Can you have Internet access while still be off grid? It seems, and is in fact, self-contradictory. The Internet is by definition of network of connected server and client computers. That requires being, in some fashion or another, on that “grid” and to be connected to it.

Yet for someone working on getting off grid, it seems possible to mitigate some of the privacy challenges of connectedness to make it more “like” being off grid for the user. That is what this section of GettingOffGrid.org will explore.

How can we be connected to the apps, companies, and information providers we want to have access to, while also protecting ourselves from indiscriminate spying on our life?

To be clear, someone who appreciates privacy from the spying eyes of silicon valley, perhaps, isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, illegal, or unethical that they are trying to hide. A common thought about Internet privacy is that the only people wanting it are doing things that are culturally or legally questionable. That is simply not true.

You are the product

The key to understanding my off grid desires is the reality that Silicon Valley consider you and I to be the product they are selling. For example, my wife and I were taking our daughter to Spanish lessons a few years ago. On the drive, I was practicing with her using some flash cards, asking her what various words mean, or how to say various things in Spanish.

We dropped her off to her lessons, and on our drive home, I looked at my phone and had an ad for McDonalds pop up–in Spanish. Silicon valley was listening to my Spanish practice with my daughter, and clearly sold me to a McDonalds ad campaign as a Spanish-speaking potential customer.

They got it wrong, since we don’t read or speak Spanish fluently. Getting better, but still not great at it. But the most troublesome thing was knowing that:

1. Our phones are at least listening, and perhaps watching us (I highly recommend watching the movie Snowden about this).
2. Our words, GPS locations, and patterns of life, or being sold to advertisers or worse.
3. If one or more tech companies can do this, how many hackers can hack into that data for nefarious purposes?

What this means for me is that I’ve become very aware of how technology violates privacy. Part of getting off grid but still using the Internet is becoming more savvy about using apps, devices, and companies that protect our data. This means not only telling us they won’t sell it to anyone, but ideally that they’re not collecting it at all.

If our data doesn’t exist on someone’s server, it can’t be hacked by nefarious individuals or companies.