías usar contraseñas fuertes y diferentes para cada uno de los servicios que usas – si no lo haces, eso significa que si alguien consigue interceptar alguna de tus contraseñas podria conseguir acceso a los otros servicios para los cuales usas la misma contraseña (https://info.securityinabox.org/es/chapter-3).

Publicación atenta de contenidos:

  • Cuando compartes detalles personales acerca de tu vida, puedes usar perfiles privados que solo pueden ser accedidos por contactos seleccionados. Cuando usas plataformas de redes sociales comerciales, tienes que ser consciente de los cambios frecuentes de sus políticas de privacidad. Se han dado situaciones en las cuales estas políticas han cambiado de repente exponiendo imágenes, contenidos y conversaciones que se publicaron dentro de grupos privados.
  • Cuando escribes o publicas imágenes acerca de eventos públicos, deberías preguntarte si las informaciones que publicas acerca de personas, lugares u otras pueden ponerte o poner alguien a riesgo. Siempre resulta una buena practica pedir primero por el “permiso” de escribir acerca de personas y eventos, y también puede ser establecer acuerdos consensuados acerca de que y como publicar información con todas las presentes a un evento publico.
  • Puedes oscurecer o volver borrosas las caras en tus fotografías usando una app llamada ObscuraCam, una aplicación libre para Android: (https://guardianproject.info/apps/obscuracam)
Obscuracamp.png


Reducir tus metadatos:

  • Puedes apagar el rastreador GPS de tu celular o cámara. Puedes también limitar el acceso por aplicaciones (o apps) varias a tus datos de localización, contactos e imágenes en la configuración de tu celular. Puedes también leer acerca de herramientas alternativas que ofrecen encriptar las comunicaciones con los celulares (https://info.securityinabox.org/es/chapter-11) como Signal para el envío de SMS (https://whispersystems.org/#) o Ostel (https://ostel.co/).
  • Cuando registras un dispositivo o un programa como Microsoft Office, Libre Office, Adobe Acrobat u otros, no tienes porque usar tu nombre real. Eso previene de que los metadatos que se generan usando ese dispositivo o programa estén relacionados con tu nombre.
  • Cuando publicas contenidos en linea puedes cambiar los formatos de archivos que contienen muchos metadatos (como .doc o .jpeg) por otros que usan menos metadatos (como .txt o .png), o puedes usar directamente texto plano.
  • Puedes utilizar herramientas para quitar metadatos de algunos archivos. Para imágenes tienes Metanull para Windows (https://securityinabox.org/en/lgbti-africa/metanull/windows). Para PDFs, existe para Windows y MAC OSX programas como el Adobe Acrobat XI Pro (para el cual existe una versión de prueba). Las usuarias de GNU/Linux pueden usar PDF MOD, une herramienta libre y gratuita. Esta herramienta no remueven las “marcas de tiempo/time stamp” y tampoco remueve la información acerca del dispositivo que has usado para crear el PDF. También se encuentra MAT (Metadata Anonymisation Toolkit), una caja de herramientas utilizada también por TAILS para remover metadatos. Para una guía completa acerca de como remover metadatos de varios tipos de archivos, puedes visitar este recurso por Tactical Tech: (https://securityinabox.org/en/lgbti-mena/remove-metadata).

Bloquear acceso a contenidos y borrado de cuentas

  • Bloquear temporalmente contenido en los resultados del buscador de Google: (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en&lr=all&rd=2) describe como usar el bloqueador temporal de URL para bloquear resultados en las búsquedas. Esto no remueve contenido, si no que bloquea contenidos mas antiguos (y potencialmente mas sensibles) de la búsqueda mientras realizas una actualización de tu pagina web.
  • La Suicide Machineː (http://suicidemachine.org) es una herramienta que facilita el proceso de borrado de cuentas en plataformas de redes sociales. Esta herramienta ha sido forzada a no borrar cuentas de Facebook, pero puedes leer instrucciones de como hacerlo aquí: (https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674).
  • AccountKillerː (https://www.accountkiller.com) te provee con instrucciones para borrar cuentas y perfiles en las paginas web y plataformas de redes sociales mas populares.
  • JustDelete Meː (http://justdelete.me) es un directorio con enlaces directos para borrar cuentas de paginas web y plataformas de redes sociales.


Creating and managing identities online

Most of us have encountered challenging decisions about how to manage our personal, professional, and other ‘selves’ with our online accounts and identities. We might have only one identity that we use to connect with all our different networks, or we might have taken steps to ‘separate’ our identities online, even though this can entail creating and managing different accounts and the different ‘social domains’ we use to interact with. This has been an increasing safety issue for many activists, as their personal, professional, and activism networks can overlap in ways that can lead to greater levels of risk for themselves and their networks.

Usually, most people who separate how they interact with their different social domains (especially work and personal life) still use the same identity, which is generally either their ‘real name’, or a 'pseudonym' (more on that below). But with the nature of the work we do as women human rights defenders (WHRDs) or as feminists plus the increased risk of attacks and harassment we can have simply due to our gender or sexual orientation, there are other options to consider and explore. Targeting, harassment, and gender-based violence online represents tremendous and ever-increasing problems that remain almost entirely unaddressed by those who control many of the online spaces we use. Currently, women, trans* and other marginalized individuals struggle to find safe spaces online, as governments, online communities, and both corporate and non-corporate services and websites stumble in their attempts to adequately address what have become hotly contested ‘spaces’ and ‘cultures’ online.

In this section, we’ll continue the process of reflecting on what our current online identity or identities are, what social domains we use those identities to communicate with, and how we may adjust and re-invent our online identities and activities in ways that are safer and more efficient for the work we do online. We’ll describe the different types of online identities, how they are used, and the trade-offs of using one over another. We’ll then dive into how to create new online identities, how to create believable pseudonyms and ‘back stories’ on platforms that require ‘real names’, the ins and outs of managing multiple identities, and how you can use certain tools, platforms, and devices to complement the management of your identities online.

Using your 'real identity' vs. other options

Once you have identified your different social domains and the activities and networks that go with them, you need to think about how to improve the ways you interact with those. The first question to consider is whether or not you want to differentiate your identities according to the social domains you’ve identified for yourself, or if you'd rather stick to your official name and true face for each of them. There is no ‘right’ or unique answer to this, but this process and the consideration of your options will illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of how you currently operate online. All these are potential decisions that need to be thought through carefully, and speaking about these decisions and trade-offs with friends who do similar work can be immensely helpful. You may want to keep your work connected to your legal or "real" identity because this gives it legitimacy, or perhaps you are so well established that reversing this would be problematic for various reasons. Or you may think that your activism should be anonymous (more on this below).

Let’s use an example of a journalist considering these issues. She may have more credibility and more job opportunities if she uses her real identity for her writing. Or she may decide to keep her real name confidential and use a nickname (or ‘pseudonym’) for her work, which means taking various precautions so no one can connect the two spheres together. This may mean she has to work harder to build her credibility as a journalist, and some potential employers may not want (or be able) to pay her for her work without knowing her real name, but separating her online journalism identity from her real name and identity is important and valuable enough for her to work a little harder.

A second example that illustrates these trade-offs is an activist considering her choices. If she wants to use a pseudonym instead of her real name, she should consider that she may be showing her face as part of her activism-related activities in the real world (such as speaking at conferences, participating in demonstrations, or attending small events). Can she keep all images of her doing her activism-related work offline? If not, her online pseudonym will be linked to her face in online images, and her face can be then also be linked to her real name in other social domains, such as her personal account on social media. This could eventually ‘unmask’ her online activist identity, defeating the reasons why she originally chose to use a pseudonym.

It also becomes increasingly difficult to understand and remain aware of all the kinds of data and metadata (‘digital traces’) we create when using many apps and functionalities via multiple devices—especially mobile phones and the emerging number of networked devices that we describe as the ‘Internet of Things’. This has made various types of online identities much more challenging to create and maintain effectively and safely without revealing identifiable information about ourselves and our networks.

Considering how potential online identities can improve your safety (and the safety of those connected to you personally and professionally), is crucial to accurately assessing your risks, as well as the technical skills and abilities you would need to use various types of online identities safely. You also need to think about which kind of identity you’d use in a given context. The following questions illustrate elements you should be considering when evaluating alternate online identities:

  • Would my safety, job or livelihood be at risk if my real identity were known?
  • Would my mental health or stability be affected if my participation in certain activities were known?
  • Would my family or other loved ones be harmed in any way if my real identity became known?
  • Am I able and willing to maintain separate identities safely?

These questions illustrate elements of basic risk assessment processes that you should apply when thinking about how your online identity (or identities) impact—or are affected by—your digital security and privacy. Assessing your risk helps to clarify your options and needs when considering different strategies for separating your identities online. These range from full transparency to full anonymity, and include as many separate identities as you think are needed and possible for you to maintain and do your work safely. Because of the risks involved with WHRDs’ work, we recommend doing as in-depth risk assessment as you’re able, and to seek assistance if you need it.

Further readings:


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"Real" names

Author Kate Harding talks about her decision to start writing under her real name, dismissing the recommendations that are generally given to bloggers to follow practices like 'writing under a pseudonym, making that pseudonym male or gender-neutral if you’re one of them lady bloggers... masking one’s personal information, being circumspect about publishing identifying details, and not writing anything that might inflame the crazies'. Instead of putting responsibility on women, Harding says, problems of harassment should be handled by society as a whole, including men. However, she also acknowledges that the decision can be a dangerous one.

For example the project Geek Feminism reveals how certain groups of people are disadvantaged by policies that require individuals to use their real or legal names. These include women, queers, trans* persons, differently-abled persons, children and parents. The costs to individuals from these groups when they have a public profile attached to their real name can range from discrimination (in employment or services) to arrest, imprisonment or execution in some contexts. At the Human Rights Council, APC together with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the International Lesbian and Gay Association delivered a joint statement highlighting the importance of encryption and anonymity for people who face discrimination and persecution based on their sexual orientation and gender identityː (https://www.apc.org/en/node/20587/)

Further readings:


Anonymity

Anonymity is the approach of keeping your identity and any uniquely identifying details about you completely hidden. This can mean attempting to keep your real identity private and separate from the work, activism you do and/or opinions you voice. On anonymity, Vani, a human rights activist, writes: “I am a regular social network user. I voice my opinions on a range of topics. But I remain faceless and nameless” (http://internetdemocracy.in/media/).

Anonymity may be a good choice for certain contexts and activities if you don't need to gain other people's trust, if there are few or no people you can trust, or when you don't want to expose yourself and others in your life to increased risk. Similar to other options below, it requires being mindful of the ‘digital traces’ you create, as we discussed above, it requires dedication and not making simple mistakes. For example, commitment to anonymity means you have to be very disciplined about not revealing your ‘real IP address’, similar to not revealing your ‘real name’. For this, Tor Browser and trusted VPNs can be critical everyday tools you use.

Anonymity may also be a good option from time to time when you are doing certain online activities that are more sensitive than other work and online activities you do under other types of identities. For example, you may want to remain anonymous when researching or participating in message boards about sensitive health issues, or when discussing censored content or highly political issues in online environments that are possibly monitored.

Anonymity can also mean using elements of other types of online identities. If you want to communicate with someone that you don’t entirely trust or you don't want to reveal your ‘real’ identity to (for example, someone you met on the sensitive health issue forum in the example above), you may want to set up a one-time account using a pseudonym to communicate with them over chat or email. When operating anonymously online, you may also want to use one-time pseudonyms to comment on a blog post or news site, or to establish a one-time nickname to identify yourself in a single chat session.

But total anonymity can be difficult to maintain, especially as you create larger amounts of content over long periods of time. The odds increase that you (and others who know your identity) may make ‘mistakes’ and reveal identifying ‘digital traces’ about you through your content or metadata that uniquely identifies you. Additionally, anonymity can also be risky in countries where it’s automatically considered a ‘red flag’ by authorities that may think an anonymous user is trying to hide something or doing something wrong. Anonymity can also be lonely and isolating, which leads one blogger to question: “Can you have a network to protect you and also be anonymous at the same time? Would visibility be a better strategy for you?”.

When you adopt anonymity as a strategy you may use pseudonyms, but these should not be used across different networks or social domains, and some may only be used once and then discarded. Because of this, anonymity differs from persistent pseudonymity.

Further Readings:


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Persistent Pseudonymity

Persistent pseudonymity involves using a fictitious name consistently over a period of time. A pseudonym may also be referred to as a ‘nickname’, a ‘handle’ or a moniker. As discussed above, there is a myriad of reasons why you might want to use a name other than the one you were born with. Remember that using a pseudonym means you still have to be very careful about keeping your pseudonymous work separate from your personal life, which means paying close attention to potentially identifying digital traces created under that pseudonym (such as a photo that can be traced to you, or an email account or forum comment that you made with your real name can be linked with your pseudonym, or revealing your ‘real’ IP address the same way you could reveal your ‘real name’ by not masking it using Tor Broswer, a VPN, or other tools). For an excellent example of how a pseudonymous blogger’s ‘real identity’ was revealed using digital traces, read the ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ story above. All of this means you have to be really sure this is something you want to do and that you are ready to make the effort required. If so, here's some things to consider.

A pseudonym can be name-shaped (e.g., "Jane Doe") or not (think of some Twitter handles you’ve seen that are thematic, symbolic, or nonsensical phrases or words). Often, you will have complete freedom to create pseudonyms, but there are also services that police and shut down accounts with pseudonymous or anonymous identities. At the time of writing, the most well-known example of this is Facebook, which requires users to use their ‘authentic identity’ (or ‘real name’), which almost always means your legal name, or the name by which you are commonly known (such as a nickname).

