How to Keep Your Privacy and Stay in Control Online in 2026

2026 is just getting underway and the censorship-surveillance-industrial complex is already in overdrive finding new ways to demolish digital freedom. In this article I explain how this happens and what can be done to stop it from ‘slowly driving us mad‘.

Let’s start by asking what an Apple developer, a French judge, Polish trains, Russian Porsche owners and the Iranian people have in common? All have suffered on account of depending on technology they did not truly own. If you have an Android or Apple phone or a Windows computer, read on, because you too could experience something similar.

The Apple developer was locked out from his personal files and professional platform when his company objected to a gift card top-up. The judge was locked out from all his accounts with American companies, including email and card payments, after annoying Donald Trump. As for the Iranian people, had their internet connectivity not been reliant upon state-controlled physical infrastructure then the regime could not have achieved an almost total connectivity cut-off. Had it not been for that news blackout, I doubt the regime would have dared to conduct such a murderous suppression of protesters, and I expect the international community would have come to the people’s aid much earlier.

So what does owning technology amount to? Ownership, as a concept in philosophy, psychology or law, may have many definitions. But where technology is concerned, real ownership is having the ability to exert full control over what a device can do: the ability to both make and undo changes to its functionality. Ownership means being able to do all that without needing anyone else’s permission. Many smart-home appliance buyers have discovered that anything which insists on phoning-home to a corporate server, even if it is only for setup or after a factory reset, isn’t practically yours, however much you paid for it.....<<<Read More>>>...

Critical Analysis of the Dead Internet Conspiracy Theory

 The Dead Internet Theory is a popular online conspiracy theory that suggests that the Internet is not real and is instead run by bots or artificial intelligence. The date given for this “death” is generally around 2016 or 2017.

According to this theory, the majority of internet activity is generated by automated systems that mimic human behavior, and that the web is not real because it is solely AI-generated.

The theory claims that human activity is increasingly marginalized, and the web is now controlled by bots, algorithms, and AI programs. This idea of a dead internet is a startling thought and has gained traction with internet trolls and conspiracy theorists who believe that the web is losing its authenticity.

However, this theory is not based on solid evidence or logical reasoning. It is a flawed and exaggerated interpretation of some real phenomena that are happening on the internet, such as the rise of bot activity, the proliferation of fake news, and the increasing use of AI-generated content....<<<Read More>>>...

Forget About Reading Books, Teenagers Aren’t Even Bothering With the Internet Anymore

 Remember in May this year when the Daily Sceptic ran a piece about people not reading anymore and the Spectator published its own version in August and the Atlantic finally caught up and ran a variation on the theme this month? Well, here’s another think piece for them to follow up in a few months’ time: teenagers are not bothering with the internet either.

Way back in 2023, while teaching a confidence class in a secondary school, I first had an inkling of this latest generational calamity. We were discussing ChatGPT and what was then Bard. I asked GCSE age students how they were using them. Blank looks all round. Eventually one boy explained why he doesn’t: “I have to log on.” I put this down to classic teenage laziness and thought nothing more of it. But the evidence of largescale internet ignorance is growing: a conversation with a 15-year-old girl who has had a smartphone since she was five (yes five) about learning to cook. “Where do I find recipes?” she asked… A similar aged girl who spends nine hours a day on her phone but didn’t know there were yoga exercises on YouTube… The teenage boy who had no idea how to book train tickets… The girl who was visiting London and didn’t know “what do to there?”… the child baffled that we could watch a video to teach us how to remove permanent marker from skin – and so on.

I’ve been asked variously by teenagers: does the death penalty exist in Britain? Who is President of America? When was the Second World War? Where is Turkey? What do they eat in Scotland? What are sausages made from? When I’ve suggested that the children could Google the answers, I’m met with a shrug and shake of the head: “I hate searching it up,” they reply. They don’t want to know that much to actually initiate a question of the internet. If pushed, they might ask Alexa at home but they hardly go to the bother of typing out a question.

