Between the NSA, Microsoft’s spying and forced upgrades to Windows 10, Google’s ties to the US State Department, and once trusted extensions like Adblock and Ghostery selling information I’ve been a bit freaked out. The Windows 10 privacy violations were the last straw so I switched both my main computers to Linux Mint. This piqued my interest in big data and security in general. I’ve been moving my data to encrypted storage based in Switzerland and use an anonymous VPN whenever possible.