This story (http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/07/03/3676827/facebook-transgender-real-name-policy/) illustrates how even using your legal name can be incredibly difficult on sites banning all but ‘real names’. Facebook’s policy in particular has also caused many users to lose their Facebook accounts (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/facebook-real-name-policy-hurts-people-creates-new-digital-divide), including feminist groups, trans* persons and drag kings and queens known for their pseudonyms rather than their legal names. If you choose to use a pseudonym on some social networking services, it is important to understand that you can be reported for using a "fake name," and possibly have your account deleted. A strategy for avoiding that can be to use a name-shaped pseudonym so that your account is not automatically picked out as problematic by services like Facebook.


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Persistent pseudonymity can also offer visibility in a way that anonymity cannot, which allows you and your work to gain an online reputation and following over time, as well as the ability to network with others. Successfully establishing an online reputation and connections with online networks will still depend on members of trust-based online communities deciding whether you are worthy of their trust, which can make your online reputation a crucial element of your online pseudonymous identity. You may even choose to reveal your legal identity or ‘real name’ to some people within trust-based networks, or not. Any potential decision to connect your pseudonym and the online reputation associated with it to your ‘real name’ is a highly personal choice made according to your needs and context.

Further readings:

Collective Identity

Another way to be anonymous is through collective anonymous participation. For centuries, groups and like-minded people have participated anonymously in historic protest movements, or have created ground-breaking artworks and thought-provoking pranks under collective pseudonyms. In addition to enabling members to ‘hide’ their identities, these collective personas often create an aura of almost magical power from their actions. Anonymity through collective identity can translate into a number of concrete activities and resources, from a private group or mailing list that puts out collective statements, to a shared Twitter account. While the same security and privacy concerns apply, working as part of a collective identity can mean having the ‘power of the crowd’ behind you, and can offer a good option if you don’t want to reveal your identity as part of a movement.

But be aware that the ‘power of the crowd’ can also be the mob mentality’, or even the ‘tyranny of structureleness’ (in reference to Jo Freeman workː http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm). The collective may choose to do things that you don’t agree with, or things that will put you at unacceptable levels of risk. In some cases, members of collectives have been prosecuted for illegal acts even if they played low-level roles in the collective, and simply being a member of a collective can increase the level of scrutiny, surveillance, and risks you experience. So if you are considering acting as a collective identity, choose wisely and do your research before joining.

Some examples of collective identities:

Captain Swing: the identity used by farm workers in protest letters written during the English Swing Riots in 1830 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Swing)

Luther Blisset: this was originally the name of an Italian footballer that became adopted and used by many artists and activists for various actions and even a series of books (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_%28nom_de_plume%29)

Guerrilla Girls: an anonymous group of feminist and female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world (http://guerrillagirls.com/)

Netochka Nezvanovaː may be the name of a group of people, or it may actually be the pseudonym of a single woman. (The name itself means ‘Nameless Nobody’ in Russian, from a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky). Netochka is the ‘human face’ of a software tool kit used to manipulate digital video in real time, but her activities and actions add to the reputation and mystique of the identity. Netochka used to give the interviews to promote the software, but she was frequently represented by different women when she showed up in person (http://www.salon.com/2002/03/01/netochka/)

Anonymous: is perhaps the most widely known contemporary group of activists working under a pseudonym. It is a loose international network of activist and ‘hacktivist’ individuals and entities. Anonymous became known for a series of controversial stunts both online and offline, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, website defacing, and publishing illegally obtained corporate documents and emails. They’ve targeted governments, religious groups, individuals, and corporations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29) .

Kolena Lailaː was started by a group of young women bloggers in Egypt in 2006. The initiative devotes one day a year to mobilizing all Arab woman bloggers to speak out on different forms of oppressions they face; Kolena Laila means ‘We are all Laila’, the protagonist of ‘The Open Door,’ a novel by Latifa El Zayyat )(http://yfa.awid.org/2010/04/blogging-initiative-amplifies-voices-of-young-arab-women/)

Further readings:


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Comparing strategies

You should now know more about different types of online identities, what they offer, how they overlap, and the trade-offs involved in using them. You’ve probably thought about how different types of online identities would work well for communicating with others in different ways, and are pondering the steps you would take towards different strategies. But, as mentioned above, it is crucial to understand the benefits and drawbacks for you and your specific needs and situation in terms of your safety, the requirements of implementing a specific type of identity, and the technical abilities that identity requires for your specific level of risk. Since the community this was originally written for was women and trans* human rights defenders and activists, there may be a certain level of increased risk that would require a relatively strong baseline of technical knowledge and skills in order to safely create and manage these types of online identities. For others, the steps and strategies may be built more around personal preferences and decisions.

Since this initial content in the manual is avoiding hands-on technical advice and ‘deep dives’ into tools and digital systems, it’s important to remember that you will probably need to know how to use a range of security and privacy tools well (for example, Tor Browser), since employing many of these identities require fairly advanced knowledge, awareness, and skills to avoid making mistakes that could reveal enough data to expose one’s true identity and even the identity of others.

Because of these issues, we recommend to read and review our 'Establishing a baseline of privacy and security knowledge'.

To use these identities well enough to withstand surveillance and monitoring in hostile environments requires a certain level of technical skills and knowledge because of the number of variables, technologies, systems, and actors involved. This is really about making good decisions about the threats you are facing or are likely to face in the future. Choosing to limit your use to certain platforms over others could help with many of the challenges, but not all of them. We suggest when possible talking with others who have used these types of identities in similarly high-risk or hostile environments as part of your research before choosing to use one or more of them unless you are simply exploring and trying a type of identity in a safe and innocuous context, which is an excellent way to gain practice and a sense of what each of these identities entails.

This can seem overwhelming. One thing that may help is to consider what kind of ‘worse case scenarios’ you could handle if one of your online identities became compromised and your ‘real identity’ was revealed. For some people it could have very serious repercussions that could cause harm or prevent them from operating. For others, it may be problematic, but it would be something that they could absorb and move on from, and no one would suffer serious harm. This illustrates how much these decisions depend on each individual, as well as how they decide to use these identities to interact with their various social domains, including the activities they do as WHRD and trans* activists.

The pros and cons of the various identity options described above:

Risk Reputation Effort
Real Name "+" "+" "-"
Total Anonymity "-" "-" "+"
Persistent Pseudonimity "-" "+" "+"
Collective Identity "-" "+" "+"


Real name

  • Risk: Using your "real world" identity online means you are easily identifiable by family members, colleagues, and others, and your activities can be linked back to your identity.
  • Reputation: Others can easily identify you, thus gaining reputation and trust is easier.
  • Effort: It requires little effort.

Total anonymity

  • Risk: It can be beneficial at times, but also be very difficult to maintain. Choose this option carefully.
  • Reputation: There are few opportunities to network with others thus to gain trust and reputation.
  • Effort: Intensive as it requires considerable caution and knowledge. It will probably require the use of anonymisation tools (for example Tor or TAILS)

Persistent pseudonymity

  • Risk: Pseudonyms could be linked to your real world identity.
  • Reputation: A persistent pseudonym that others can use to identify you across platforms is a good way to gain reputation and trust.
  • Effort: Maintenance requires some effort, particularly if you are also using your real name elsewhere.

Collective Identity

  • Risk: Possible exposure of your real world identity by other people's actions in the group.
  • Reputation: While not a way to gain individual reputation, you can still benefit from the reputation of the collective.
  • Effort: Although secure communications are still important, it requires less effort than total anonymity.


Creating a new online identity

Once something is on the Internet it will almost always persist online and on private servers in some form. You may think that deleting certain sensitive data from social networking platforms and web services are enough to protect yourself, but remember that metadata cannot be deleted (or found) as easily. Many companies delete your account - for your view- but may keep the data on their servers for some time depending on their policies and local laws. And using just one identity throughout your whole life—in all your work and personal domains—creates a bulk of information that makes it easier to profile (or ‘dox’) you.

One option to avoid this is to leave an old identity behind and create a new one, or (as discussed above) several new ones for each of your social domains. You might also choose to still use your real identity in some areas, and your new alternative identities in others. Even if you don't feel an explicit need to have more than one online identity right now, it is worth familiarising yourself with the process. That way, if you get trolled or harassed online in the future and need to create a new identity, it will be easier to do. As with all security and privacy tactics and tools, you will learn better when you are not facing a direct threat, especially one attacking your online identity, reputation or even, your physical integrity. The effects of distress and fatigue affect our ability to engage with the systematic processes of risk analysis, security planning, and skill-building.

Besides all of this, creating new online identities can be really fun and is an essential part of how the Internet began: as a vast and endless new playground to reinvent one’s self and be whomever we dreamt of being. Whilst it is changing, it is a feature we should try to hold on to. Once you have decided that you want to experiment with multiple identities and have chosen what kind of identity (or identities) you want to create, you may want to take into account the following recommendations:

  • You should select your social contacts for each one carefully, and avoid sharing contacts with other identities you use for different activities. This effectively creates separate social domains, with separate accounts, email addresses, browser profiles, apps, and if possible, even devices.
  • Your various identities should not be linked to each other, or to your real identity. Remember that some of these connections can be tenuous as for example when signing up for a new pseudonymous email account using your real phone number, or using a persistent pseudonym when creating a one time use disposable email.
  • Creating additional disposable identities can be useful, as they can be discarded easily if compromised. These can also be created for new acquaintances (when appropriate) as introductory profiles to get to know somebody before you include them in a more trusted network.

Creating names and life stories

As discussed at length above, many platforms have ‘real name’ policies, so if you want to use commercial social networking platforms under a false name, it is better to use a credible name and surname rather than more ‘imaginative’ ones that seem fake. Or you may want to use the information in this section to create accounts you only use once, or devices that you only use to create a fake identity.

Once you have decided on a name, a surname, and a username for your virtual persona, you should do thorough research—perhaps also using doxing tools and techniques—to find out if someone else is already using that name. After all, if you wish to develop your own reputation, you don’t want to be confused with someone else, especially if they don’t share your views of the world or if your activities might put them at risk! Or you could use the opposite strategy of intentionally using a very common name with hundreds of instances online.

Then you need to create a story for this virtual persona, because if it comes with a story it makes it a lot easier to maintain. This can be really fun and challenging. You can invent a new story if you feel particularly inspired, or base your story on a “known” person’s story, a super-heroine, a fictional character from your favorite novel, or adopt a “collective identity”. In any case, when you create an identity you should conceive of a whole virtual persona, an avatar that needs to be nurtured and developed in order to become credible.

Relevant links:

  • Fakena.me: (https://fakena.me) is a privacy-oriented '"fake name generator" that will give you all the fake info you need to set up an account (fake name, birth date, US only address, username and password) as well as a link to an associated guerillamail mailbox.
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Credible personas

A virtual persona or identity can't be just a name with an email address and a series of web accounts. If you keep all your core identifying traits in all your personas—such as your gender, profession, preferences, or even the unique way you write and the words you use—it might be possible eventually for a dedicated person to connect the dots and link your pseudonymous personas with your real identity.

  • Work: Your persona should have a job that is different from yours, but not so different that you don’t know anything about that field. Also, you may want to vary where you work in terms of city and country.
  • Skills and interests: Similar considerations should be made to select your persona's skills and the main topics they focus on and write about.
  • Psychological attitude: A good way to give your persona depth is by creating some "weak spots" which are not the same as your own. So when the persona gets attacked, you can laugh about it and not experience harm. For example if you have a good sense of humour, try impersonating a humourless person!
  • Linguistic fingerprint: Although more advanced, it’s possible to be identifiable through a "stylometric analysis" that can identify the author of a particular text if they have enough samples of their writing. This is not used by many people of course, but if you’re concerned about this, analyse how you write, what kind of typos you tend to make (you can utilize a spell-checker to help with this), and what kind of phrases and sentence structures you tend to use. You can complicate any potential analysis by using different writing styles that could involve the words you use, the structure of your sentences, unusual use of capitol or lowercase letters, and various misspellings you typically wouldn’t make. If you have a number of personas, you could potentially create a simple rule for how each writes, and keep track by saving them with your passwords and login information for each persona’s account(s). This of course is a technique for the dedicated!

In any case, you should always remember that on the Internet, each of your identities—even those connected to your real name—is a “virtual” identity, and it is always better to decide what character traits you want to expose in each of them. Creating a somewhat fictional character may even be a good idea for your “real” online identity in some cases.

Relevant links:


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Manejando varias identidades

Mantener múltiples identidades puede ser trabajoso, pero, como la mayoría de estas prácticas, requiere de un poco de curiosidad, paciencia y atención. Después de un rato, es volverá habitual como todo lo demás que hacemos online (¡piensa cómo de complejos son nuestros hábitos en plataformas de redes sociales!). Lo fundamental es mantenerse atentas a separar nuestras identidades porque si no, se empezarán a mezclar unas con otras. Como punto de partida, puedes mantener anotaciones de tus identidades para ayudarte a evitar situaciones incómodas en las que confundas una identidad con otra (¡pero ojo con dónde vayas a guardar estas anotaciones!). También hay aspectos técnicos que puedes seguir y que se describen a continuación. De todas maneras, toma en cuenta que estas recomendaciones se centran en el manejo de identidades en computadoras de escritorio y puede que no apliquen siempre en caso de usar dispositivos móviles. Desafortunadamente, los dispositivos móviles tienen implicaciones a nivel de metadatos y seguridad que son más difíciles de controlar y manejar, lo cual se traduce, en parte, a que son descritos sistemáticamente como dispositivos intrínsicamente inseguros .


