Tag: Social Media

Sleeping With ASMR

I was watching in amazement this week as a colleague edited together a video for use on Instagram using only his phone. I was recognising why the age of the blog has truly sailed. Although it was obvious that the video editing took skill, and it took time, the output was so easy to consume. I could recognise, instantly, why thousands of followers migrate towards channels which produce video content.

It is quite easy to understand why people who, at one time,

 would have read a manual or would have looked at a diagram, are now watching a YouTube video to try and get the same information. However, I cannot see myself producing YouTube material reviewing material which is also on YouTube.

Luddite I maybe, but I am not yet ready to give up on the idea that there is value in writing things down. Even if by so doing I am missing out on the more skilful operation of my mobile phone.

I hope, if you are reading this, you agree.

I have not changed the format of these posts for a while now (perhaps it is overdue for a change). This week, again, I recommend something from Calm for no better reason than I have a subscription to Calm and I listen with reasonable frequency.

(You should be aware that relatively limited free material exists on Calm and the following isn’t part of that).

https://www.calm.com/app/player/ns0e03Lo4U

Daily Calm

Recreating the Past

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

The tendency to want to re-live perfect memories, attempts to recreate the experience never quite measure up. Comparison of the new experience with the previous one tends to make it less enjoyable. Resisting the urge to compare can improve the involvement in the present by leaving the past behind.

For some time, I have been on the lookout for material outside of YouTube because I would rather like the ability to leave adverts far behind. In practice I have found the results a bit variable. In some ways paying up for a service to get an advert-free experience may be the better approach. But, assuming for whatever reason you do not wish to do that, I remembered that during lockdown I came across a track by Rhonda Magee who I recall had a good voice. However, of course, I could not remember where I had come across Rhonda.

It turns out that Rhonda has a website and that there is a part of the site dedicated to meditations. But sadly, this just redirects to YouTube: https://rhondavmagee.com/meditations/

However, I did find a podcast page with a recording which is quite open to a listen for free:

https://dharmapodcast.libsyn.com/dp-1953_rhonda-magee_metta-in-a-time-of-warmp3

There is a small amount of hiss on the track but I think there is enough material here to get an idea of the quality of the voice.

Recently when I have been reviewing professional YouTube ASMR artists, I have been going back into the past to re-listen to some tracks that I used to listen to years ago. At the time I was not sticking to a medical theme. The idea of reviewing ASMR videos had not even occurred, so the odd one has cropped up which is not even distantly medical. Today’s is like that:

ASMR Back Tracing w/ Scratch, Brushing, Buds & Oil Massage

So not even remotely medical then. Normal service will resume fairly soon.

It is from the channel WhispersRed ASMR. This has 1.12m subscribers, nine hundred and one videos, twenty nine playlists of which none at all seem to be on a medical theme. This could be the reason that WhispersRed has not appeared previously on this blog.

The video has notes (of course it does) and as usual (for a professional ASMR artist) these are extensive:

“10,592,056 views 3 Jun 2018 #whispersred #asmr

An ASMR Back treatment with nail tracing, a back scratch, brushing and oil massage.

Uploaded with love, Emma

Other back pampering videos –

   • Childhood ASMR Triggers – #1 Back Tracing … 

   • ASMR Back Pampering | Brushing, Oil, Massa… 

—————————————————————————————————————- 📚My ASMR Book – Unwind Your Mind: The Life-changing power of ASMR https://campsite.bio/whispersredasmr  Published by Ebury/PenguinRandomHouse in the UK and Harper One in the US and Canada.

🎧 ASMR albums are available to download or stream on all services worldwide Search – WhispersRed ASMR 🎧

Spotify – https://spoti.fi/2EugqJo

Google Play – https://bit.ly/2JwXP34

Itunes – https://apple.co/2qhg6Zb

Amazon Music – https://amzn.to/2Ev7R0E

——————————————————————————————————————————————

💎Crystals & ASMR Gifts – https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/WhispersRed

🌟 Merch –  https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/wh…

🌺Other items from this channel – https://bit.ly/2ICABXR

🎤Live ASMR events – https://whispersredasmr.com/events/

——————————————————————————————————————————————

🌟Please LIKE if you do and SUBSCRIBE if you’d like to! This makes sure that new videos show up in your feed. Click the bell if you would like notifications for new uploads🌟

💜My other Channels💜

❥ Vlog Channel –    / mypurplelife 

❥ Channel intended specifically for younger audience at adult carer discretion – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgL7…

🌟Connect🌟

Website – https://whispersredasmr.com

Facebook –   / whispersredasmr 

Twitter – @WhispersRedASMR

Instagram – whispersred_asmr

Email – emma@whispersredasmr.com

————————————————————————————————————————————–

🌹Contribute translations! – http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_p…

❥ To reach the UK & Ireland ASMR Community!

