Business platforms that enable your full sovereignty & data security

Posted on 18th December 2020 by Elaira

BUILDING BUSINESS WITH FULL SOVEREIGNTY AND INTEGRITY. LEAVING ALL THE PLACES I SHOULDN’T BE…

Running a business with full personal freedom and integrity is what I stand for, which I care about hugely. I believe that’s what our new “business paradigm” fundamentally is all about.

My allergy to manipulation and brainwash reached all times high. I can’t tolerate even slightly what I sense or experience comes with the energy of harm, abuse, manipulation, deceit, destroys nature, tries to control, limits my freedom, don’t hear me or my needs, don’t honor my boundaries, and wants to take my power without my consent.

I believe it is just a matter of time, till privacy-intrusive services exploiting and manipulating our data disappear from the market.

So, I did a huge “INTEGRITY AUDIT” of all the platforms, providers, partners, and tools I built my business with for a while now. I try to examine each new provider as much as I can. I look for what they stand for, their “why”, their values, their management, and team, their customer service, etc. In the end, it is a close relationship I go into here. Some services I use almost daily. I can’t stress enough what a huge impact energetically it had on me after leaving some of them.

Deeper I was digging, more shocking realizations came to me: “how deeply ingrained and normalized harm, manipulation, and abuse are in our society, structures, and everyday life…”. I kept thinking to myself: “How can we be OK with it? Why do we continue to allow it?”

As a result, I moved almost to all new platforms and some are still in the exploration stage. I would recommend starting with analyzing which platforms and data you want to have secure and where privacy is absolutely key for you. In case, you want to explore that for yourself too, here are some suggestions of my research:

• Email: Tutanota, Protonmail, Mailfence, Mailbox.org, Posteo (and even more on the additional links at the end of the blog).
• Calendar: Lightning calendar, Fruux. For those who want to combine e-mail with a calendar, providers that offer that: Tutanota, Posteo, Mailbox, Collab now, Mailfence.
• Secure and private internet browser: Brave, Firefox, Tor, Vivaldi,
• The Internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers’ privacy: Duckduckgo, Searx, Quant, Ecosia, Startpage.com (provides Google search results with complete privacy protection).
• Data storage: Dropbox, Tresorit, Nextcloud, Owncloud.
• End-to-end encrypted messenger for conversations: Signal, Element, Briar, Jami, Telegram.
• Some alternative social media platforms to explore: Mastodon, Pleroma (alternative to Twitter), MeWe & Friendica (alternative to Facebook), Pixelfed (Instagram alternative), gab.com, thinkspot, minds.com, lbry.com, diaspora.
• Free speech video platforms: BitChute (alternative to youtube), Brighton (sponsored by Natural News), PeerTube, Vimeo.
• Security. Password manager (way to store, manage and generate strong passwords for all your platforms): Dashlane, Bitwarden, KeePassXC, LessPass.
• Extra security. Make sure you secure all or at least your key platforms and data with an extra level of security: 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) — Authy, or hardware authentication device (UFA) — Yubikees. The warning here, make sure you install 2FA on several devices and buy at least two UFA keys because if you lose one, no customer service could help you restore it. You have complete and ultimate ownership of it. So, have your extra “backdoor key ready”.
• Online security and privacy, use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). Here is probably the most extensive comparison list. It will secure your connection to the internet and give you more unrestricted & anonymous use of the web. In other words, it helps protect your online activities: sending emails, shopping online, or paying bills. Use is, especially when you are in public places.
• And last but not least, get your camera phone covers for all devices. Just search “camera phone cover” and you will find suggestions with sliding stickers costing just a few euros.

These are the great basic starting points in my opinion and if you prefer to go even further, here are a couple of great articles for that:

• If you want to take this topic further, this is a superb article for that!
• The complete list of alternatives to all Google products.

I will keep updating this page with new information I discover.

What are your favorite non-harming platforms and providers who act with integrity and security? Let’s help each other.