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Why I am deleting my Facebook account

March 30, 2018 by Simon

Below are the reasons why I am deleting my Facebook account.

I enjoyed sending photos to Facebook (for family and friends to see) along with reading random information from random people in my timeline. This is not making me smarter (quite the opposite).

I know “echo chambers” on the Internet are making people dumber, I too am sick of blocking racist people online, am I part of the problem with modern society? What is worse using personal data to control people or knowing you can control people with personal data.?

FaceBook was free and I was the product, there is no need to lie to users.

Facebook: “This is their information. They own it”
BBC: “And you won’t sell it?”
FB: “No! Of course not.”

Please help this 2009 interview of Facebook’s CEO get seen by people who don’t use Twitter. Here’s a download link so you can pull and repost it: https://t.co/c32DmpVIig pic.twitter.com/quERsO5WZi

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 27, 2018

I am deleting Facebook because

I want to keep my families life private
I don’t want all sides of government to take me for granted (and manipulate me with my own data)
I don’t run a business and don’t need Facebook.
Facebook is dying (it might bounce back but only by greedy investors looking for a quick buck).

“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

— Tony Windsor (@TonyHWindsor) February 14, 2018

Mark Zuckerberg’s hesitation to accept the problem is worrying (Elon Musk showed more leadership).
Deleting my account may send a message to other tech companies to act (Google, Microsoft and Apple take note).
I want to regain time (the number of parents staring at Facebook while kids are trying to get their attention is scary).
FaceBook’s insecure data practices are making it too easy to destroy democracy.
Etc.

Related News Items

Facebook ‘ugly truth’ growth memo haunts firm

Cambridge Analytica: The data firm’s global influence

Cambridge Analytica files spell out election tactics

The FTC confirms it’s investigating Facebook over its privacy practices

Cambridge Analytica, which uses ‘psychographic’ methods to persuade voters, is looking to open Australia office

Cambridge Analytica helped ‘cheat’ Brexit vote and US election claims whistleblower

Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media – With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage – The rightwing US computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network (“This article is the subject of a legal complaint on behalf of Cambridge Analytica LLC and SCL Elections Limited.”)

The shadowy firm behind the Trump campaign coming to an election near you – “And in 2017, it wooed Australia’s Liberal Party, selling its brand of detailed voter profiling that can help political parties drill down into constituents’ lives and likes to win elections.”

Cambridge Analytica’s pitching tactics caught on video – Cambridge Analytica used data to build lists of peoples likes/hates/biases to help influence elections by showing said users things that may influence combined with other illegal activities like covertly sending in “pretty ladies” to politicians houses to then bribe the is disgusting.

Statement from the Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica

A former Facebook staffer, Obama campaign boss reveal concerns about Facebook data

It is nice to see the Australian government are debating privacy laws following this – “We believe that political bodies should not have an exemption under the Privacy Act” and “Australians have a right to privacy. This right applies online and offline. They have a right to know why their personal information is being collected, how it will be used and who it will be disclosed to. They have a right to ask to access it for their personal information, and they have the right to make a complaint about an entity covered by the Privacy Act if they believe their personal information—and this is critical—has been mishandled.”

Great leadership by Senator Jordon Steele-John

How to Download your personal data from Facebook

Enter Your Facebook Password

Extract the Zip file contents and view the index.html file to view your Facebook collected contents.

What did my Facebook Data contain?

All of my contact information
Every advertisement I have ever clicked on
Advertisers that have my contact list
Keywords that are assigned to me to help drive advertisements.
What events and venues I have visited.
All of my conversations with friends
All past IP addresses and sessions with FaceBook along with the device details (geographic data can be reversed from this)
etc

How to delete Facebook

Click here to find out.

Future

I am still the same person (but not on Facebook)

“Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it“. – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Done

I have deactivated my Facebook account

Confirm

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Revision History

v1.4 Added “You Will Wish You Watched This Before You Started Using Social Media”

v1.3 Deleted

v1.2 Added ink

v1.1 Added more links

v1.0 Initial post

Add email alias to an existing GSuite email account

January 14, 2018 by Simon

This short post will show you how (and why) you should add email aliases to email accounts for previously added domains.