Facebook Group – ASMR UK & Ireland –   / asmruk 

———————————————————————————————————————————-

Disclaimer – This video is not intended to replace any medical care, therapy or counselling that might be needed. The benefits of ASMR in terms of a therapy is so far anecdotal and in the early stages of published research. This video is intended for a mature audience for the purposes of mindfulness, relaxation and entertainment.

Product links – These are usually affiliate links. Anything you purchase through them will help in the running of my YouTube channels. However, I only link items I bought myself and/or use regularly.

#asmr #whispersred”

So, we have now discovered that WhispersRed is called Emma. Later on (whilst watching the video) we find that her subject is called Stephanie. Comments are permitted, and there are literally thousands of these. One that stands out for me is one that asks for YouTube to ensure that ASMR videos are not accompanied by loud adverts. A drum which I have been banging for a considerable time now.

The video is in excess of forty three minutes which is long for one we have reviewed of late.

It starts in full-on whisper mode accompanied by that strange mouth clicking sound that ASMR artists love so much. It is not off-putting though.  At intervals it does get a little breathy for me.

There are of course noises not associated with the voice – nail clicking (these seem to go on a bit), hand rubbing, liquid noises, the sound of skin being brushed, squelching noises (I am not a great fan of these in ASMR videos, but I read comments that indicate some ASMR fans come to YouTube for just such content). This comes back to my theory that artists are hammering in every ASMR “trigger” that they have managed to think of in the hope of gathering more fans. I still feel that a video focusing on the gentle voice tone only would be more appealing but 1.12m subscribers seems to indicate that I am in a group of one…

The voice (as we might expect) is properly relaxing and I can hear why it was that I used to listen to this all those years ago. The pace is lovely, even slow in places; the volume is spot on. It is quite old-school now, in that there are not artificial breaks in the video to permit an (objectionably loud) advert to butt-in part way through. For me this makes the experience far more calming.

Around the half hour mark I did feel that I was ready to listen to something else, but then I was reviewing the video rather than trying to fall asleep to it. I’m sure if you’re reviewing it as a sleep aid you will find it is absolutely ideal.

Following the theme of recent blog posts, I will now turn to inadvertent ASMR (which has been the theme of this blog for some while now).

It probably should not be unexpected, but to me is still surprising, when people post medical videos some of the comments are from people who are really looking for a medical diagnosis. Perhaps this points to an area that people could home in on. A whole audience of people whose needs are not being satisfied and I doubt that they can be satisfied by those persons who are posting videos.

As you can probably tell from the above, we are back in the professional medical video category i.e. videos created with a purpose which is unrelated to ASMR. Historically some of these are quite good for ASMR purposes, some are barely adequate, and some are just awful.

But that is the reason this blog exists, to try and identify the odd diamond in all that refuse. Regular readers will have seen videos reviewed, videos trialled in the main Procrastination Pen playlist and videos retired into the Procrastination Pen archive list.

At the same time the video content is itself dynamic. We have seen videos, lauded by ASMR fans, removed on copyright grounds. Channels, apparently with thousands of fans, which disappear and some videos so popular that they disappear (often with their respective channel) only to appear again on another channel sometime later.

This blog will attempt to navigate these changes by maintaining a list of videos that can be played prior to sleep with the intention of allowing you to relax and minimising, as much as is feasible, jarring noises that might disturb that restful state.

Today’s video is listed in the order found, however, it is obvious from the title that it is the third in the series:

Neurology – Topic 3 – Sensory aspects of gait including Romberg’s test

This is a short video at less than four minutes. We seem to have arrived at the point in this review process where short videos have become the norm  but I never know what I will find next, so you may find an hour-long video in the next review.

In common with the majority of professional videos we have seen recently this one has some notes: “20 Dec 2012

Sensory aspects of gait including Romberg’s test”

Not the most comprehensive notes but notes, nonetheless.

The comments, as usual, are a bit variable; I have previously concluded that permitting comments with a video is a brave move indeed.