  • Crear diferentes perfiles de navegación para que tus hábitos de navegación se capturen bajo diferentes identidades, en Firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles) o Google Chrome (https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824). *Cuando creas una nueva cuenta de correo o cuenta en una plataforma de red social para una identidad, es buena idea conectarte a la página del servidor usando el navegador Tor o Orbot (dispositivos móviles: https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/orbot/android) Si se requiere de un mail de contacto, considera usar un correo desechable, uno que sólo uses para esa cuenta. Pero también ten en cuenta que el proveedor de mail que escojas no recolecte y revele las conexiones entre esa nueva cuenta 'desechable' y tu identidad real -por ejemplo, ésto es casi imposible cuando intentas crear una cuenta Gmail desechable con un navegador Chrome que ya está logueado a una de tus cuentas principales asociadas a tu 'identidad real'. Considera usar otros proveedores de correo que no sueles usar para tus cuentas de correo asociadas a tu 'identidad real'.
  • Escribe y establece 'pasos básicos de limpieza' a seguir cuando 'entras y sales' de las cuentas de tus diferentes identidades'. Ésto incluye cerrar sesión, borrar cookies, no guardar tus contraseñas en el navegador, etc. Obviamente, necesitarás manejar diferentes contraseñas para cada una de estas cuentas, así que recomendamos que echen un vistazo a herramientas como Keepass' (https://info.securityinabox.org/es/keepass_principal), por ejemplo, que funciona en todos los sistemas operativos .
  • Si tienes los recursos y motivación puedes eseparate vuestras identidades por dispositivo o sistema operativo'. Puedes usar máquinas virtuales, por ejemplo, como se explica al final de este capítulo. Esta opción puede ser una manera increíblemente útil de usar y manejar tus diferentes cuentas.

Whichever route you choose, try to make the processes as routine as possible so that it becomes something that you can manage as part of your workflow.

Disposable email addresses

For some activities and social domains you need to manage rounded personas, in order to gain a strong reputation and trust from other members of the community. In other cases, though, all you need is a ‘disposable’ email address for opening an account in a platform you don’t trust because of potential tracking, monitoring and/or spamming. Using disposable email accounts will reduce the number of traces connected to the main email address(es) you use for your work or personal life, and have the bonus feature of minimising the amount of spam in those accounts. Below are some services that can help you set up disposable accounts and addresses:

  • Anonbox: (https://anonbox.net) is a service provided by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) that gives you a mailbox for a day.
  • Guerilla Mail: (https://www.guerrillamail.com) lets you choose your email id and holds any mail you receive to it in a mailbox for one hour.
  • BugMeNot: (http://bugmenot.com) allows people to share their email logins and passwords created for platforms with free registration, for anyone to use.
  • Another option is to set up a mail alias. This a different email address that is connected to your main mailbox. The advantages of this approach are that this email account will not expire, and if it gets compromised you can just dispose of it and create a new one. But beware that it is very easy to check what the source email address (i.e., your main email address) is, so don't use this method when you really need to disguise your identity.

Relevant links:

Commercial social networking platforms

Before choosing to use any social networking platform there are some basic security and privacy questions you should ask, regardless of which identity you plan on using:

  • Does it provide an encrypted connection (https) for all uses of the site, rather than just during login? Are there any problems related to the website’s encryption? (see previous chapter on regaining control)
  • According to the platform's End User Licence Agreement (EULA), Privacy Policy and/or Data Use Policy, how is your content and personal data handled? With whom is it shared or possibly sold to?
  • What privacy options and features are provided for users? For example, can you choose to share your videos securely with a small number of individuals, or are all your videos and other content public by default?
  • Is the geographical location of the servers known? Under which territorial (and therefore legal) jurisdiction do they fall? Where is the company registered? How does this information relate to the privacy and security of your activity and information?

Now when you think about crafting a separate identity and letting it out on commercial social networking platforms, there are additional precautions to take:

  • When creating a social networking account for a new persona, use the unique browser profile you have created for that persona (mentioned above). Make sure to check the platform’s privacy settings so that you know what you are making public, who can see what you post, who can contact you, who can look you up using search, and what your contacts can see and do (e.g., can they tag you in pictures? can they write on your ‘wall’?).
  • Have fun with the profile information you provide but remember that this information is publicly available, so think about the message you want to convey with it.
  • Make sure your contacts do not overlap with your other identities, and your different identities don't "follow" one another. It is particularly not a good idea to follow your pseudonymous personas with your real identity. If someone is looking to unmask one of these personas, the first thing they will look for is who the account follows, and who follows the account. For the same reason, we should avoid reposting posts or other content published by one account with another account.
  • To make your identities look like different people, you can publish from your various accounts at different times of the day. Some social networking platforms, like Facebook, allow users to schedule the publication time of their posts.
  • It can be a good idea to follow, from your pseudonymous profiles, other people who might reasonably be considered the real owners of that profile. To further distance your real identity from your pseudonymous identities, you can also write (and hashtag on Twitter) posts under your pseudonymous profiles about events that you are not attending, especially if they are taking place far away from you. It can also be fun to publish and then delete posts that look like you have exposed your identity, so as to further confuse anyone who may try to unmask you.
  • If you are using a GPS-enabled phone, most social networking platforms will display your location where they can. This function is generally provided when you interact with the platform using a GPS-enabled phone, but the network your computer is connected to may also provide location data. It's always a good idea to double-check your settings - particularly on photo and video sharing sites to make sure your physical location and other metadata is not being collected and shared with media you share or post online.
  • If you access social networking platforms via mobile apps, it is better to use a different app for each separate account, so as not to post something to the wrong account by mistake. There are several apps that can be used to carefully manage your social networking platforms. It is, however, a good idea to use a different one for each identity, to reduce the risk of giving away your real identity.

Relevant links:

Further readings:


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A different machine for each identity

There are various approaches to digital security, but one of the most realistic approaches is security by isolation, which assumes that all security measures have their holes and therefore focuses on harm reduction by preventing possible attackers from accessing the ‘whole system’ that needs to be secured. This is what underlies the strategy of using multiple online identities in isolation from each other—it takes a single target that is difficult to defend (your ‘real identity’) and turns it into multiple targets (your various online identities) —if done correctly—. It can be effective, but this all depends on your situation and the type and depth of security you are trying to create. Ultimately this depends on who you really think your "adversary" is and what kind of access you think they have. How you appear to outsiders online, is very different to how you appear to someone who has indirect access to you devices or the services you use. If you are working in an environment where you want greater control over your devices and services, one technique is to extend this strategy from separate and isolated online personas (and the online accounts you use them with to communicate with distinct social domains) to the devices you use. Most of us use the same operating system on the same device to create, use and manage all our online identities, since we usually only have access to one computer and one mobile phone. Because of the way we are uniquely ‘fingerprinted’ online via our browsers and apps (see for instance EFF’s Panopticlickː https://panopticlick.eff.org/), we have to take extra steps to ‘appear’ different when we use our different online identities. One of the ways we do this is by varying the browsers we use, and creating and saving separate browser profiles that we use for each online identity.

But by always using the same device (usually a computer) and operating system on that device, you unavoidably increase the chances of making mistakes, no matter how carefully you separate your profiles and do everything ‘right’. For example, you may accidentally sign into a pseudonymous account using the browser profile you have assigned to your "real" identity, which leaves distinct metadata behind that seems unusual compared to the browser profile you usually use for that account, and can even inescapably link that pseudonymous account to your real account if someone is paying very close attention and is capturing your browser data when you log in. You could also get infected by malware that enables your attacker to monitor everything you do online, including all your activities using your many carefully crafted and managed identities.

To mitigate these risks (which are very common human errors—nobody’s perfect!), you can use a different device for each of your online accounts (and their respective social domains), which reduces the possible harm caused by potential spyware or human error. Most of us don't have those kind of resources, however. Therefore, an inexpensive (and usually free) option is to use a different operating system on your one main computer by using a GNU/Linux live distribution like Tails or by creating ‘virtual machines’ that run ‘inside’ your computer’s main operating system. A virtual machine (VM) can be described as a simulated computer with its own operating system, which runs as software on your physical computer. You can think of a VM as a computer within a computer. Using VMs can be useful for a wide range of things, including anonymisation, sharing machines with other people, or for opening untrusted and potentially harmful attachments ‘isolated’ in the VM from your main operating system in order to avoid a potential malware infection of your entire system.

The three tools proposed here — Tails, Whonix and Qubes OS — provide you the additional protection of separate operating systems for managing your alternate identities without having to use multiple computers, and can be incredibly powerful tools to make sure you don’t reveal your true identity when you’re using your other online identities in isolation from each other. Even better is that these solutions (detailed more below) are free and open-source Linux distributions that have been designed to maximise the privacy and security of its users.

Tails, or The Amnesic Incognito Live System: (https://tails.boum.org/) is a live operating system designed to help you use the Internet anonymously and evade censorship. It can be run on almost any computer directly from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card, and then be shut down without leaving traces on your computer (or other devices you use). It forces all the computer’s outgoing connections to go through Tor, and blocks attempts to make direct, non-anonymous connections to your computer. Using Tails is pretty easy, although some of what you can do (and the apps you can use) are limited out of necessity; despite this, you can do everything you need in order to use and maintain your online identities, including your ‘real’ identity, although you cannot access the content on your computer that you’ve stored there (such as photos and videos). You can still access your email accounts, and transfer media over to be used in Tails via USB stick, SD card, or other portable media.

If what you want to do with your virtual identity requires anonymisation, then it may be worthwhile to take the initial step of installing Tails on a USB stick and launching it on your computer. Tails is also a good option if you have very few resources, if you don’t have a computer of your own, or if you often use computers at Internet cafes or at your workplace as you can run your own desktop environment from a USB stick and if configurated correctly it leaves no traces. As mentioned above, if you want to keep the files you have created when using Tails, or save your actions, you need to enable this option (also known as ‘persistence’ (https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/persistence/index.en.html)) when you first start it. Tails is an well-established, highly respected project that has been developed for many years and is used by a wide community of people.

Whonix: (https://www.whonix.org) is an operating system created to run in a virtual machine that is designed to protect your anonymity, privacy, and security by helping you to use your applications anonymously. A web browser, IRC client, word processor and other tools come pre-configured with security in mind. Whonix is a relatively recent project and the community using it is still rather small.

Qubes: (https://www.qubes-os.org) keeps the things you do on your computer securely isolated in different virtual machines so that if one VM gets compromised, nothing else will be affected. This way, you can do everything on a single physical computer without having to worry that one successful cyberattack harms your whole system, potentially revealing all the connections among your various identities. Qubes OS is a good choice if you want to keep all your activities inside your own computer without having to install anything else.

To sum up, we shouldn’t look at those tools as ‘silver bullets’ or a ‘magic potion’ that will make you invulnerable. Nevertheless, by using any of these options according to your needs and resources, you will raise the level of effort that an attacker will need to harm you, making a successful attack—as well as harmful human errors—less likely.

Relevant links:


This chapter of the manual has looked at how to include gender into individual security and privacy practices by focusing on the question of identity; explored what digital traces are and what they can ‘tell’ about us individually and how we can regain control of those traces and the stories they tell others about us. It also covered how mapping our various social domains can help us manage our lives and activities more safely, and explored how creating different types of separate online identities can be a powerful tool for working and playing online safely.

But most of us also want to safely communicate and organise with others online. So, how do you create and maintain pockets of community online that are safe, trusted havens for sharing, support, and dialogue between those who share common goals, views, or ideas (whether it be within your organisation or more broadly within your communities).

Given the hostility, types of digital gender-based violence, and targeting we can experience online, what are strategies for increasing our visibility and resistance in inhospitable spaces which exclude or harm us. This second chapter of the manual looks beyond the choices and practices available to us at the individual level, and delves into the creation and management of spaces that are safe for us—both online and offline.



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Safe Spaces

Safe spaces can be understood as spaces that are created though explicit community agreement, or through an implicit sharing of values. They enable members of a group to flourish, create community, and empower themselves. Safe environments for discussion and awareness-raising have played a key role in many women's liberation movements as well as other social movements.

As explained by holistic security trainer Sandra Ljubinkovic, safe spaces in the context of training events are important for any integrated approach to security because they enable a supportive environment that helps people express their emotions without fearing any judgment: “Creating a safe space is crucial for creating a sense of physical safety as well as a sense of confidence in a group. It is important for participants who usually have no time to relax to feel comfortable and enjoy simple things­. And if they live in a country where their lives are in danger, it is even more crucial to make sure that they feel physically safe. Safe space in a group means a space to feel comfortable and speak openly and freely about feelings, challenges, and emotions as they may arise. In the workshops where issues personally affect people (whether those are physical, emotional, or spiritual threats and challenges), participants may have strong emotions as they do their own inner work facing their own oppression, privilege, anger, hurt, pain and suffering”.

Safe spaces can be temporary and take place during a one-time event or training (as described above), or they can also become permanent spaces where collectives or organisations embed the basic principles of safety, support, respect, and inclusiveness in their own space management. They can also be established online among a group of trusted individuals.

Whatever format or style is used, a safe space should allow women and trans* persons to access and learn about technology and related fields without having to fear intimidation or embarrassment, sexist language and attitudes, or being challenged, mocked or mansplained. There are many possible event formats and styles which can support the creation of safe spaces, both online and offline, that allow women, trans* persons, and other individuals to communicate and collaborate in a nurturing and welcoming environment.

You may assume that the online communities you create or take part in through social media, discussion lists, and chat channels are inherently democratic, non-hierarchical, participatory, and relatively safe. However, within online spaces the same hierarchies, privileges, and power relations that exist in society in the offline world can be reproduced. It's important to be mindful of this and to think through ways to mitigate and limit these downsides in order to get the most utility out of the virtual and physical spaces we have. Using these strategies is about caring for ourselves and for the communities we are part of. Making these issues explicit and visible is also about agency, social justice, and feminism, by helping us shape the spaces that we care about, use to organize, and within which we grow.