Here are my two posts related to setting up a new suite account and adding a second domain to an existing GSuite account. I used to have my own C Panel domain but moved all servers to self-managed servers first on Digital Ocean then AWS then Vultr. Vultr is now my preferred hosts as they are affordable and have server locations in Australia.

Click Users

I tried to add an email alias to existing 2x domains in Google Suite (the help did not align with the screens I was seeing in my admin consoles), there was no email alias section)??

Official Google Help: https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6304345?hl=en-AU

Snip:

Every user in a G Suite account has a

primary address

 for signing in to their account and receiving mail. If a user wants another email address, you can create an

email alias

 for them.

Why use an alias?

 If [email protected] wants a sales address to post to the company website, you can create the alias

[email protected]

. Mail sent to either address then appears in Ann's Gmail inbox.

You can add up to 30 email aliases for each user. Users continue to sign in to their G Suite account with their primary address, not an email alias.

I fired up the G Suite support

I wanted to add the following email aliases of “security@..”, “admin@..” and “root@..” to an existing email on 2 domains to support security disclosures (post soon (nope Troy Hunt beat me, read his post on security disclosure here)).

While I was waiting for the support chat I figured out the email alias thing, it turned out I needed to click the “Account” header on the user screen (I did not realise “account word was clickable).

Solution: How to add Aliases

You need to click the account heading (It’s a link apparently).

When the Ajax content loads you can scroll down to alias section.

Tip: There is no “Apply” or “OK” button when adding aliases so just press enter.

Now if you want to be able to send as the new alias you need to add the aliases in Gmail.

Now you can send via this email alias in GMail or via CLI via the primary account 🙂

sendemail -f [email protected] -t [email protected] -u "Test email via alias" -s smtp.gmail.com:587 -o tls=yes -xu [email protected] -xp YourPa$w0rdH3r3 -m "Test email via alias"

Read my blog post on sending email from the command line via G Suite.

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Revision History
v1.1 Added Troy Hunt “Data Breach Disclosures” link

v1.0 Working Copy.

Hope this helps someone.

Adding a second domain to an existing GSuite account and creating an email address

December 14, 2017 by Simon

Below is my post (personal view, not paid view) on how to add a second domain to an existing gsuite account and creating an email address and sending emails from a client tor CLI.

Jan 2018 Update

Post on adding email aliases to G Suite

Main

Read my post here if you have never created or managed a GSuite account to take control of mail for a domain. This guide will build on this previous guide and show you how to add a second domain to an existing GSuite account. Read this guide if you need a Namecheap domain and or an Ubuntu VM to host a website. I really like deploying WordPress via Command Line (CLI), read my guide here.

Buy a domain name from Namecheap here.

Before you get started login to your G Suite account and ensure your first domain is set up and working. If you don’t have a GSuite account click here to set one up (first 14 days are free).

Also, I highly recommend the G Suite support, this has to be the best and most experienced support I have used of any company (my views only).

In the Google G Suite admin bar type “add domain” and select “Add new Domain” (not “Add new Domain Alias”).

Select “Add another domain” and click “CONTINUE AND VERIFY DOMAIN OWNERSHIP”

Now copy the domain verify code (I use Namecheap for my domains so you may see different advice)

I logged into Namecheap and added the TXT record to my domain.

While I was here I added G Suite MX records.

I went back to GSuite and clicked Verify

I could now add an email user to the second domain I just added to G Suite. 🙂

I set a strong password so I won’t force the reset of a password at next login. I plan on using the email account for manual and semi-automated alerts in code (read my guide here on how to send GSuite/gmails via code).

Once the user is created you can send them a welcome email.

Sample welcome email.

The email is now ready to use. I can send and revive email using this account with an email client.

I can even send emails via the command line (read how here)

cat testemail.sh
#!/bin/bash

echo "Sending Email";
sendemail -f [email protected] -t [email protected] -u "Subject" -s smtp.gmail.com:587 -o tls=yes -xu [email protected] -xp 'passwordhere' -m 'Message Body Here'

Send via running

sudo bash testemail.sh

Output

Sending Email
Dec 13 23:16:15 thedomain sendemail[8397]: Email was sent successfully!

More

Post on adding email aliases to G Suite

Hope this helps someone.

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Revision History

1.3 added more links.

v1.2 Fixed.

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Why I am deleting my Facebook account

Add email alias to an existing GSuite email account

Adding a second domain to an existing GSuite account and creating an email address

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