The video is from University College Dublin and, as we expect, they have a YouTube channel eight hundred and twenty eight videos as at the time of review which is rather too many to examine in one sitting. Habitually such channels are university promotional vehicles which is exactly what we would expect.

The presenter is flagged at the start as Professor Niall Tubridy, Consultant Neurologist

Sadly, the video has startup music. Startup music is the bane of any ASMR video research. In this case it is not as offensive as some. I have, in the past, weeded out videos purely on startup music. I am hoping that in the future YouTube will introduce a function which allows me to add parts of videos to the playlist; in which case a great many will be subjected to top and tail behaviour. i.e., removing any funky music inclusions from these videos.

Professor Niall has a great voice; there is minimal background noise, not your classic ASMR but it should be calm enough to be relaxing (funky startup music allowing). Sadly, there are periods where it gets louder as if Professor Niall is presenting to a lecture theatre. It is quite fascinating, which is not the reason we are here, but causes me to stick with it.

Thankfully there is no tail end music to this particular video. Good enough for the Procrastination Pen playlist I think, although I aways reserve the right to weed it out if after a few reviews it doesn’t stand the test of time. There’s a couple in there right now that I am mulling over with a view to foisting them out.

The channel is UCD Medicine which has one hundred and sixty-three videos. That is a few I’m sure you will agree. Small wonder then that the channel has 52.7K subscribers.

There are five playlists and none of those seem to be connected with Professor Niall or with Neurology.

However, scanning the list of videos there are at least thirty-one videos on this subject and probably a great many more than that. I’m not sure I would feature thirty-one videos at one time in a single blog post even if they were all to feature Hollie Berry. On that basis therefore I’ll select the first five (including number three, which we just reviewed) and the later videos can form the basis of subsequent blog posts.

Neurology – Topic 1 – Brief neuro anatomical background

We are now into classic cranial nerve examination – which has been the subject of several blog posts previously

This is less than three minutes and yet again with the startup music – grr.

This time Professor Niall seems a bit on the loud side. I have the sense that this video captures a presentation to a class.

The location does not seem to assist in this respect I suspect a large room with a slight echo via the microphone. I always wonder why lapel mics are not more frequently in use. But I imagine additional microphones=additional cost.

Neurology – Topic 2 – Brief neuro anatomical background with notes

This is really a re-run of the above with some notes as well – no doubt great for students but it makes no odds for us, I think.

Neurology – Topic 4 – Cerebellar Syndrome Examination

A much more substantial video in that it is nearly nine minutes but still short in terms of some of the videos reviewed previously.

I think we can now take it that all of these will share the irritating startup music. Here again we encounter Professor Niall at his best in terms of his voice. We discover that the patient is “Peter”.

Unfortunately, Professor Niall gets louder. It’s a shame because at the start the video is lovely and quiet. If only I felt empowered to take the video and edit it down but I have no doubt a number of solicitors would be delighted if I tried that and the Procrastination Pen would be added to the channels on YouTube that disappear without trace.

However, there are long periods where Professor Niall settles into what must be his default which is a lovely voice to listen to. Perhaps in the future I will look for other material by Professor Niall as there might be the odd one which is properly quiet throughout.

Now, the assurance that we would cover up to video five was made without understanding how the videos progress on this channel, whilst videos one to four were individual videos there is now video 5a to 5j with some of the videos appearing both with and without notes.

I feel it is fair therefore to split the approach to video 5 I think your attention muscles probably will have had enough if I push too far so I think as far as 5c in this blog item and then pick up a future blog item at 5d.

Neurology – Topic 05a Cranial Nerve 1

Here Professor Niall is obviously presenting to a class, it is loud. Again, there are moments where the voice is excellent. Each one of these videos is tantalising in that it is not quite excellent for ASMR but has the potential to be so.

Neurology – Topic 5a Cranial Nerve 1 with notes

A duplicate of the above video – with notes included.

Neurology – Topic 5b – Cranial Nerve 2

A truly substantial video in excess of eighteen minutes. It starts loud and continues loud. Fair doos, the guy at the back of the class needs to hear what you are saying but it makes it less than gorgeous from an ASMR perspective.

Here the patient, in fact has a better intonation for the purposes of ASMR (well he is quieter). I think his name might be Donnacha (with apologies to Irish readers if I messed that name up).

It is even possible that Donnacha may have a channel all of his own but that is for a future blog item if so.