This section will first focus on strategies of resistance in large online public spaces that are not inherently safe for all users, such as Twitter and Wikipedia. These examples are designed to give us insight into how we can work collectively to create safety online by using certain tactics and strategies, such as developing and using feminist counterspeech, and ‘storming’ and ‘swarming’ together in order to protect and support each other.

Secondly, the section will also look at the offline world and discuss how we can build safe spaces in the physical world in order to host privacy and digital security trainings and activities for narrowing the gender gap in tech.

Finally, this chapter looks at building safe spaces online to enable better—and safer—collaborations through the use of mailing lists, chat rooms, forums, wikis, etherpads, blogs, and alternative social networking platforms. It will also look at how to use these tools tactically to support the creation and maintenance of safe spaces. The tools that have been highlighted in this section have been included because they are free and open source software (FOSS) instead of for-profit tools that prevent users from understanding how they work. Because they are completely open for the public to look at, review, and improve, FOSS tools are openly designed and administered, and tend to have increased privacy and security features that can minimise the amount of traces we create online.

It's important to remember (and remind others) that most of the alternative tools and service providers we refer to in this section are not profit-oriented and are often managed (and even paid for out-of-pocket) by volunteers. Additionally, most of them do not accept government funding in order to retain autonomy and because they are not 'formal', 'for-profit' entities that have the resources to manage grants. Therefore, most of these 'free' online services and tools rely on volunteers and contributions to sustain their work. You can support these alternative services and tools by volunteering to help with various tasks (e.g., documentation, translations, training, coding, etc.), but also with funding contributions, since they all require certain levels of funds in order to sustain their networks and services (for example, see this breakdown of annual costs for austici: https://www.autistici.org/en/who/costs.html). So, we suggest making it a habit: Whenever you, your network, or your organization uses FOSS tools and services, please help sustain these key resources with whatever contribution (voluntary or monetary) you're able to provide. Use these services? Donate or volunteer using the links below:


Further Readingsː

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Safe spaces in the public sphere (online and offline)

There are a number of virtual and physical spaces that feel hostile—or less safe—for women and trans* persons because they explicitly or implicitly exclude us and other marginalized groups. We may also discover that apparently safe and welcoming spaces end up harbouring bigots. When we feel restrained, harrassed or intimidated, there are a number of things we can do. One way to proactively care for our personal and collective safety is by using appropriate security- and privacy- enhancing tools and techniques, as well as safely managing our online identities. Another is working with others to craft methods for reclaiming a sense — or space — of safety in the public sphere. Organising collective actions can also be powerful acts of resistance, bringing attention and visibility to the reality of marginalized individuals’ experiences of abuse and lack of safe spaces, and this in turn can help bring about transformation.

Counterspeech

Creating counter-narratives online, or ‘talking back’, is one strategy for making sexism and gender-based violence visible in response to online attacks and harassment. It can be an effective tactic, creating a sense of belonging and making visible the effectiveness of collective feminist actions online.

Counterspeech can be used for exposing hate/deceit/abuse/stereotypes, promoting counter-narratives and clarifying facts, advancing counter values, uniting communities and sharing experiences. When planning for counterspeech it is important to ask who should be aimed at, what will be the main objectives driving the speech (awareness, changing norms, support target, share experiences), and how it will be achieved (parody, humor, mock, fact checking, call for action/consequences)? For example, there are many examples of feminist counterspeech in actionː


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Storming Wikipedia

Feminist counterspeech can also include tactics to enable the inclusion and visibility of women and trans* persons’ contributions inside universal free knowledge platforms such as the Wikipedia. There have been many studies that have criticised the way in which knowledge is produced on Wikipedia. A 2010 survey (https://web.archive.org/web/20100414165445/http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf) conducted by the United Nations University found that only 13% of Wikipedia contributors identified as female. The fact that Wikipedia’s contributors are mostly men in their twenties and thirties, and disproportionately Western, are important factors that influence content, participation and review.

Women who have played a significant role in history are also often missing from Wikipedia, and feminist, queer and trans content is often challenged or heavily ‘contested’. For example, changing the name of whistleblower Bradley Manning to Chelsea Manning in Wikipedia became a very complex issue as the following article explains (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/24/chelsea-manning-name-row-wikipedia-editors-banned-from-trans-pages). The lack of gender and cultural diversity in Wikipedia content demands creative responses. This has led to the support and exploration of partnerships, research, community organizing, and socio-cultural and technical interventiont by the Wikimedia Foundation for instance and many other organisations and grass-roots collectives.

‘Storming Wikipedia’ or organising ‘Edit-a-thons’ are two possible interventions that address the lack of gender and cultural diversity amongst the editors and content on Wikipedia. These two examples of creative interventions can enable participants to collectively learn how to edit Wikipedia content in ways that reflect more accurately their communities and relevant histories. Learning how to edit Wikipedia can seem daunting for many, so collectively editing and creating pages with others in a safe space is a great way to confront one’s hesitations or fears. In addition, participants also learn about Wikipedia’s community values and principles, as well as how such a large community-driven effort has—through the development of bottom-up community rules—become the most important encyclopaedia in the world. All together, Wikipedia remains an important space worth investigating and reclaiming by marginalized individuals and communities across all languages and pages!

Organising a ‘wikistorming’ involves gathering a group of friends (and friends of friends) who want to learn (or already know) how to edit Wikipedia, and then identifying a safe space in which to hold the event. It can be held in someone’s home, in a community centre, at an art centre, or at a community organisation. Wikistorming can—and should—be organised any day, but Ada Lovelace Day in mid-October and International Women's Day on March 8 are two specific days on which such gatherings often happen. A wikistorming can last from a half-day to a whole day. Before wikistorming, decide which Wikipedia entries you may want create, or which existing pages you want to edit. Be realistic about your goals given the length of the wikistorming event, and refrain from adding too many planned edits to your personal editing agenda, since editing Wikipedia carefully takes time.

Relevant links:


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Dealing with Trolls

Women and trans persons who have influence online and/or begin to develop an online following may experience what Kathy Siera describes as a ‘Koolaid point’ (http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point/). This is the point at which a certain group of people decide that you have too much influence and make it their mission to silence or discredit you. This is commonly referred to as 'trolling'—although this particular category of gender- and minority-based actions described by Siera are usually targeted, hate-based, and discriminatory in nature. A ‘troll's’ tactics can include anything from sending constant derogatory and belittling messages to editing and distributing offensive images, and even making threats.

Block or engage?

If you are not planning to ignore the trolls, then there are two ways you can deal with them. One is to block them and then report them to the platform you are using. The other options is to engage with them. The decision on which way to go depends on what you want to achieve.

Blocking trolls can sometimes be effective, and may allow you to continue with your work unimpeded. Projects like Block Together (https://blocktogether.org/) and Block Bot (http://www.theblockbot.com/sign_up) were developed to help people who are harassed share their blocklists with each other.

When trolls are really committed to harassing you, however, blocking doesn't really help. A determined troll can create numerous different profiles (called ‘sock puppet accounts’) to continue the harassment, and this means your blocking has to keep up with their generation of new accounts. This quickly becomes very tedious. Historically, platforms like Twitter and Facebook have not handled reports of intimidation and online violence very well. However, this is beginning to change as they recognise the severity of problem and see how it deters people with important voices and large numbers of followers (or friends) from using their services.

You might consider the alternative: engaging the trolls who are harassing you. One way to do this is to try and enter into rational arguments with them and interrogate their views. Another way is to try to shame them, or to use humour to deflate their egos. Effective engagement with trolls can actually help generate debate and public interest around the act of online harassment, and can involve others in online discussions about safe spaces, violence, sexism, and online behaviour. It can also be a source of empowerment for the subjects of trolling—seeing others laugh at your harasser(s) can be very uplifting.

Swarming can be another way to drown out the voices of the harassers. Creating communities of support with allies in social media spaces where you are likely to encounter harassment can accomplish this. When someone is being targeted, others can be quickly alerted and then bombard the harasser with messages. The content of that message is up to you: it could be scolding, educational, or loving. Another swarming option is instead of directing messages towards the harasser, the swarm can fill the victim's content stream with lots of new content in order to quickly make the negative, violent content disappear into online history.

If you want to engage with trolls, or try swarming, you might prefer to stay anonymous to avoid having your real identity trolled. Setting up a network of secondary accounts (as described in previous chapter) to do your troll-response work can be a good tactic for your organisation or your community of friends. It may even be easier psychologically to say some of the things you want to say to trolls using these secondary accounts, instead of making similar comments linked to your main identity (and possibly your ‘real’ identity). And using fake secondary accounts to respond to trolls is also more performative—you can create any kind of identity you want and style it with an avatar, a funny name, a character etc. This can be part of the total message you are ‘sending’ to trolls in response to their harassment.

While battling trolls by directly responded to them in a ‘old-fashioned’ way can be fun and eye opening, it can also be a considerable time-waster. Another option to consider is automation for your responses using bots. For this, you need to do some coding, or you can work with freely available code that others have already shared online for this purpose on software repositories such as Github.

Further readings:

Bots against trolls

A bot (shorted from ‘robot’) is a piece of software that runs an automated task online, performing tasks much faster than humans can. There are many different types of and uses for bots. Spambots are used to harvest email addresses and contact information online. There are also 1,800 ‘approved’ bots in the English language section of Wikipedia that help semi-automate the routine editing of Wikipedia pages. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which are deployed in order to prevent access to a website or platform for a given amount of time, are another example of what bots can do (this time as a collection of bots—also known as a ‘botnet’—running on thousands of computers worldwide are ‘turned on’ to target a given page by a person or organization controlling the botnet).

Bots can post content, gather information, and click on things. Twitter is also filled with bots that use algorithms to harvest information and post tweets. Many of these are humorous and creative; for example, the twitterbot @twoheadlines grabs random news headlines and combines them to create funny and nonsensical fake headlines.

A bot can be programmed to document trolls' activities, or to talk to them so that you don't have to. The types of bots described below apply mainly to Twitter, but some of these ideas and approaches can be used for other platforms as well.

The data-gathering bot: It quietly scans Twitter and gathers up tweets, usernames and any other available information you have programmed it to collect. It places this information in a file for you. This bot can be useful for understanding what kind of content is out there, and for doing a first-stage analysis of abuse. Foxxydoxing is such an example; it is intended to help you analyse who your harassers are (https://github.com/DeepLab/FoxyDoxxing).

The simple talking bot: If you follow the #gamergate hashtag on Twitter, you will see a bot called @everyethics which tweets different humorous reasons for the recent (and ongoing) #gamergate trolling, ridiculing the claim that the major trolling which has been called ‘Gamergate’ was not about attacking women in gaming but about ‘ethics in game journalism’. While this bot could be seen as spam, it was actually clearly a strategy to undermine and make fun of the trolls.

The retweet bot: is programmed (by you) to scan Twitter for a list of specific words, phrases or hashtags, and to then retweet those. This could be used as part of a strategy to document and publicise Twitter abuse. Here's an example of such a bot you can download and install yourself (https://lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=17418).

The autotweet bot: is similar to the retweet bot, except that every time it finds a tweet with one of the words, phrases, or hashtags you have programmed it to look for, it will tweet a pre-written tweet directed at the user who posted the tweet it’s located. These bots get shut down much faster now, as was seen in the case of @fembot, which was programmed to automatically respond to racist and sexist tweets, and was blocked after only 75 tweets.

The data-gathering bot in combination with the talking bot: In this example, the data-gathering bot finds users according to your search terms, and compiles lists of them for you to read over and check for accuracy (as well as remove any ‘false positives’, which are tweets that technically met your search term requirements, but are users you don’t want as part of your list). In combination with the data-gathering bot, you can use a talking bot (or a team of talking bots), which can then tweet whatever you want to the users the data-gathering bot found. The campaign Zero Trollerance (https://zerotrollerance.guru) used this method, employing 160 talking bots that enrolled 3,000 identified trolls in a ‘self-help program’, and then sent them humorous motivational messages and video clips over a period of one week.

If you are considering creating and using bots to work for you as you fight online bigotry and harassment, there are some things you need to watch out for. Twitter is not against bots, and if you just want to create a bot that scans information from Twitter for you to analyse, or a bot that just tweets out to no one in particular, you will probably not encounter any problems. However, if you want to tweet at other Twitter users, you have to take into account Twitter's current policy against spam. Also keep in mind that language is very complicated and ‘slippery’, so if you want to tackle violence against women and trans* persons online (for example), you will have to be very careful about what kind of language you search for. Every time someone uses the word ‘bitch’ on Twitter to intimidate or harass someone in a negative way, there are probably at least five other people using it to tell their friend how much they love them in a positive way for instance. The best method to figure out how language is being used negatively to cause harm is to crowdsource it from people who have been harassed, and then experiment pulling tweets from Twitter using data-gathering bots and analyse the results yourself. Continuing reading more of this section to learn how to set up Twitter accounts to act as bots for you and your activism.

Relevant links:

Further readings:

Supporting others

It can feel daunting when you see someone experiencing online violence, and sometimes when trying to help you can inadvertently worsen the situation. Knowing how to act in the best possible way is our individual and collective responsibility to help create safe spaces online. If you are someone who wants to support a disadvantaged group but is not part of that group (e.g., men are allies when it comes to women's rights issues), it's important to speak out and clearly say ‘NO’ publicly to online harassment and violence. Otherwise, the culture of impunity around online harassment will continue. And if you are from a disadvantaged group, remember to tell your supporters outside of that group that this is one of the most powerful ways they can help—instead of feeling like they can’t or shouldn’t do anything because they are not from that particular group.When your friends or allies are being harassed and/or attacked online, there are some good practices you can followː

Offer quick support: When someone is being attacked or harassed, try to be quick in bringing in support. If you are close to the person under attack, offer immediate assistance. Bear in mind that this person might feel overwhelmed and might not have a clear set of instructions in mind about how they can be best supported. Remain quiet, attentive, and patient. Try to not create any additional pressure or stress. In the event of doxing —when detailed, comprehensive, and often confidential info is released online about a person for malicious reasons—you may want to offer a safe space to stay (like your home) if the person does not feel safe. You can also offer to moderate your friend's Twitter feed or blog comments to allow them to take a break from managing them. Finally, you can also review local and national law as well as policies for dealing with online and offline harassment, in order to translate your knowledge into concrete actions in support of the person being attacked.

