Why You Should Self-Host Services, and How to Actually Do It

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0800

Self-hosting (self-hosted), also called “self-managed hosting” or “self-deployment”, is a computer science term meaning running network services on a private server to replace network services provided by large companies.

Refer to Wikipedia’s definition of Self-hosting:

Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website or service using a private web server, instead of using a service outside of someone’s own control. Self-hosting allows users to have more control over their data, privacy, and computing infrastructure, as well as potentially saving costs and improving skills.

For example, purchasing a server, placing it at home, installing Nextcloud, and replacing Google Drive, with all data controlled in your own hands, is a kind of self-hosting.

Self-hosting does not only mean setting up websites or file servers, but setting up a series of private web services. For almost every commercial network service you can think of, someone has made a self-hostable alternative.

This article discusses the reasons for self-hosting and concrete methods.

Reasons for Self-Hosting
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In the current internet era, people find a company that provides a specific network service, use and rely on its service, and place personal data on it.

Common network services include: photo albums, calendars, cloud drives, blogs, content management systems, e-books, video and audio streaming, password vaults, note software, game streaming services, search engines, VPNs… and so on.

However, many companies use free of charge as an appeal. In pursuit of profit, what they often sell is user privacy, such as collecting user data to serve ads. It can be considered an equivalent exchange. And for commercial competition, they also use various methods to retain users, making users hand over their important data while increasing the cost of getting off the pirate ship, so they can never leave.

Under the above premise, if personal data is regarded as the crystallization of a person’s effort, then it is the most precious asset. And this asset should not be bound. If users have spare energy and care about autonomy over their data and privacy, and do not want to sacrifice personal rights and interests by letting data be firmly controlled by large companies, the only method is self-hosting.

Self-hosting is not merely setting up websites, but setting up a series of private web services.

Owning your own server and running the network services you want on it, accessing them anytime and anywhere, means the data is completely in your hands and will not be controlled by any enterprise.

If you still need to use commercial cloud drives, just treat them as cold storage backup locations! Encrypt and lock files before throwing them up there.

For the hardware system part, self-hosted services usually run on Linux systems, which are open source, free of charge, and user-autonomous free systems.

As for the web services to run, the internet has many alternatives for equivalent commercial services, many of which are open source software. Users can easily find self-hosted alternatives and run them on their own servers. If problems arise, as long as one is familiar with using online forums, one can quickly obtain answers, and even help contribute features.

Five Ways to Protect Privacy Online and Defend Freedom and Digital Citizenship

infoivonblog.nkfjt@aleeas.com (Ivon Huang) — Mon, 29 May 2023 18:00:00 +0800

In today’s internet environment, if you want to protect digital privacy, preparing countermeasures for the worst-case scenario is unavoidable.

Image from Wikipedia

This article shares five tricks I learned for protecting online privacy while also protecting user freedom. They are provided for reference from simple to easy; some were learned from anti-CCP netizens.

In the context of this article, the order of value importance is: privacy > freedom > open source > practicality > convenience. Therefore, sometimes I will recommend online privacy services that are neither free nor open source, but this does not mean I do not value internet users’ freedom rights.

1. Do Not Casually Use Your Real Email
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When registering accounts, use forwarding to protect your real email address, eliminate harassment, and protect privacy. Apple icloud, Mozilla Firefox Relay, and SimpleLogin can do this. With a third-party forwarding mechanism, use the email provided by these service providers during registration, then forward it to yourself to prevent leaking your real email address.

Do not easily hand over your real phone number. If possible, use virtual numbers such as TextNow for registration more often. Paying is fine too.

Pay attention to whether the personal profile page after account registration displays phone and email information, exposing everything to others.

Use strong passwords when registering on websites (Firefox supports random password generation), and make good use of encrypted password manager software to manage passwords.

Do not give every website account the same name. (Hehe, although I used to use the same one everywhere, now I do not dare.) Do not put numbers such as QQ numbers/phone numbers in your account name. I heard that in China this makes it easy to be doxxed by nasty people through “box-opening” or human flesh search.

Using your real name and photos on Facebook and Twitter is also very dangerous. If possible, I recommend changing your name today, or decisively deleting social media accounts to cut off all paths that leak personal identity.

2. Remove EXIF When Uploading Photos and Videos
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EXIF is a file format that records photo data. It is embedded inside photo files, and some video files may also have this kind of metadata. EXIF states what camera and aperture were used to take the photo. If GPS is enabled when taking photos with a phone, EXIF will also write in the coordinates where you took the photo.

After taking and uploading a photo, image hosting platforms such as Imgur and Postimg.cc may not remove the photo’s EXIF information for you, which can leak geographic location. Therefore, removing EXIF before uploading is an important step.

On Android phones, download Simple Gallery, which has a feature for removing EXIF from photos.

On computers, you can use EXIF Tool to batch remove EXIF information from photos and videos.

Hey, hey, do not be stupid enough to look for websites online that claim they can remove EXIF and then foolishly upload your photos for them to process! When Casually Using Online Conversion Services, Have You Considered Privacy Issues?

Privacy on Ivon's Blog

Why You Should Self-Host Services, and How to Actually Do It

Reasons for Self-Hosting #

Five Ways to Protect Privacy Online and Defend Freedom and Digital Citizenship

1. Do Not Casually Use Your Real Email #

2. Remove EXIF When Uploading Photos and Videos #

Reasons for Self-Hosting
#

1. Do Not Casually Use Your Real Email
#

2. Remove EXIF When Uploading Photos and Videos
#