Neurology – Topic 05b – Cranial Nerve 2 with notes

As before a duplicate video to allow for the addition of notes.

Neurology – Topic 5c – Cranial Nerve 3,4,6

A little over seven minutes in length but sadly no quieter. Shame about that classroom setting. I suppose we can take succour from the fact that there are no infernal air conditioning noises.

Neurology – Topic 5c – Cranial Nerve 3,4,6 with notes

With notes

And that’s it this time, I think I’ll come back and give it another try Professor Niall probably has a few gems to offer.

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

As life rushes onwards and time disappears, there come little points at which one starts to re-evaluate whether the activities one has been engaged in were ever worthwhile. Occasionally I get enlivening feedback. More usually not. I am not clear how many people I have reached and if any of them had better sleep as a consequence. It is also clear that the amount of time to deliver content is slowly disappearing.

In the present, I continue to try and evaluate sources of restful content and give you my opinion of it. I hope that it may help on the evenings when your mind will just not be quiet. If only as a distraction regarding the hours that are passing, and in which you would have preferred to have been sleeping.

A little while ago, rather foolishly, I did mention that I would look for resources that were outside of YouTube and did not require payment (such as the Calm subscription that I keep banging on about). The time for locating new sources is at a premium so in a bid to satisfy this statement I am falling back on material that I have used in the past (pre-YouTube playlist) most notably during lockdown. One name that I recall was Gil Fronsdal. I have no idea how I first came across him but I do recall that he had a splendid voice.

Of course he appears on YouTube for example:

and

but the point is to find material that is outside of YouTube and subject to less of the godawful advertising that dogs the heels of each and every video.

One amazing resource is this:

https://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/1/

and here we find the audio equivalent of the YouTube series I just outlined. For example:

https://www.audiodharma.org/series/19711

Gil has a beautiful, relaxing voice. As we would expect, the content has a definite Buddhism leaning. You may find that off-putting. In which case this review will probably stand to put you off. I am not particularly worried that it has a religious focus as long as the content is relaxing. I would say almost anything from Gil is likely to fit the bill. Some people may miss the video aspect of YouTube (I can understand that). However, this might be compensated for by the fact that you are not likely to be ripped from your sleep by some objectionable advert.

I may return to Gil. Re-acquainting myself with some of his material today I remembered how much I used to like it.

Those who read this blog reasonably often will know that I have been reviewing material from Calm.com for a little while, with the understanding that some people will not have (nor want) to have a subscription to Calm. This is reasonable, in which case after this brief overview of something from Jay Shetty we’ll get back to some YouTube content.

Today’s Calm content is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/OJtPBsWToz

Daily Jay

Humility & Curiosity

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

It is from Jay Shetty and I have found that whilst Jay does not have the voice I most like on Calm, he quite often has the most interesting content.

This is quite short (it is less than eight minutes). It considers what happens when you are lost or adrift in the world (and who isn’t). It reflects how temporary everything is and how facing that successfully requires humility and curiosity. (The world is interesting, not threatening).

At this stage, for quite a while in this blog now, I have been reviewing a professional ASMR artist. The results have been a little so-so. Not actually disappointing, but I have had to ratchet my expectations down a little. I am sure that people in YouTube videos are universally attractive but they do not universally have attractive voices. They do not always know how to create a consistently restful video. In this way, my original decision to focus on inadvertent ASMR does not look as crazy as perhaps at one time it might have done.

This week’s is a little left field in that it is only vaguely to do with examinations (medical or otherwise). I saw the title and I was intrigued…

It is from a channel called gumoochie. This channel has 192K subscribers and one hundred and thirty-two videos, so a pretty respectable subscriber per video created ratio. To be honest though, I have not always found that translates towards high quality content. I am not certain why that is, but it does seem to be a valid finding.

This is the first time I have encountered a channel from a professional ASMR artist where there are plenty of videos but no playlists. I’m guessing there is a reason, I do not know what it is.

The video is:

iq test but you’re an idiot (asmr)

a little less than twenty three minutes, the setting appears to be domestic – probably a bedroom from the background, not that I expect you’ll be watching, but listening instead. The video-associated notes are refreshingly brief: “430,120 views 24 Apr 2025

if you want a non-idiot ver, check out the bonus vid on my patreon!!

————————- ♡ ————————-

SOCIALS

email: basicklegwp@gmail.com

insta:   / gumooochie  

letterboxd: https://boxd.it/9z0jz

patreon: / gumoochie 

tiktok:   / gumoochie “

The comments are suitably off the wall, with a low count of dedicated sycophancy. That, in itself, is unusual for a professional ASMR artist.