Speak out: If you do not know the person well, you can at least speak out against what is happening. It's not enough to simply send a private email or tweet to the person who is under attack telling them that you think this kind of attack behaviour is unacceptable. (Sometimes, if the person under attack is being flooded with tweets and emails, it's even better not to write at all.) Instead, speak out about it in your networks and raise your voice against such behaviour. You can, for instance, publicly commend the work that the person under attack has been doing. Don't be silent, especially if you are a colleague or a teammate. Make your voice resonate online—particularly if you are a man (or have a large audience)! Here is a great example of Jay Smooth calling on men to challenge anti-feminist internet trolls: (https://vimeo.com/44117178).

Organise collectively: If you want to have more impact, think about taking collective action, as this is often more effective than individual actions alone. Gather a group of friends­—and friends of friends—for a Twitter storming, for instance. This will show the person under attack that you and others care, and that such attacks are not acceptable.

Write a solidarity statement: If you are part of an organisation or network, you can write a statement that explicitly says you condemn online gender-based violence and harassment. Having (other) persons versed in gender social justice and feminism reviewing the statement of solidarity is a best practice. If the person under attacks is from your organisation, make sure they read the solidarity statement before it is released. You can also proactively prepare an organisational policy in advance on what to do if someone is under attack onliney. That way, if you already have a policy and have outlined specific steps to follow when this type of situation occurs, chances are you will do less harm and be more effective in your response. For an example, see the Tor solidarity statement against online harassment: (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/solidarity-against-online-harassment).

Talk to the media: Depending on the nature and context of the situation, you might want to speak out through the media and highlight the gendered and sexist nature of online attacks. It's always a best practice to consult the persons targeted before speaking to the mainstream media. If you do not know the person who is being attacked personally, take a ‘web of trust approach’ by using your connections and trusted online network(s). Be sure you carefully consider the additional stress and potential harm you could inadvertently create for the person under attack if you are making them visible in the mainstream. Remember that this is not only about you: This is about fighting sexism online and supporting others in distress!

Relevant linksː

  • Crash Override Network: (http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/) is a support network and assistance group for victims and targets of unique forms of online harassment, composed entirely of experienced survivors. They work preventively and reactively with survivors during episodes of harassment to keep them safe. They also provide them with ways to disempower their harassers, reduce harm, and rebuild.
  • The Online Abuse Prevention Initiative (OAPI): is a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing and mitigating online abuse through the study and analysis of abuse patterns, the creation of anti-harassment tools and resources, and collaboration with companies trying to improve support for their communities. It works in collaboration with Crash Override Network
  • HeartMobː is a platform for real-time support to individuals experiencing online harassment and empowers bystanders to act. Visit their Kickstarter project to learn more about the initiative (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4096561/heartmob).

Further Readingsː

Documenting violence

In addition to directly supporting and showing solidarity with targets of online violence, you can also help document instances of online violence and harassment. These initiatives are key to showing the true extent of this problem (which is all-too-often written off as ‘rare’), as well as exhibit the structural aspects of gender-based violence in societies that it mirrors, parallels, and embodies.

Relevant links:

  • GenderIT.org: emerged from APC's Women’s Rights Programme’s advocacy work in information and communications technologies. It was developed in response to ICT advocates’ and policy makers’ expressed need for examples of national policies, examples of gender-sensitive language, lobbying resources, and an understanding of the impact that poor or positive policies can make.
  • Breaking the Circle:(http://en.breakingthecircle.org/) is an international UNI trade union campaign to raise awareness about the seriousness of gender violence and how it impacts both men and women. It focuses on the role of men and includes them as agents of change. They have developed tools and information to help spread the message and raise awareness.
  • Crowdmaps in Indiaː After the Delhi Gang Rape there was a lot of interest in how tech could be used to address the issue of sexual violence against women in offline spaces. The following initiatives emerged from spaces where tech meets gender in order to see how tech can be used to tackle gender based violence problems. See for instance Harassmap in Bombay (www.akshara.crowdmap.com ). Besides, the Safecity -Pin the creep (www.safecity.in) and the 'Safetipin' app enable to safely auditing public spaces (http://safetipin.com/). See also Harassmap in Egypt (http://harassmap.org/en/).
  • Macholandː (http://macholand.fr/) This French platform wants to increase the profile of voices and actions against sexism. Each user can participate and propose actions that are ‘pinned’ to brands, organizations, and public figures.


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Safe spaces offline

Many of the principles of creating and maintaining safe spaces online can also be applied offline. As noted in the introduction, both online and offline safe spaces can be temporary or a one-time event like a training or workshop. They can also become permanent online and offline spaces that have embedded basic principles in their management, including safety, support, respect, inclusiveness, and social and personal reflection. Safe spaces imply a vital use of personal and social reflection in order to critically engage in the social realities in which we live, and understanding how power and privilege shape relationships. By understanding how power is ‘played out’, we can regain space for critical questioning and awareness. 

In the case of security and privacy training, you also need to consider how participants can best learn skills to protect themselves when the topics themselves can be frightening or overwhelming. The environment also has to be suited to the participants sharing stories about threats they have been facing online and offline. Those stories can be very intimate and distressing to share so they should be handled carefully, but at the same time they are a very important part of the process of developing security and privacy strategies. As underlined by digital security trainer, Yvonne Reyes: “Without safe spaces you are bound to miss the true, honest stories that participants want to share. So making your participants feel safe is an important aspect for the success of any digital security and privacy training”.

The difficulties in defining what a "safe space" should look like are inherent in the fact that you are bringing a diversity of people together, who might be considered to be part of the same community but who all have different histories, contexts and needs. What one person might find politically, socially or personally threatening might mean very little to another. And everyone will of course also come with different experiences and levels of knowledge and skills with regard to technology.

It is important to be aware that, in struggling to perfect a safe space, one always runs the risk of creating instead yet another form of social control and pressure to conform.

Narrowing the gender gap in tech

As a reference for the elements that will be discussed below, it is worth noticing that safe spaces are crucial for organising security and privacy training in general regardless of the group and also to create spaces where gender gaps in tech can be narrowed. Indeed gender gaps in technology and the sciences can be bridged by focusing more on building safe spaces where women and trans* persons can access, use, learn about, and develop technologies at their own rhythm and according to their own needs and motivations. These spaces and initiatives can also help create space for us to autonomously build our own tools, services, and strategies. For some examples and inspiration, these initiatives are specially oriented at getting more women into ICT- and technology-related fields.

Asikana Network (Zambia)ː (http://asikananetwork.org/) is a group of women working to empower women in ICT-related fields by changing mind-sets and eliminating negative stereotypes about girls and women in ICT.

Akirachix (Kenya)ː (http://akirachix.com) is an African network of women in technology who develop technologies to inspire, as well as mentor women technologists.

Donestech (Spain)ː (http://www.donestech.net) is a cyber feminist and activist research group that develop workshops and audio-visual productions related to gender and ICT access. Lelacoders (https://vimeo.com/user8966514) is a related project focused on researching and highlighting women in computer science as well as free software and hacker cultures.

Feminist Approach to Technology (India)ː (http://fat-net.org/) increases women’s awareness, interest, and participation in technology.

Flossie (UK)ː (http://www.flossie.org/) runs a conference and workshops that combine advocacy, support, and skills sharing that bring women involved in the digital arts together with coders, artists, and makers.

Speakerinnenn (Germany)ː (http://speakerinnen.org/) aims to increase the visibility of women experts available for public speaking from a wide range of disciplines, including women experts in technology.


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General framework

When creating a safe space, you might encounter the issue of who is included and who is excluded from it. This can be very divisive, as it will often touch on people's strongly held sense of their political, personal, sexual, and social identities. Issues of sexual orientation and gender identity will likely come up. Some will prefer a women and trans* only environment, although some may feel that this choice (to exclude others) opens up an opportunity for external criticism, and others will feel that cis-men friends and colleagues are being unfairly excluded, and feel resentful. As you are having a discussion about these and related issues, some things to consider include:

  • Is there an agreed framework and rules of engagement for the event? How do we define ‘woman’ and ‘trans*’? How do we define ‘safe’?
  • Who do we want to include, influence, or support? Specifically women and trans* persons, or also potential allies?
  • How important versus how contentious are the issues under discussion? Are they worth alienating some people from the group? How can we frame the discussion to avoid alienating people who may not agree with the (final) decision?
  • How will the decision affect the actual experience of people within the space? Will it still feel like a safe space for them?
  • Do we have all the necessary skills within our networks to properly create and deliver this safe space, or will we need to find people outside our networks who have specific skills we cannot find within our networks? Where will we find them?
  • How will the space be organised to promote equal participation, especially if (for example) cis-men are included?

It's important to remember that building offline spaces is resource- and labour-intensive, and often many compromises have to be made. It may be a good idea to try to identify—as early as possible—which values are shared, important, and relevant to the event, so that you can constantly remember to prioritise those and de-prioritise less important or potentially divisive issues. Building offline spaces is most successful when you're clear about what you're trying to accomplish and how you plan to go about it. You should also be clear about what exactly the event is intended to achieve. For example will it be more about:

Skills: How can we learn to do xyz?

Advocacy: How do we change the culture of tech sectors to be more amenable for women and trans* persons, and/or let the world know that they are great at tech?

Support, networking and boundary crossing: What does it mean to be a woman or trans* person in tech? How can women from different places or sectors come together to spark off new ideas and practices? How can we support each other in tech?

Different aims will inform different safe space policies. For instance, it's difficult advocating for change in the male-dominated tech sector if you haven't invited cis-men to hear what you want to say, but you may prefer to discuss how to do this in a women and trans*-only environment first. If, on the other hand, you are advocating for increased engagement with technology by women and trans* persons, and want free, honest, and mutually supportive discussions or skills sharing, then a women and trans* only environment may be best. Take into account that in some cases, you will also need to decide if you can mix women, transwomen and transmen in one space, or if you should create separate spaces based on gender identification.

With skills workshops, there is research to suggest that women and trans* persons learn tech skills best with each other, so these workshops can have a very distinct reason for being exclusive that you can explain to others. Another possibility is to run an event twice: once for women and trans* participants, and once for open participation. This can have the positive side-effect of enabling others to experience a safe space methodology and thereby change their own practices in the spaces they organise, but it will clearly be more time-consuming. Finally, if you are running a smaller training or workshop as part of a larger mixed-gender event, don't be shy to create a shared agreement with the participants of your event, even if there isn't one in place at the main event.

Further readings:

How safe is the space?

Although this isn’t an exhaustive checklist, these are some questions that can help you assess whether a space is ‘safe’ or not:

Background: What is the history of the space? Who started it and why? How many women and trans* persons have been (and are now) involved in the space?

Participation: Who has stopped participating in the space since it was founded, and why? Is it mostly women who have left?

Policies: Does the space have policies? If so, what are they? Are the policies regularly put in practice? Ask members in the space about the policies, particularly women.

New people: How does the space welcome newcomers? The first time you arrived, did you get a tour? Did people say hello? Were the people in the space friendly?

Access: Who can go into the space, and under which conditions? This should be made explicit on the website, otherwise ask.

Accessibility: Is the space itself easily accessible? In which part of town is it located? Are there bathrooms? What are the opening hours? Who has access to the keys of the space?

Regular assemblies: Are there regular meetings (assemblies) that offer possibilities to raise concerns, to suggest collective projects, to suggest the organisation of workshops, to discuss the space (its cleanliness, etc.), to present yourself, etc.?

Language: Is the language and vocabulary used on the website and in the space explicitly open and inclusive, or something you feel comfortable with? Read the website carefully, or go and see for yourself what the space looks like.

Trust: Do you know people who you trust in the space, or do you know friends of friends who do? The web of trust can be very useful here.

Cost: How much does it cost to become a member? Is there a sliding scale policy?

Security: Make sure the space is secure and participants don't have to worry about external threats. Sometimes you will need spaces where you can control who is in the space and who is not. In those cases, shared spaces such as hotels, conference or meeting rooms might not be the best idea (for example).

No space is perfect; a safe space should always, however, at least provide an environment with boundaries in which to meet up, talk, and address difficult issues. Creating such spaces involves a subtle shift of focus from what is absent to what is present (e.g., our realities including fears, happiness, sorrows, frustrations and even rage). In creating safe spaces, we are reconnecting with ourselves and each other in the present moment. We have a chance to honour our feelings, and through deep listening to understand our own perspective and the perspectives of others, as well as their experiences, their journeys and their struggles. When people begin to feel heard and valued in this way, amazing things can happen.

Further readingsː

  • Holistic security manualː (Publication forthcoming in December 2015) is a manual from TTC to help understand how to develop an integrated approach to security for activists and human rights defenders.
  • Integrated Security Manual: (http://www.integratedsecuritymanual.org/) a resource for planning, convening, and hosting your workshop that prioritizes your participants' emotional and physical well being.
  • Level Up (https://www.level-up.cc/ ) has a number of resources for digital security trainers, including this section of non-training content resources (https://www.level-up.cc/resources-for-trainers), including pedagogy for adult learners (‘andragogy’), helpful do’s and don’ts for trainers and facilitators, and a resource by Craig Higson-Smith from Center for Victims of Torture on how security-related trainings and workshops affect participants who may have experienced trauma, anxiety and stress, and how facilitators and trainers can be mindful of these realities (https://www.level-up.cc/resources-for-trainers/holistic/psychological-underpinnings-security-training)


Shared agreements

It's important, especially in mixed environments, to think about what's acceptable conduct in the space and what isn't. In order for this to have any practical effect, you should think about what you'll do if individuals breach this - or when things go wrong generally. You can find plenty of information and example policies on the Geek Feminism Conference anti-harassment/Adoption page (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Adoption).

