How to Use RSS for Privacy and Profit

With RSS you can reclaim your online freedom. Say no to tracking, censorship, and information overload. Experience the internet on your terms!

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Social media may tempt website owners by bringing in a swarm of visitors once in a while, but that is essentially a bait-and-switch trap. Ultimately, the social media companies will want to be paid. There are other less onerous ways to grow the audience for a website. Email is one of them, but not everyone wants to consume news, opinion or entertainment through email. How about RSS? It is a time-tested strategy to build a loyal audience without exposing them to the intrusive tracking done by tech giants.

Even if you do not leave the mobile data or the wireless connection of your phone on all the time, there will be continuous tracking. Smartphones are designed to continue to report your movements even in airplane mode or when the phone is turned off. You agree to this incessant tracking when you mindlessly click the ‘Next’ button when you first set up the phone (https://www.opensourceforu.com/2016/05/howto-run-android-without-google/). The only way to avoid this tracking is to use a feature/button phone or no phone at all. Unfortunately, this is not an easy option for everyone.

When you are using a desktop or a laptop, do not be logged into Google. Then, how will you check your email? Do not check your mail in the browser. Use dedicated software for it, known as an email client like Thunderbird or Seamonkey to separate your email from your browsing (https://www.opensourceforu.com/2018/02/tricks-trythunderbird-seamonkey/).

Similarly, do not log into Facebook or Twitter to read your news. It gives them the ability to censor news and track you. Go directly to the source, anonymously. But there are potentially dozens or hundreds of news sources. Who has the time to visit all of them? There is a simple solution — RSS.

An RSS feed