A pet peeve of living abroad is that content from my home country, the Netherlands, is often restricted by geo-blocks. I have a VPN installed on all my devices to bypass this issue but regularly forget to turn it on or am connected to the wrong country as I try to optimize for speed. I also want to be able to cast my phone or tablet to my TV but with VPN enabled my Chromecast does not recognize the casting device. To overcome these challenges I decided to set up a second WiFi network that routes all traffic via the Netherlands.
Most apps & websites these days require an account, promising a tailored experience while collecting lots of personal data. Unfortunately, a regularly recurring news item is about companies getting hacked and the theft of user data. For decades, I was naively using the same email & often password everywhere and a quick look at my spam folder shows it. Checking on haveibeenpwned.com reveals my email address has been part of ten publicly known data breaches! For many of these breaches I didn't even remember I had an account. I, therefore, decided it was time for a more secure approach moving forward.
I read a column about registering your baby’s email and social media handles to ensure their names are not taken by the time they grow up (especially if you have a common last name). Although many people will find this idea ridiculous, I have empathy for parents thinking about their family’s online identity – see my last post – but I am also a big advocate for being in control of your digital footprint and not relying on free services. Like most of the internet users, I have used Gmail, Hotmail (now Outlook) or Yahoo for personal accounts as long as I can remember; however, becoming more privacy concerned I finally set-out to find alternatives for my family’s email.
Back in the late 2000’s I briefly experimented with buying & selling domain names after I read the story about Nissan.com and realized the value of a good domain name. I was way too late to the game with all the good .com domains already taken and only made a very small profit. Much to my annoyance I found out that the domain my lastname.com is already registered since 1999. I think it would be cool to have a firstname@lastname.com email address for each member of my family, but 9-year old me was not internet savvy enough to register the domain in time.
I have always wanted to build my own PC and join the cool kids on /r/pcmasterrace, but I have never really had a need for a custom setup (+ I am not a gamer & have a strong dislike for RGB lights). Yet when our family laptop’s screen would no longer turn on I couldn’t stop myself browsing YouTube for PC building tutorials. My wife tried to convince me to give fixing the laptop a shot (in my defense I did open it up and re-plugged some wires), but my mind was already made-up: we must-have a new family PC