Make sure your participants understand the shared agreement and how it relates to their own conduct. It can be useful to make time in your schedule at the beginning of the event to share your policy, and reach consensus with the group on how to maintain a safe space over the days of the event.

Your shared agreement should be about preventing aggressive behavior and not about trying to police how people identify, communicate or present themselves. It's also worth remembering that people who are struggling in a culturally unfamiliar environment can become confrontational more easily than they usually would. There may be many reasons why a participant might be struggling to communicate positively at any given moment. It's key to remain calm and to provide a non-judgmental space for the expression of emotions like anger or frustration. Because of this, a shared agreement should also include some people that will be assigned to receive feedback if any problem takes place. They should be good facilitators or moderators and be calm and patient. We are different; let's celebrate it, even when it's difficult to do!

Last not least, your code of conduct should include an agreement about how participants will respect other participants right to privacy. Some general guidelines could include the following:

  • Don't take or circulate sound, video or photos without permissionːIf anyone present faces significant external risk then don't take photos at all unless participants have given express permission and an opportunity to cover their identity.
  • If you wish to record the event, prepare formal consent forms telling people exactly what audio-visual records are being made and how they will be stored, used, licensed and ask for clear consent with a signature.
  • Don't share details of anyone's participation, speech or actions on social media without their express permission.


Choosing a format that fits

Once you have settled the basic questions on what your event is designed to accomplish, and whom you want to invite, it's time to think about the format of your event. Deciding which format to use can be helped by your answers to some key questions:

  • What are you trying to do? Which format will support this activity best?
  • What are the participants' needs, existing skills, experiences and preferences?
  • What physical spaces are available, what will they allow you to do, and what resources do you have?
  • What (and who) are your human and organisational resources—how much can you realistically take on for this event?

There are many different ways of organising events. Some of the most popular in FOSS and tech-related communities are:

Un-Conference: helps people to make connections, share knowledge, collaborate and inspire each other. To take part, participants are encouraged to give a presentation, create a discussion, or even chair a debate (http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/unconference-howto/ ; http://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/). This format can be relatively egalitarian and relatively easy to organise but you should watch out for the tyranny of structurelessness. If not well organised in advance they can become very ineffective. They can also be extremely intimidating and therefore exclusionary towards less experienced or skilled participants; and can be stressful if you need to organise tech or other resources for specific activities in advance. Events such as the Ada Camps (https://adacamp.org/) or the TransHackFeminist convergence (http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/) have been using the model of un-conferences for instance.

Workshop: consist in transferring skills or knowledge in an interactive session. There are many possible workshop methodologies. Workshops can be a good format for building skills or for maker and design activities. For instance in Pakistan Hamara Internet is a campaign by Digital Rights Foundation that seeks to raise awareness about violence against women online through various workshops. It literally means ‘Our Internet’ in English and works to impart digital security tips and training to women and bridge the gender digital divide in Pakistan (http://hamarainternet.org/). For another example of how to organise large scale workshops, see Tactical Tech's Source Camp replication site (https://replication.tacticaltech.org/).

Hackathon: With its general motto ‘programming till someone drops from exhaustion’, hack events can mix different groups - like NGOs with hackers - to come up with new approaches to building technology for that group. For instance IGNITE (Women Fueling Science and Technology from the Global Fund for Women International) organised a global Hackathon called #hackgirlsrights. This 24-hour, multi-country coding event, targeted girl coders which collaborate to develop a website or application that address specific challenge facing girls and young women (http://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org/gallery/ignite-international-girls-hackathon). On the past 23th of April 2015, another global feminist hackaton called Femhack was organised around the world in loving memory of Woman Human Rights Defender Sabeen Mahmud (https://f3mhack.org). You can read more about how to run a hackathon here: (http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/23/hackathons-in-droves-how-is-a-hackathon-organised/)

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Sprint: A sprint is a gathering of people involved in a specific project to further the focused development of some aspect of the project, such as working on sections of code, writing manuals or books, etc. These are effective at getting a lot done quickly for code and manuals (less so for other forms of writing), but can be exhausting and emotionally demanding - make sure you keep food and drink coming! To read more about sprints, visit wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(software_development) and Flossmanuals: (http://www.flossmanuals.org/service/booksprints). To note for instance that this manual was edited during an editorial sprintǃ

Seminar: A seminar brings together a small group for recurring meetings that focus on a particular subject. In a seminar, everyone actively participates, or offers information or training on specific topics. On the one hand, this kind of structured activity supports people with less experience or confidence; planning for tech/resource support is fairly straightforward; and people know what to expect. On the other hand, the event can be experienced as overly structured and lacking spontaneity for more experienced participants; more 'top-down'; and requires more organisational effort in advance. Check out for instance the documentation of the Feminist Server Summit which consisted in a feminist review of mesh- cloud- autonomous- and D.I.Y. servers (http://vj14.constantvzw.org/r/about).

Residenciesː According to the artist communities network 'residencies provide dedicated time and space for creative work. Beyond this core value, these creative communities are a diverse group, and provide artists of all disciplines with many different styles and models of support. Residencies can be found in urban or rural areas, serving one artist at a time or 50'. There are many examples of interesting residencies for women and trans* interested in developing their artistic and techie projects, see for example Nuvem (Brasil) (http://www.transartists.org/air/nuvem), Studio XX (Canada) (http://studioxx.org/en/residences) and Deep lab (USA) (http://www.newinc.org/deep-lab/).

Other more stable kinds of safe spaces for experimenting and learning technology include:

Hacklab, hackerspace or makerspaceː These are community spaces with hardware and/or tools - great for people to ‘get their hands dirty’ and play around with anything - from taking computers apart to installing Linux to making music with bananas or building a radio out of razorblades and wire. Read more about hacklabs and hackerspaces here: ‘Hacklabs and Hackerspaces: Shared Machine Workshops’:(http://www.coredem.info/IMG/pdf/pass11_an-2.pdf). You can also visit the following portalsː (http://makerspace.com/) (http://hackerspaces.org/)

Feminist hackerspace: Those vary in shape, form, and size. What often unites them is a set of boundaries that are decided on collectively (who can be a member, who can be a guest, what are the policies, etc.) and an explicit belief in feminist principles. Feminist hackerspaces provide a place to work on individual and collective projects in a supportive environment. To know more about feminist hackerspaces you might want to visit the websites Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna (http://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/), The Mothership Hackermoms in Berkeley (http://mothership.hackermoms.org/), Double Union in San Francisco (https://www.doubleunion.org/), FemHack in Montreal (http://foufem.wiki.orangeseeds.org/), Marialab in Sao Paolo (http://marialab.com.br), Pechblenda LAB in Catalonia (https://pechblenda.hotglue.me/).


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For sharing skills, setting up a feminist hackerspace, or choosing an unconference, workshop or seminar format makes a lot of sense. For advocacy and networking events, the choice is not so obvious. Advocacy events can be some of the most challenging as it's easy to spend the entire day ‘re-inventing the wheel’ with people who are new to the questions. If you have participants from diverse backgrounds in your advocacy event, it could be best to go with a more structured format. Unconferences and hackathons work best with activists or experienced practitioners who are used to a high level of self-determination, and who have a shared understanding of the implicit rules and structures of the space. Having said that, it can work well to try more open formats anyway, but be prepared for some skilled facilitating to make it a safe and fun space for both experienced and less experienced participants. Sometimes a mixed approach is what's needed - and some experimentation!

Now in the last section, we detail some of the tools and alternatives that can enable you, your collective and networks to have a safer and more privacy oriented communication. We review how to use efficiently tools for collaboration such as mailing lists, IRC chat, forums, wikis, etherpads, blogs and alternative social networking services.


Tools for collaboration

Mailing lists

Mailing lists are one of the oldest forms of social networks, allowing a group to discuss, organise, and exchange information and media. A mailing list is a list of email addresses to which the same information is sent simultaneously. The most common types of mailing lists are announcement and discussion lists.

If you have decided within your group that you need a secure communication channel and/or that you do not want to use corporate services, there are some good alternative services to choose from that are often recommended for human rights defenders. Riseup, Aktivix, and Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) are all free services that prioritise security and user privacy. Riseup in particular has many feminist- and queer-oriented mailing lists, and is therefore a great place to consider hosting your own, either publicly or privately. On their website you can also have a look at the public lists that already exist.

Riseup lists: https://lists.riseup.net/www/

Aktivix lists: https://lists.aktivix.org/mailman/listinfo

Autistici lists: http://www.autistici.org/en/services/lists.html

If you or your organisation has your own server, you can also install your own software for managing mailing lists and ensuring that all your communications remain securely hosted on your own machines, reducing the opportunities for them to be intercepted by unauthorized third parties. More information on this exists at: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_mailing_list_software).

Encrypted lists: If you want a high level of security, there is also the possibility of having mailing lists that provide end-to-end encryption, which—if used correctly on uncompromised devices—means that only the senders and recipients will be able to read the content of messages. However, it is important to understand that this requires all list participants to be experienced in using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) or Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG). This type of list is called a Schleuder list (http://schleuder2.nadir.org/ , developed by https://www.nadir.org/), and is designed to serve as a tool for group communications with a strong emphasis on security beyond just having encrypted connections using SSL/TLS. Be aware, however, that setting up a Schleuder list can require command line skills, and that the project hasn’t been kept fully up to date and documented as of writing.

Open or closed?

Once you are ready to create your mailing list, you need to decide whether it will be open or closed.

Open: An open list allows anyone to subscribe, and then once they have joined the list, to receive announcements and/or participate in the discussion. Subscription can be automatic for those signing up, or it can require subscriber approval by a moderator. This type of mailing list is good for reaching out to potential allies, supporters, contributors, and followers to keep them updated about your activities. You can configure your list to be open when you create it in the list administration or configuration options.

Closed: Another option is to keep your mailing list closed. In a closed list, membership is limited, and all subscribers require approval before they can join the list. It may also not be possible for people to even request membership in the group. It's also possible to have a list that is publicised (i.e., everyone can know it exists) but to still have it closed. This type of list is useful when you want to discuss sensitive or personal topics and want to be sure that all members on the list are known and considered trustworthy by their fellow members.

Note that sometimes the archives of a list can be made public and end up being discoverable via search engines or by being posted on various websites. Know the email mailing list system that you are using, and check if keeping a list open to new subscriptions automatically means that the list's archives—all of the messages that have been sent or received via the list—will be publicly available; or if the list’s archives will only be accessible to list members and (in some cases) additional authorized users. Depending on the list service or software you use, sometimes you can choose whether you keep the list’s archives public or not.

If you intend to talk about sensitive issues on the list (and talking about gender-related topics is often a sensitive issue!), or if trust within the group is critical for creating the list as a safe space, you may want to establish a closed list and keep your archives closed or private. If you do choose to leave your archives accessible publicly, it is important to inform all list subscribers that any sensitive topics or personal details that emerge in list discussions will be accessible to anyone online who is looking for it.

Relevant links:

Policies

Agreeing on a mailing list policy—a set of do's and don'ts for the list—from the start will save you a lot of time and potentially difficult conversations. Even on a closed list, publishing your policy—which should include how the list is moderated, as well as how to report violations of the mailing list’s policy — can be helpful in establishing an online safe space that you want everyone to feel comfortable in. Your policy can also address particular tensions or issues within your group (for example, being free to express emotion is an important feminist principle, but losing your temper and attacking someone you don't agree with on the list is not ok). In the end, any good mailing list policy will set its own rules for achieving a balance between freedom of expression and opinion and impeding potentially racist, sexist, homophobic, or other types of aggressive attacks from taking place within the list community.

Having a visible and explicit policy signals the value of maintaining the mailing list as a safe space for members. It can also help you to decide who should be added to your list and who should not be. To make sure that the policy does not get forgotten or go unread, you can regularly remind subscribers about it, or add a link to it at the end of each mail that is sent out to members.

Relevant links:

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Administration

Administrating a list: it involves handling subscriptions and moderating content. You can choose how many administrators you want your list to have. Be aware that if your list suddenly becomes very ‘chatty’, administration and moderation may become too demanding for just one person. In general, any community communication tool with many members should not rely on only one person for administration duties. Take into account that this person probably has other commitments, could disappear from their administrative role, or just be poorly suited to the task. Lists can also be collectively managed by distributing administrative and moderating responsibilities among multiple members of a list.

Moderating a list: as a general rule, moderation has two main goals: sharing relevant information with fellow members, and enabling dialogue among them. A well-moderated community list will be efficient in the production and redistribution of useful information for members, and good moderation will enable respectful dialogue among its members, increasing the accessibility and openness of an online community.