The voice, as you would expect, is relaxing. There is no introductory music. The participant does engage in that strange clucking behaviour which ASMR artists believe is a trigger for someone. In which case they are probably right. Just not me. I would be happier with just the voice. This voice does not dwell on whispering, which is refreshing, although some ASMR afficionados no doubt will disagree with me. Not to say that there is no whispering because there is some but it does not predominate.

There are no offensively loud noises. People who enjoy pencil on paper noises or mouth-clicking noises are well served here. There is no tail-end music and no content dedicated to sponsors.

I’m not sure I am up to IQ tests any longer (assuming that I ever was) but I do recommend the video as being worthy of review.

At this point I review a video that is inadvertent ASMR. Since I have been looking at non-YouTube content, these blog posts have got rather long. I am conscious that perhaps I soon need to start dropping something.

This time, however, I am going to limit myself to just the one video and that one being a very brief one at that.

Assessment of abdomen & blood vessels

It is a bit over ten and a half minutes in length. There are no notes and relatively few comments. The Channel is Cassidy George which has 1.07k subscribers but only eight videos – that seems a very high performance for so few videos but perhaps there is a reason for that. The video seems to be one of the student assessment videos which is a type of video that has been reviewed on this blog multiple times previously.

The video was posted on 12 Apr 2023 but already has 30, 786 views. Cassidy seems to me a bit loud to be honest, and the background noise similarly. If it is air conditioning it is really working hard. I am not sure that those views were by ASMR fans. I am thinking not. The presentation is as if presenting to a huge room and yet I would think the recording equipment was nearby and this would have been unnecessary. As the examination is performed, the voice does get quieter but, if anything, this just demonstrates how loud the air conditioning is. The setting is domestic, as far as I can tell it is someone’s front room and examination is performed on their sofa.

I tried turning down the air conditioning noise (which also muted the vocal track) and found that the whole thing was a great deal more palatable. As one of the people commented, there is a regular beep which could be a low battery warning for example from a smoke alarm.

This appears to be another situation in which any listener will be reaching for the volume control in a disgruntled fashion. It is a shame about that air conditioning (how many times have I said that on this blog).

So, not startling. However, I notice the channel has eight videos. If I had not used up so much space reviewing Gil at the start of this article I would have reviewed some more. I think I will be returning to this channel in the future.

On that basis, just one, video today.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Privacy – A How-To Guide

There can be few people alive now who have not heard about Edward Snowden. 

He is a marmite character hailed as a hero by some and a pariah requiring execution by others.

I realised that in my Gravatar profile I state: “Keen on privacy and IT Security. A volunteer counsellor. I use blogging to improve my writing.” There has been a few blog items on writing and the odd one related to counselling but except for the EXIF article precious little in support of privacy.

Snowden showed us that if you decide to put something on the Internet it is not private anymore. (No matter how much security you imagine protects it).

Security services have techniques that can read information, often when we believed that information was protected.

Information that you put on the Internet today, believing it to be secure, is exposed in a security breach tomorrow.

Some people believe that this is fair enough, if you decide to put a nude selfie online for example then on your head be it.

This article is not for them.

Still reading? Ok, well there are some basic steps that you can take which will protect you. Some more advanced steps you can take if you are very keen on privacy. There are also steps you should take if your life depends on privacy (which is sadly not unfamiliar to some activists in the world today).

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/improve-internet-privacy_n_6902622

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/12/snowden_guide_to_practical_privacy/

  • Mobile Phones Mobile Phones – transmit a great deal of information about you. they are used by shops to track your purchasing preferences. They still transmit information even when you have turned location services off.

    If you are in the group that really needs to protect your privacy faraday bags for phones do work.If you like your privacy but your life isn’t likely to be in danger over it – turn on location services only when you need it.

    Similarly turn off Bluetooth and wireless when they are not in use.Better still if you do not want to be tracked leave the phone at home.

  • Encrypt Encryption uses mathematics to render the information inaccessible to anyone other than the people you want to have access.However encryption does not solve all problems.There is some evidence that some encryption has been circumvented. .However encryption will defeat prying eyes in the majority of cases.

    You can encrypt your phone .You can encrypt the hard drive on your laptop.

    You can use encrypted file storage online .

