Shivam Shankar Singh Profile picture
Sep 26, 2020 11 tweets 2 min read Read on X
I’ve been following some data security hygiene since 2012 and some might have thought it was paranoid, but suddenly everyone thinks it’s really smart... so sharing it for your information:

1. If you don’t want your internet search known, incognito mode isn’t enough...
Good VPN + incognito of a separate browser is an okay practice.

DuckDuckGo + TOR is the best!

2. Online backups aren’t really secure unfortunately. iCloud, Google Drive have all been compromised in the past. Encrypted local storage (external HD/SSD) still wins in my book.
3. Keep 2 Factor Authentication on for everything! External token is ideal. Authenticator apps are good. SMS OTP is good enough.

4. Nostalgia is great, but don’t keep content. I stopped hoarding chat backups and documents long ago. If you stop using a device, wipe it.
5. Signal’s great. WhatsApp is good too. Issue is chat backups or local device. Securely wipe your phone and it truly is gone!

6. Nothing’s deleted till the sectors are written over. If you delete a file, do it with something that writes on top of it. Better yet...
7. To keep stuff truly secure, keep it all in Veracrypt (formerly TrueCrypt). You delete it in there, it isn’t coming back.

8. The person you talk to / chat with is likely doing none of this, so when their device is compromised your cyber hygiene is essentially meaningless.
9. It’s luck too. Your habits protect your data, but in the end it comes down to who’s after you and how each of your luck is operating.

There will always be points of weakness, but very likely if you do this much your adversary won’t be able to find that weak spot.
10. You can go all crazy with bootable USB sticks with Linux distros but then you might have bigger problems than simple data security. This thread likely isn’t what you need.
Realise that it isn’t about hiding illegal things. What started as a murder conspiracy is now about drugs. If that had failed it’d be about relationship gossip.

How your cyber trail will be used to discredit and destroy you isn’t yet known...
It depends on the story that sounds good at the time. Why you’d have someone who wants to do this?

Most likely you won’t. But then someone might be after your uncle’s best friend’s cousin in law, and they might reach you regardless.
You can be 100% legally in the clear but is living through a national TV embarrassment and an image destruction campaign worth it?

Take 5 mins, secure yourself. And especially secure yourself if we’ve ever talked! :p
Also do check out the Blacklight Project! You’d be surprised what websites track you, and to what extent.

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More from @ShivamShankarS

Mar 18
There has been only one justification of Electoral Bonds - that otherwise money was moving in cash. It's surprising how little people understand about political money flows!

Political funding is not even 20% in EBs. It's still mostly all black! Then why bring EBs? A 🧵...
Cost of elections and even running a political party's organization is MUCH higher that the amount in EBs. Covered this in my first book.

So the businesses that generate a huge amount of black money are still giving black money to parties! That's still most of political funding.
But there was a problem. Some businesses just don't generate a lot of black money by their very nature.

Like if you get big govt contracts, it'll come from govt's accounts, obviously. There's no way a large business can just withdraw cash. They need to maintain accounts!
Read 6 tweets
Feb 18
Think EVM - VVPAT hacking is a conspiracy theory? Found out one part of it is 100% true.

Earlier VVPAT screens used to be transparent, they changed it to translucent, and now it's completely opaque. You can't see the slips being printed or cut now. Just light on and light off.
Video above is how it used to be - you could clearly see slip being printed and cut. Then they changed it to where light only turned on after slip printing, and turned off before slip cutting. You could still see the process from the right angle though...
In the latest version, nothing. You can't see the printing or the cutting. You only see the slip when light is turned on, and then light turns off... it's totally an opaque window now.

Why is this relevant?
Read 10 tweets
Aug 31, 2023
#AdaniExposed Few weeks ago, Deloitte resigned as auditors to Adani. They stated Adani wasn't willing to provide details of suspicious transactions.

The new auditor reported on in the media, BDO Global, isn't even an audit firm! It's a network of independent auditors... 🧵 Image
The actual auditor is a tiny little Bangalore firm called MSKA & Associates, with a 2.3 star rating on Google with 9 reviews. From Deloitte to this? Why?

Today we found out! Image
In an investigation by @OCCRP, further reported on by the @guardian and @FT, it's been shown how two associates of the Adani group used offshore shell companies to manipulate and boost up Adani's share price.
Image
Image
Read 14 tweets
Jul 22, 2023
Manipur won't recover for decades, but it's worse than that. The insurgency across India's Northeast, mostly ended after decades of work by the govt and local leaders in the 2000s.

Now, with its actions, the govt has told many communities it'll not only not protect them...
It can become an active participant in helping spread a genocide.

All the leaders from Modi to N. Biren Singh and all of BJPs office bearers... no one has even mentioned making things normal in Manipur. They instead talk of West Bengal, do whataboutery and suppress information.
This isn't just a breakdown of law and order. This is a state actively telling people it'll not intervene to restore normalcy. It'll not even say that it is intervening.

It's showing BJP will compare any evidence of Manipur descending into chaos with other states...
Read 5 tweets
May 29, 2023
Talked to BJP folks to understand how they're justifying getting the police to beat up athletes who are protesting against sexual harassment.

The story spun is now surprisingly more complicated.

Initially it was just, politically motivated protest to defame India. As usual.
The athletes now seem to have public sympathy though, as per their assessment. So the defaming needs to be more robust. With a backstory that explains it all away as a conspiracy.

New message is that this all started because Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh is from UP...
All these Haryanvi wrestlers want a Haryanvi to head the association, and the fight is about internal control of the wrestling federation - earlier controlled by Congress' Deepender Hooda.

Hooda was corrupt and mismanaged federation money. Now these corrupt people can't make $.
Read 5 tweets
May 28, 2023
A very interesting phenomenon I've been trying to explain to people for a while...

The poor and uneducated aren't the ones who fall for and support Hindu-Muslim, Sengol, Vishwaguru because took foreign trips narratives.

It's the middle class and rich!
This bears out in surveys and election results, and even conversations time and again!

The poor 60% of India will vote on welfare, law and order. It's a clear calculation of who is more beneficial to my interests. Then the narratives are secondary.
It's the better off who sway purely on how their ego is manipulated.

Sway it with inferiority complex and how they were suppressed, then show revivalism of their glorious past. Give them an ego boost on how they are better than other humans.
Read 5 tweets

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