Remember that any online safe space should apply the basic principles of ‘online etiquette’ and that good administrators, moderators, and mailing list policies should review, adapt and include those basic principles in their core social norms and values, as well as ask members of the list to discuss, understand, and ammend those principles. In a nutshell, ‘online etiquette’ requires users to remember to be nice (as we all experience strong feelings when communicating), keep messages brief, not ‘shout’ at one another, protect others’ personal information, provide help when needed, and to avoid sending emails when angry! For more information on ‘online’ or ‘net’ etiquette, see: (http://www.networketiquette.net/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_in_technology)

Gender and tech mailing list

Before setting up your own mailing lists, you might want to engage with some of the established mailing lists focused on gender and technology. It is always a good idea to briefly introduce yourself and explain why you are interested in subscribing to the mailing list. For example:

Open Mailing lists:

Take Back the Tech!: the mailing list associated with APC’s collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies to end online and offline violence against women. To register, visitː (https://lists.takebackthetech.net/mailman/listinfo/takebackthetech)

FemTechNet: is a network of scholars, students, and artists who work on technology, science, and feminism in a variety of fields including Science and Technology Studies, Media and Visual Studies, Art, as well as Women’s, Queer, and Ethnic Studies. To register, visit: (http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/mailman/listinfo/femtechnet)

Queer Feminism Geek: is a network of feminist, queer and trans* hackers, makers, geeks and artists who organise activities and assemblies at the Computer Chaos Camp and Congress. To register, visit: (https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/queerfeministgeeks)

Subscription after endorsement by other members on a list:

Fembot: is a network of scholars and students who focus on gender, media, and technologyː (http://fembotcollective.org/)

Femmehack: is a list created to organise a Global Feminist Hackathon that took place on the 23th of May 2015 in loving memory of Sabeen Mahmud, a Woman Human Right Defender shot to death in Pakistan: (https://f3mhack.org)

TransHackFeminist: is a list created after the first THF convergence in 2014 where intersectional feminists, queer and trans* people of all genders met to better understand, use, and ultimately develop free and ‘liberating technologies’ for social dissent: (http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/ and http://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/files/2015/01/THF_report_Eng.pdf).


Femhack.gif


Chat with IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat service that can be hosted on different servers and accessed through various user clients. It provides the ability to set up channels or chat rooms enabling multiple participants to contribute to a discussion in real time. IRC also gives you the option to encrypt your communication. You can’t embed video, audio or pictures, but you can link to them. While IRC can be a great tool for facilitating collaboration, there are things to bear in mind if you decide to use it.

First, IRC can take a little time to get used to, depending on the skills and experience of your group. Second, developing relationships across a purely text-based channel such as IRC can be challenging. Writing is not easy for everyone, and some in the group might not be using their first language or mother tongue. Thirdly, there may be situations where it simply isn’t the right tool for what you need to do (for example, if there’s simply too many people involved in a time-limited meeting), so have plans for how you’re going to use other types of collaboration tools from time to time.

Accessing IRC through your browser: There are several ways to chat through an IRC network using a browser, although it isn’t usually the most secure way to access and use IRC. The easiest way to start out is to access an IRC network directly through your browser, such as one from Indymedia (https://irc.indymedia.nl/) or Freenode (https://webchat.freenode.net/). You can get set up immediately by creating a nickname and a channel, which you can then give to your colleagues to connect to with you.

Accessing IRC through a chat client: Connecting to an IRC network through your browser is, however, not the most secure option out there. If you are a more advanced user, or if you have already tested out IRC out and think it will work for your group, it can be better to access your chosen IRC network from a chat client.

There are a few different chat clients which you can choose from, including Jitsi and Pidgin for all OS and Adium for Mac OSX. You can read more about these clients and how to use them in Tactical Tech's Security in-a-Box: Jitsi (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/jitsi/windows) ; Pidgin (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/pidgin/windows).

How to use an IRC network: Advice and instructions on using an IRC network can be found on Freenode (https://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml), Autistici (https://www.autistici.org/en/stuff/man_irc), and Indymedia (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/IrcHowTo) The last two also allow us to anonymise our connections through Tor.

Facilitating a meeting: Once you start an IRC meeting, it is useful to appoint a facilitator to keep track of time. This person might also be in charge of making sure the discussion sticks to the topics at hand. In order to create a welcoming environment and a safe space, acknowledging and valuing the voice of everyone is key on IRC. When you start a conversation, take time to greet people, particularly any newcomers. When facilitating a conversation on IRC:

  • Set a time limit and stick to it because IRC meetings can be very tiring.
  • You might decide that people should be given turns to speak in order to ensure that everyone has space to express themselves. You can simply assign turns in alphabetical order of nicknames (or any order you want to give) regarding each of the points addressed during the conversation. This can help structure the conversation and stop one person or a small group of people dominating the conversation.
  • It can be useful to end your input with 'over' or 'done', so everyone knows when you have stopped speaking.
  • IRC can go very fast, particularly if there are many people involved in the discussion. Getting everyone to slow down and read all the inputs can decrease frustration.

Whatever the facilitation methods you choose, communicate them explicitly to all the participants beforehand, for example in the email where you invite people to join the meeting.

Forums, Wikis and Etherpads

Chat services and mailing lists can be extremely useful, but they will only take you so far in terms of sustained collaboration over long distances. When it comes to managing collaboration between people living in different places, you will probably find yourself looking for something with more functionality.

Internet forums: One of the oldest tools used for public discussions online are internet forums, where discussions can be hosted over time and are at least temporarily archived. What really distinguishes a forum from a mailing list or IRC chat is that it has a tree-like structure and can contain a number of sub-discussions, each with a different topic.

Wikis: If you are looking for a tool to collaboratively write a text with many sections and pages, or even to create the initial structure and content for a website, a wiki can be a useful tool (for instance this manual has been edited in this wiki). A wiki is a web application that allows a hierarchical structuring of content, and tracks the edits and additions made by users, easily allowing you to revert changes, move, or delete content. You can also make a wiki private or public, and change it from one state to another if you are, say, privately developing a wiki with a closed group of people that you later open up to the public. Please note that both forums and wikis need to be hosted on a server, so you'll need to know how to set one up and manage it.

Etherpads: For collaborating in real-time on documents, Etherpads are a great resource. They are also a good alternative to corporate-hosted and -provided services like Google Docs. Google's suite of sharing tools are popular, but it is important to remember that the data of the users and the content is on Google's servers reducing your control over your own data. Etherpads are also far easier for co-editing text than sending mails back and forth and using other asynchronous (i.e., not simultaneous) methods. The main thing you need to look for when choosing an etherpad is that it is hosted using an encrypted connection between you and the server (via https/SSL). A list of such etherpads can be found here: (https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/wiki/Sites-that-run-Etherpad-Lite).

  • To create a new etherpad (i.e., a new document that you are going to use with others to collaborate with), you need to decide on the name of that specific etherpad’s URL. Because each pad is accessible to anyone who has the URL, you should give each pad a long and inventive name, so that it can't be easily guessed. For example: https://pad.riseup.net/p/feminists is not secure. A more complicated URL such as https://pad.riseup.net/p/FeministsRockAndTheyWillBeDoingGreatThingsToghether is much more secure. Once the etherpad has been created you can send the URL to your friends and colleagues to start collaborating on a document.
  • If you are worried about your etherpad being found and accessed by others, you can also consider a password-protected pad. For more on this, see: (https://www.protectedtext.com/)
  • Etherpads allow you to be anonymous, use a pseudonym or use your real name. There is a colour-based system that differentiates the contributions of each participants on the Etherpad, so you can always see who is contributing what. There is also a chat function for etherpad contributors to discuss what they’re working on if they so choose.

Blogs and websites

If you are part of an organisation or group, you might want to publish information about yourselves, your work, or write opinion pieces. A blog is a good vehicle for this and can be as easy as signing up to a blogging platform and choosing a name and a ‘theme’ (or visual template). There are several blogging platforms that are both user-friendly and free:

Wordpress: (https://wordpress.org) very popular and easy to use, open-source.

Noblogs: (http://noblogs.org) security-oriented blogging platform based on Wordpress with some tweaks for additional user privacy, managed on autonomous servers hosted by Autistici/Inventati.

BlackBlogs: (http://blackblogs.org) similar to Noblogs, managed by German tech collective Nadir.

There are a wide range of popular publishing platforms that are easy-to-use and free of fees. However, it is useful to remember that these companies make their money out of your data, which means you quickly loose control of it. This is a choice you have to make. If you want a complex graphic layout, or need to install particular tools that are not offered by Wordpress and its plugins, you can create your own website. For this you need to get some space in a server through a webhosting service or host it yourself using for instance autonomous servers. If you are using webhosting by others, there are many services out there, but since they generally aren’t free, the options to stay completely anonymous are reduced to creating a website with Austistici/Inventati, which by default does not connect the users of its services with their real identities. To learn more about Autistici/Inventati’s webhosting service, visit: (https://www.autistici.org/en/services/website.html).

If you want to use your own domain name, bypassing payments and identifications may be difficult unless you have and use Bitcoin or another anonymous payment system. Otherwise, the personal data you provide will not only be stored in the domain registrar’s internal archives, but by default will also be recorded in a database that can be easily queried by anybody through a simple command in a search engine (‘whois’) or on several websites (e.g: https://www.gandi.net/whois). To avoid this, you can register your domain with the data of an association and use a prepaid credit card that is not connected to your own identity and data (if available in your country). Alternatively, you can use a registrar like Gandi (https://www.gandi.net) that offers private domain registration for individuals whenever possible.

Alternative social networking platforms

Mainstream commercial social networking platforms can be extremely useful if your intention is to publicise something as widely as possible (such as an event you are organizing, or a project you are launching). You can think of these platforms as a megaphone­—these are great tools for getting attention and drawing a crowd. But often, they may not be ideal for communicating anything sensitive or private to a smaller or discrete group, depending on your particular needs and situation. There have been a number of improvements made to mainstream commercial social networking platforms with the addition of new security and privacy features, but some of the main reasons why they’re considered less secure and privacy-sensitive remain. To begin with, they have very strict terms of service (‘ToS’) that may ‘legally’ justify their ability to close your accounts if they find that your content goes against their self-determined rules. They also profile their users and share that information with advertisers and other for-profit corporations. If you add to these drawbacks their ever-changing terms of service, and the way their platform interacts with other apps and features. it all makes it very difficult or impossible for users to clearly understand what actually happens to their data.

So be strategic. Limit your use of commercial social networking platforms to specific projects you want to publicise to a wide audience and to non-sensitive communications and activities. There are also alternative social networking platforms that give much more freedom to their users and don't profile them for profit. These are community-based, privacy-friendly, distributed rather than centralized, and based on free and open-source software. Examples include:

Diaspora: (https://joindiaspora.com) offers a community driven micro-tweeting platform

Crabgrass: (https://we.riseup.net) has been around for more than ten years and constitute a solid and sustainable social networking alternative.

Friendica: (http://friendica.com) enables users to integrate their contacts from different social networking platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Diaspora, GNU social, App.net, Pump.io, etc)

Relevant links:



Congratulationsǃ You have reached the end of our beta manual. We expect to develop a more complete new version on the course of the next months and to develop translations. We also expect in the next years to add new chapters so we can have more of our tech working for us and not against us. Foreseen contents might deal with safest ways of using mobile devices and/or how to maintain our autonomous infrastructure for instance.

In any case we would love to read bout your ideas, suggestions and opinions, take five minutes to fill on our online form [1] and provide us with your feed back. In the meantime put some of what you have read here in practice and enjoy safely the internet. Take careǃ

Glossary

Anonymisation is the process that ensures users to remain anonymous as they access and use the internet by removing personally identifiable information from the traces they leave behind. Anonymisation can also be supported by encrypting communications and contents exchanged over the internet.

Appropriated technologies are generally recognized as encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, decentralized, people-centred, energy-efficient, environmentally sound, and locally controlled. (most from wikipedia)

Bitcoin is a pseudonymous online payment system based on the name sake cryptocurrency bitcoin. Bitcoins are created through "mining", a process in which users offer their computing power to verify and record payments. Besides mining, bitcoins can be obtained in exchange for different currencies, products, and services.

Bots is a piece of software that runs an automated task over the internet, performing tasks much faster than we can.

Circumvention is the act of bypassing Internet filters to access blocked websites and other Internet services.

Cis-man is a man who is naturally-born as a man and self-identify as a man. "cis" is the opposite of "trans". We can also see cis-women, cis-Gender, cis-men, etc.

Cookies are tiny pieces of data that are stored in our browser when we visit a website. Some cookies are harmless, as they are just used to make browsing easier and quicker, but others, so-called “profiling cookies”, are used to profile users for commercial purposes.

Crowdsource consists in the process of obtaining services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially online communities.

Digital traces includes data that you intentionally create and see — like publicly shared tweets or a blog post on your website—which we commonly call 'content'. It also includes pieces of data that are created about your content that is mostly invisible to us, commonly called 'metadata'. Those traces are almost always passively created, without you necessarily realising it, or consenting to it.

Domain (if you are looking for "Social domain", see "Social networks") The domain name is a component of a URL, the address we write in our browser to access a certain web site. URLs (https://www.wikipedia.org) are formed by a top-level domain name (in our case .org), by a host name (www), and by a second-level domain name (wikipedia), which is what identifies a certain website and is generally called a domain.

Doxing (also written as "doxxing", or "D0xing", a word derived from "Documents", or "Docx") describes tracing or gathering information about someone using sources that are freely available on the internet.

Encryption is a way of using clever mathematics to encrypt, or scramble, information so that it can only be decrypted and read by someone who has a particular piece of information, such as a password or an encryption key.

Feminist hackerspaces are physical spaces created by women, queer and trans* with a set of social norms that they decide collectively (who can be a member, who can be a guest, what are the policies, etc.) and an explicit belief in feminist principles. Feminist hackerspaces provide a place to work on individual and collective projects in a supportive environment.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that, unlike proprietary software, can be freely used, copied, studied and modified and whose source code is openly shared so as to encourage others to voluntarily improve its design.

Gender roles are sets of societal norms dictating what types of behaviors are generally considered acceptable, appropriate or desirable for a person based on their actual or perceived biological sex. These are usually centered around opposing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, although there are myriad exceptions and variations.

Gender queer is a gender variant person whose gender identity is neither male nor female, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders.Often includes a political agenda to challenge gender stereotypes and the gender binary system.