  • Encrypted Apps – Use encrypted alternatives to text messages. The recommended system here is an app called Signal which is as easy to use as any text message system.
  • Unique Passwords – Make certain that every website you log into has a unique password.

    Breaches in passwords happen every day.

    A breach is when a company loses the usernames and passwords of its customers onto the Internet. Criminals then get hold of these details and attempt to log into as many websites as they can. It takes criminals minutes to do this it can take many years before a company is aware of the leak.

  • Password Managers – maintaining a different password for each login (for every website) is a discipline that is sometimes beyond the memory of the average individual. This means that you really must use a password manager.

    Password Managers store all your passwords in one place and you only need to remember the one password – the one to access the password manager.

    I use KeePass . It is a standalone password manager (in that it is not integrated with your browser).This reduces functionality a little but increases security a lot. (With all your passwords in one place you do want the solution to be secure).

  • Use two-factor authentication. Remember I said that passwords are leaked onto the internet every day? How do you stop a criminal logging in when you don’t know that your password is already out there?

    Make certain logging on to your account takes more than a password.

    A number of sites permit use of two-factor authentication. Usually this means that after you add your username and password you get a text on your mobile phone giving you a code that you also need to enter.This small amount of extra effort can have a big effect on your security.

  • Use a VPN service that cloaks your location.Every ISP has a list of addresses that they hand out to their clients. This means that when you browse the Internet others on the Internet can determine which ISP you use. In many cases this gives a good approximation of where you are accessing the Internet from.In addition every piece of browsing behaviour goes through a link provided by your ISP who has a log of your activity. The only way to disguise your activity from your ISP is to have a tool that uses an encrypted tunnel to hide what you’re are doing.

    This can be a VPN , use of ToR browser or using ToR browser over a VPN .

    A VPN creates a tunnel between you and a VPN Provider.

    The problem with this is that it moves the keeping track of your actions from your ISP to your VPN provider.

    You therefore need a VPN provider that undertakes not to track your actions.

    For the truly privacy conscious use ToR.

    https://lifehacker.com/what-is-tor-and-should-i-use-it-1527891029.

    ToR is not a panacea but it does make it much more difficult to trace any actions back to you. ToR is a technology that sends the messages you use to communicate on the Internet through a very convoluted route, making it very difficult to trace.

Of course it is far easier to keep something private if you do not share it in the first place. If you share something which would have consequences (if it became public) then perhaps sharing it is not wise. Don’t depend for example on Facebook privacy settings. It is known that people use Facebook to monitor and to trap the unwary.

Don’t put your holiday destination into Facebook until after you have returned.

It is really a bad idea to exchange nude photographs. Can you really be certain that the picture won’t turn up later on in a context which you might not like?

Many sites allow recovery of your account if you supply personal details about yourself. This means that they allow you access after you share with them a secret that they know about you. A favourite is Mother’s maiden name for example. If you forget your password – you supply your mother’s maiden name – you get to reset your password.

If that information (your mother’s maiden name) is on the Internet already (say on social media) it is no longer a secret. Criminals can use this information too.

Firstly be careful what you share. Secondly if you are asked for a secret that can be used to reset your account – lie. If your dog is called Fido and the recovery question is “pet’s name” use ”jambalaya” for example (don’t do that – it’s in the Internet now so people know it – make up your own version and keep it secret).

Once you have created a lie make sure you record it somewhere offline (say in the password manager) so if you need to recover the account you can remember what lie it was that you told them.

Make certain that you use the HTTPS version of a website (most sites have a HTTPS version now). The HTTPS-everywhere add-on can do this for you. HTTPS uses secure communication and hence is more secure to use than HTTP.

Adverts on the Internet have been the source of a great many attacks. Wherever possible use an ad-blocker. This also makes it harder for sites to track your behaviour and use it to bombard you with ads.

It is known that search engines like Google mine your information in order to sell it to advertising companies. One way to obviate this is to use an alternative search engine that does not log your behaviour. The best known of these is DuckDuckGo.

If you are one of the people whose life depends on your privacy then this article is not going to be cautious enough for you.

ToR is a good start. There are also guides as to how compartmentalise your life. There are guides about how to communicate with journalists. Encrypted email solutions exist and should be considered. Even operating systems designed to preserve security.

However it would be remiss of me to advise about these given my life has never been at risk because of a lack of privacy. You must gauge the level of risk and apply appropriate precautions.

For everyone else these few steps can make a big difference.

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