IDtheTarget

Purpose

I’m very concerned about identity theft. It’s such a prolific issue that even government agencies, such as the IRS, Social Security Administration, and the FTC have sites and guides on how to prevent or cope with the problem. While it is impossible to completely prevent, it is possible to mitigate the risks. My primary risk-mitigation strategy is to reduce the amount of my personal data that is stored “in the cloud” to whatever extent is workable.

As of this writing (October 2025), my risk mitigation strategy breaks down into three primary goals:

  1. Where possible, move from proprietary cloud-based systems to storage systems owned by me.
  2. Where possible, move from vendors that provide “free services” to privacy-friendly services.
  3. Change from a standard Android phone to a secure and private phone operating system. I’ve chosen GrapheneOS.

Additional Design Criteria

  1. I use both an Android phone and a Windows PC for my various flows and processes. With Microsoft once again requiring Microsoft accounts to use Windows, I’m going to try to move to a Linux laptop. This all means that any system or service I migrate to needs to have multi-platform capabilities.
  2. My wife and I collaborate using a few services, most notably shared Calendars and Lists (which we use for shopping). These services need to be very easy to use without a lot of fiddling, as my wife is not a geek like me and has no patience when things don’t “just work”.

Links

Below are lists of my ideas for achieving these goals. If there is a link in the list item, then I’ve either started or completed the migration. If there is no link, then it is something I’m contemplating for a future project. I expect this endeavor to take awhile. As I write this, I’ve already been at the process for over a month.