And this, I have finally worked out, is the reason for teenagers’ disinterest in the possibilities of the internet: the current generation of children are passive users, not active ones. They look at their phones and entertainment is presented to them via their specific feeds: reams and reams of the stuff on Snap or TikTok. Teenagers have no need to actively look for anything, as everything has already been perfectly curated for their specific needs (generally beauty for girls, fitness and jokes for boys – disappointing but there it is). Internet use is a bit like reading a magazine of old, someone else has done all the hard work for you and all you have to do is sit back and scroll.

The wider internet and its wealth of possibilities has receded to the same wallpaper effect as books: it’s there, but the majority of children are not curious to find out what it has to offer. For non-digital natives like me who still carry memories of completing their Civil War history homework by trudging up the lane to Great Uncle Allen’s house hoping that his Chambers Encyclopaedia had something to say about General Fairfax, or turning up backpacking as a 19 year-old girl in Mexico City with nowhere to stay, the wonders of Google will never cease to amaze. But for digital natives, the internet is as ordinary as tarmac....<<<Read More>>>...

Internet blackouts: The rise of government-imposed shutdowns

[David Icke]:What is an internet blackout?
A blackout happens when a country's access to the internet is completely cut, preventing people from getting online.

Cyberattacks or damage to the undersea cables that carry telecommunications signals can cause this to happen, but the most common reason is that authorities choose to turn off access.

For almost a week, Sudan has been completely cut off from the internet. It started slowly, with a series of intermittent disruptions during months of protests against former President Omar al-Bashir's 30-year rule.

Al-Bashir was toppled in April, but the protests did not end and demonstrators began demanding that the Transitional Military Council (TMC) cede power to a civlian-led government.

On June 3, as security forces violently dispersed a protest camp in the capital, Khartoum, all mobile access to the internet was cut...read more>>>...

A Poor Broadband Provider

Our broadband these days is appallingly SLOW. Its so bad that we are unable to load pages up ... some take up to 45 minutes to load up; blogger editor can take longer than that! We have a problem uploading pictures on to social media (Facebook and Twitter). We've always had periods of slow internet, but they always speed up.

Currently it's been nearly ten days of really slow ... why should be have to pay for a poor service when it is clearly a problem with the provider's end of the connection? We are constantly losing connectivity ...

It is an ongoing issue that seems to be a permanent situation. 

A Bad Service Tonight

Our broadband connection is running SNAIL SLOW again. It's been chronically bad this evening, taking from 8.11pm until now (21.00) to load our blogger editor page.

Shame on your Virgin Media, especially as you advertise on UK national TV a broadband service 5 times quicker than other competitors. That's not the case with us!

Not at all. 10.5mbps download is very slow, when we have hit over 90mbps when we do have a decent service. Chronically bad.

Experts WARN: 5G technology will blanket the Earth with ultra-high microwave frequencies

Natural News: As the dawn of the next generation of the internet, 5G, approaches, proponents of the new technology can’t seem to stop singing its praises.

Faster speeds, better connectivity and nearly instantaneous data transfers are among the promises of 5G technology, but what no one is talking about is the cost of this venture. Beyond the actual financial costs of implementing a new 5G grid worldwide, experts are cautioning that 5G will come with a steep price — and the health of humanity and the rest of the planet will be paying for it.

To make matters worse, anyone who tries to even report on the growing number of specialists and activists sounding the alarm on the dangers of 5G is at risk of being silenced. What are they trying to hide?

As Natural Health 365 reports, former congressional candidate-turned-advocate Kevin Mottus has been particularly outspoken about the potential health disaster that is 5G technology. Mottus has stated that the damaging effects of 5G are already being observed in children. “We are microwaving our population,” the safety activist reportedly declared.

More than 230 scientists, doctors and other experts have weighed in on the ominous threat posed by the soon-to-be-everywhere 5G network.

In order to achieve faster speeds, 5G relies on millimeter waves, which are even smaller than microwaves and operate at a higher frequency. These smaller waves are more easily absorbed by buildings, trees and other things (like people), so more towers will be needed in order to maintain connectivity. The industry has created specialized “small cell” stations and new, larger base stations to accommodate the demands of 5G tech. Even so, it’s expected that a small cell will need to be installed every 250 meters in cities for 5G to work properly. There will be one on every street corner.