Holistic security are interventions and practices which ensure the agency, safety and well-being of activists and human rights defenders from a more holistic perspective; one which includes the physical, psycho-social and digital aspects of security.

HTTPS (see also TLS/SSL) Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within a connection encrypted by Transport Layer Security or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer. The main motivation for HTTPS is authentication of the visited website and to protect the privacy and integrity of the exchanged data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS).

Hackaton with their general motto "programming till someone drops from exhaustion" are hack events that can mix different groups - like NGOs with hackers - to come up with new approaches to building technology for that group.

Hack nights is a day or night that is dedicated to computer, body, software or hardware hacking. Often hack nights focus on special content, themes and/or demographics. Many women, queer and trans* have tried to organise women-only nights in hackerspaces.

Hacklabs and Hackerspaces are spaces whose communities embrace the hacker ethics, based on the principles of hands-on approach to technologies, sharing, openness, decentralization, and free access to technologies. Both are places where people go to learn how to use technologies, especially computer and internet-related ones, and share their skill with others. Hacklabs, which have basically existed since the advent of the personal computer and whose golden age was the decade around the turn of the millennium, are often located in squatted spaces and occupied social centres. Hackerspaces, the newer generation of such spaces, tend to interface more with the institutional grid through legal entities (associations or foundations), and rent spaces financed through a club-like membership model.

Intersectionality or intersectional feminism argue that feminism cannot be studied, understood, or practiced from a single, immediate, standpoint; understanding requires engagement with culture, class, sexuality, ethnicity, gender and other power structures which engender inequality.

Internet of Things is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity to enable objects to collect and exchange data. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things).

IP address - An IP address (meaning "Internet Protocol address") is a number assigned to each device that connects to the internet. This number has the same function of a physical address: it is needed so that the servers that host the website we want to visit or the service we use can know where to send us the data we are asking for and how to get there.

LGBTQI – A common abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersexed community. For a long time, we have seen the acronym LGBTQ. Some started reversing letters to put the emphasis elsewhere such as with GLBTQ or LGTBQ. More and more we see the "I" being added to "LGBTQI" to add Intersex people.

Liberating technologies can be defined as those that are designed mindfully, fairly produced and distributed, are rooted in free and open-source software principles, are not designed for ‘planned obsolescence’, and are built to be secure by design. In the same spirit—but ultimately determined by what users do—that the technologies, systems, and digital services we choose are not designed for or are resistant for use in gender-based violence and surveillance.

Malware is a general term for all malicious software, including viruses, spyware, trojans, and other such threats.

Mansplaining or splaining refers to a form of condescension in which a member of a privileged group explains something to a member of a marginalised group as if the privileged person knows more about it. For instance, a man explaining sexism to a woman, or a white person explaining racism to a black person.

Moniker is also known as a pen name or an avatar. It is a name that you use that is not your legal name.

Online identity is a set of data and features defining how every internet user presents themselves in online communities and web services. Sometimes it can be considered as an actively constructed presentation of oneself and compared to a digital version of a social mask.

Online reputation Reputation is the opinion others have of a person or, in internet, of an identity, that typically results from an evaluation based on a set of criteria shared within a group of people. This evaluation is particularly important in online communities, where it influences the level of trust each of us can have in others.

Passphrase is a sequence of words used to access a computer system, program or data. A passphrase is similar to a password in usage, but is generally longer for added security.

Patriarchy "is a form of mental, social, spiritual, economic and political organization of society produced by the gradual institutionalization of sex-based political relations created, maintained and reinforced by different institutions linked closely together to achieve consensus on the lesser value of women and their roles". By Alda Facio (http://learnwhr.org/wp-content/uploads/D-Facio-What-is-Patriarchy.pdf)

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that, unlike the centralized client-server model, partitions tasks or work loads between peers, thus creating a horizontal network of nodes.

Permaculture is a systems approach that include but are not limited to ecological design, ecological engineering, environmental design, construction and integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture)

Privileges refer to "advantages" people have in society. Privileges refers to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, functional diversity etc. in which a society by default privileges people with certain traits and characteristics. If you are a white cis-men in a western country for instance, changes are you will feel less street harassement than a women of color. People who have privileges in sociey are often not aware of those privileges and how they impact on our economic and social status in society. One cannot try to address issues of privileges without looking at sexism, patriarchy, ableism and racism.

Queer is an umbrella term which embraces a matrix of sexual preferences, orientations, and habits of the not-exclusively-heterosexual-and-monogamous majority. Queer includes lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans*, intersex persons, the radical sex communities, and many other sexually transgressive (underworld) explorers.

Safe space share common values, whether explicit, through a community agreement, or implicit through the sharing of values and enable members of a group to flourish, empower themselves and create community.

Self identification is something everyone could do, not just woman or trans, regardless of the biological status. In practice includes trans women as well as people who are born biologically female.

SD card or Secure Digital card is a solid-state storage card where we can save our files just as in other storage devices like USB sticks or hard disks.

Social engineering is the study of human behaviour aimed at identifying and exploiting cognitive biases (or "bugs in the human hardware") in order to attack or manipulate someone, as well as to obtain useful information from them.

Social networking platforms or social media, are online tools that offer several functions to network among users by creating, sharing and exchanging contents (text, images, videos, etc.). They can be commercial (in which case they tend to profile their users for advertising purposes), or autonomous and community-driven.

Social networks are social structures formed by relationships between individuals, groups, organizations, or even entire societies. Each of us belongs to several social networks that compose different social domains and may or may not be interconnected with one another (for instance social domains composed by your social networks with your family, friends, activists or friends colleagues, etc).

Spyware is software that aims to gather information about a person or organization without their knowledge and that may send such information to another entity without the consumer's consent, or that asserts control over a computer without the consumer's knowledge. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware)

STEM is an acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Swarming consists in creating communities of support with your allies in social media spaces where you are likely to encounter harassment. When someone is being targeted, others can quickly be alerted and bombard the harasser with messages. Another option is to have the swarm filling the victim's content stream with lots of new content in order to quickly make the negative, violent content disappear into online history.

TLS/SSL meaning "Transport Layer Security" and its predecessor SSL meaning "Secure Sockets Layer", are cryptographic protocols ensuring that our data cannot be visible as they travel from our computer to the website we are visiting or to the service we are using and vice versa. When we access a website whose url is preceded by HTTPS rather than by HTTP, we are using the TLS/SSL protocol.

Trans* (see also, cis) is a prefix used by those who do not self-identify as a cis gendered person, which means that the gender (or lack of it) that they identify with, doesn't align with the gender they were assigned at birth. The asterisk indicates that trans* is an umbrella term, and implies all the diverse possibilities of gender identities and non-identities (for example, some might be boi, trans woman, gender-fluid, transvestite, genderqueer, two-spirit).

Transgender is a person who lives as a member of a gender other than that expected based on anatomical sex. Sexual orientation varies and is not dependent on gender identity.

Transwoman is an identity label sometimes adopted by male-to-female transsexuals to signify that they are women while still affirming their history as males.

Trolls originally referred to a monster of folk stories and became in the early days of the internet a term to describe users who intentionally sowed discord on IRC and chat forums, often targeting and singling out new users. Today, the word is used more broadly to describe people who target and harass others online.

Web of trust is a set of social norms, protocols and cryptography technologies that enable to build trust on the online world. The web of trust is based on authentication and validation mechanisms to ensure that people, software, online platforms and services are really who they claim to be.


Establishing a baseline of privacy and security knowledge

If you feel like there are some holes in your digital security and privacy knowledge, this is a good place to start. Below you will find a set of collected recommendations from the contributors of the manual.

1. Read up and educate yourself about your country's internet laws and policies. Some security technologies such as encryption are illegal in some countries, for example.

2. Inform yourself about your country's laws and policies in relation to freedom of expression, right to privacy and against online and offline harassment. Those laws do not exist in all countries, and when they exist they are not framed and applied in the same way.


Freedom of expression by francesholly.jpg


You can learn and read more for instance about related rights in relation to blackmail, cyberstalking and hate speech here:

3. Keep your computer and devices clean and healthy: Updating your software, running a firewall, and protecting yourself from virus infection are fundamental to the security of your data (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/malware). You should also contemplate to have a full disk encryption as basic step of security for your devices. Most devices (computers and mobiles) offer full disk encryption and this requires only a bit of understanding and skills. For instance, MS Windows offers bitlocker encryption starting from Windows 7 Ultimate onwards. File Vault is part of Mac OS X and phone encryption is available on most Android devices starting from version 3.0 (Honeycomb).

4. Map your data: What kind of data do you produce and/or manage? With whom? Where is this data stored? Which devices or online platforms hold your data? Most importantly, how sensitive is your data and what would happen if this particular data suddenly disappeared or was seen and copied by a third party? Take also into account that storing information on devices and services that you don't have full control always is a security risk. This does not mean though that we should shy away from 3rd party services that can store your data, this is more a cautionary awareness of being mindful of what types of information and data you store on these services.

5. Secure your data: Especially where our data is stored online, it is crucial to choose strong passwords, or better passphrases, and to use a different one for each of our accounts. For more information on the importance of strong passwords, how to create them and how to store them, read Security in a Box's (SIAB) chapter on passwords (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/passwords) and the EFF's howto (https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/creating-strong-passwords). If you are storing information on your computer and other devices, you can use encryption to prevent others from accessing your files. For more information on what tools you can use to do this, see the SIAB chapter on secure file storage (https://www.securityinabox.org/en/guide/secure-file-storage).

6. Connect safely to the internet: When going online, especially if you are transmitting personal data and passwords, it is crucial to always use an encrypted connection which ensures that your data cannot be seen by anyone as it travels from your computer to the website you are visiting or to the service you are using. To make sure that you always connect securely to websites when an encrypted connectionis available , you can install HTTPS Everywhere, a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation: (https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere )

7. Anonymise your connections: There are sometimes good reasons to hide your physical location and your internet activities. Tor browser anonymises your connections when you're browsing the internet, by hiding the sites you are visiting from your internet service provider, and hiding your location from the sites you visit. Be aware though that use of Tor can raise a red flag, so it might not always be the best option for you. For more information and instructions for Windows users, visit: (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/anonymity-and-circumvention). For instructions for Mac OSX users, visit: (https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/how-use-tor-mac-os-x)

8. Secure your communications: while some advice is covered in this manual, you might want to consider tools you can use and ways you can change your behaviour to increase your security when using mobile phones (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/mobile-phones) and smart phones (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/smartphones) as well as options for email and instant messaging (https://securityinabox.org/en/guide/secure-communication). We recommend you strongly to take some time for reading the complete manual Security in a Box from Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line Defenders which is available in 15 languages (https://securityinabox.org/en). You can complement it with another manual designed by the Safehub collective called A DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity for taking control of your digital spaces (https://tech.safehubcollective.org/cybersecurity/).

9. This manual provides links to online services or sites containing resources that provide further awareness and understanding of security topics. These can also be about tactics, actions, campaigns which have been implemented or are currently being implemented. These links can be from our network partners doing the actual work and thus can be trusted. While other links may come from third parties or news sites and you may want to verify these further. Site owners vary in relation to their security context and the tools that they use. Most of these resources are accessible via the web browsers and are of course subject to browser insecurities and threats. Some of these online services can require you to provide information, please be mindful when providing it. To note that some links might not provide https access, and some might provide it and still encounter https errors displaying messages of "untrusted website". Those messages might be related to sites which have not been able to pay or renew their SSL certificates. Last not least, some links can also connect to third party websites that may be tracking metadata information.

10. Practice self-care: Nothing is secure if we only think about technology and we neglect our wellbeing. If you are exhausted, stressed or burnt out, you might make mistakes that impair your security. Our approach to security should be empowering and not a burden; having security awareness and skills makes us more effective and zen in the work and activities that we do. Tactical Tech has developed an approach to security that looks at ensuring the agency, safety and well-being of human rights defenders from a more holistic perspective; one which includes the physical, psycho-social and digital aspects of security. Read more about this here: (https://tacticaltech.org/projects/holistic-security ) . Also read this essay on The Psychological Underpinnings of Security Training (https://www.level-up.cc/resources-for-trainers/holistic/psychological-underpinnings-security-training).


Credits

Zen and the art of making your tech work for you was developed by the Tactical Technology Collective in collaboration with:

Coordination

Alex Hache

Writing

Faith Bosworth, Paula Graham, Alex Hache, valentina hvale pellizzer, Fieke Jansen, Floriana Pagano, Sophie Toupin, Núria Vergés, Jillian C. York, Marthe Van Dessel, Carol Waters

Editing

Faith Bosworth, Alex Hache, Helen Kilbey, Sophie Toupin, Floriana Pagano, Carol Waters

Reviewers

Dhyta Caturani, Nighat Dad, Daysi Flores, Stephanie Hankey, Maya Indira Ganesh, Fieke Jansen, Sandra Ljubinkovic, Fernanda Shirakawa, Jennifer Radloff, Yvonne Reyes, Jac sm Kee

Design

Ariel Acevedo

Production Manager

Lucinda Linehan

Special Thanks to

Andrea Figari, Ling Luther, Vanessa Rizk, the participants to the network of the Gender and Technology Institute, the inhabitants of Calafou and Beka Iglesias

Funding

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This manual was developped thanks to the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency funding support. To note that Sida can not be regarded as having contributed to or vouching for the content.

License

Zen and the art of making tech work for you by Tactical Technology Collective is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Welcome to the beta version of the manual “Zen and the art of making tech work for you”. Between September and December 2015 we want to understand better which are the readers needs in relation to privacy and security. We would also like to gather other interesting tools, processes, readings and cases studies that could be added in the final version of the manual. If you want to comment, suggest, interact please visit and fill on our feed back form [2]
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