Digital privacy has been a personal focus of mine since the 2018 Facebook user data scandals shined a bright light on a festering problem. I am appalled at the number of data breaches but also the quantity of and general use of my personal information by many companies. Since then, I have taken the following steps to curb the amount of my personal data being collected: Deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts Stopped using Google Hangouts and Google Voice for any communications Shifted email away from Gmail as my primary provider Signed up for a new personal email account at ProtonMail, a privacy-minded email provider Signed up for a new generic email account at Fastmail to use for all non-personal exchanges Use NordVPN on my mobile whenever I’m on WiFi Use Firefox Focus as my primary web browser on my mobile Installed uBlock Origin on my desktop Firefox browser Converted search engine use to StartPage and DuckDuckGo Installed two additional map providers on my mobile (maps.

After taking a break from blogging for a few years, I’ve decided to reboot theryanburke.com. I’ve departed Google’s Blogger platform and now I’m running my own blog with Hugo deployed on AWS. What’s new with me? I’ve been working for AWS for four and a half years. I moved from Denver to Seattle and back. I got married. Bought a house. Adopted a cat. Life is good. With the reboot of the blog, my intent is to move away from slice of life content and use this space more as a journal for projects, initiatives, and ideas.