Internet speeds may be faster, but this will ultimately create an inescapable “blanket” of electromagnetic radiation. Studies have already confirmed that prolonged exposure to the radiation produced by these frequencies can cause cancer.
As reported:

"An expert review panel looked at a $25-million study carried out by the National Institutes of Health’s National Toxicology Program (NTP). The panel discovered that radio-frequency radiation emitted from cell phones was linked to heart and brain tumors, providing evidence of carcinogenicity, at least in animals"....read more>>>...

A Slow Service Again

Again we report that our ultra fast broadband supplier is providing us with a very slow product. It's becoming a regular occurrence, once again. We're pretty certain that there are ombudsmen and regulators who are inundated with daily complaints about this UK broadband supplier.

Our gripe of the day reports that were we to contact the supplier, they would test the line and come to the conclusion their connection is fine, and its not their problem what happens once the connection goes into the house.

Our equipment is not to blame, because there is no rhyme or reason when the damn connection slows. Its not at our end ...

Nothing will ever be done about it. We'll move on to another supplier and that will be that.When it runs quick it is quick ... well over 100 mbps. When its slow like now ... we are barely at 10mbps.

A Snail Broadband Service Again

Yes, we've gone infuriatingly slow again. Our superfast broadband provider (Virgin Media) appears to be the one with the problem. Again. Not for the first time; and certainly not the last; we're experiencing painfully slow - slower than dial up slow - broadband.

It's a regular occurrence again. We have our green stress ball on the table top; and it may well be used a few times more this evening, as we attempt to upload our allotted posts for this evening.

We can guarantee, almost with certainty, there will be a superfast speed up around midnight. Its always the case. Not long after we lost connectivity around 11pm; which we always do.

And, if you see no posts added tomorrow night, on a final note, it's not the snail broadband service, its something else ... we've got a busy couple of days ahead; and may not get to do much posting. Adios for now. 

The Internet - A Grand Deception By The Hidden Hand?

Numbers are down. Numbers keep falling. The mechanism behind this are the corrupt Google Search algorithms. If you are not seen as being within 'the IN themes' then no matter how well you present, or write, or look, your popularity will plummet.

And with all the Internet purging, the alternative blogs, the alternative news sites, plus the conspiracy sites, all are feeling the pinch as their visitor numbers fall.

But if you share the common thread of 'bullshit, lies, and total crap' then your visitors will rise and rise, as you assist the corrupt in broadcasting their fake news worldwide. The days of freedom of speech on the internet are seemingly gone.

Yet in truth, it was all a grand deception, the honey pot for the bees so the bee keepers could collect data, and watch us all ... and hidden hand fooling the worker ants once again so it could determine how we think, and influence us like lab rats are driven down the corridors of a maze.

And yes, the masses were fooled, the internet nothing more than a secret service database to capture all our hopes and dreams in. We say let the internet die then let someone else invent a new one, and learn how to keep the crazy bastard 3% out ... so we can plot the freeing of mankind away from prying eyes. Yes, it may sound far fetched, but it really needs to be done.

Trapped in the Net: What They Don’t Tell You About the Internet & Social Media

Waking Times: Flawed, to a depth unlike any other beast in the animal kingdom, human beings rapaciously despoil their own environment and continue to conduct activities that appear to threaten the very existence of the biosphere – our home, planet Earth. 

Through the latter half of the 20th century an insatiable technological race to develop weapons of mass annihilation resulted in nuclear standoff among a handful of belligerent nations and an incongruous co-operative policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.). That dire policy still stands today, a shadow cast unthinkingly over all human endeavour and indeed life itself.

The very idea that humanity willingly chose to pursue a scientific course that delivered the capacity to destroy the world many times over should be breathtakingly troubling, yet inspires relatively little comment. From the very same tumultuous technological crucible that produced the enduring madness of nuclear weaponry came a more recent development – the Internet. The online world promises an ‘abundance of riches’ (as its techno-evangelists constantly assure) but it also has a profound (and profoundly under acknowledged) dark side. Birthed from the Pentagon’s desire to be able to maintain communications through the early stages of a nuclear assault (by spreading the electronic and telephonic communications load over a labyrinth of interconnected routes and servers), what we today call the Internet (which at one point was called ARPANET) was shepherded into existence by D.A.R.P.A. (the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in partnership with the scientific, academic and corporate communities...read more>>>...