Privacy Policy

Mika - NoisePrism

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Introduction

I care about mine and the Privacy of Others a lot, so this is a hopefully easy to understand breakdown of just what Data is collected, when using Noiseprism.de.

Summary

I collect the bare minimum of data. I don’t sell your Data and I don’t track you. The only Data I ever collect is for blocking AI or other malicious Bots. No Third Parties can ever see your Data.

1. Information I do collect

I basically only collect two things about you.

Your IP-Address (for blocking purposes)
Your User-Agent (also for blocking purposes)

Your IP is like a string of numbers, that act as an Identifier for you. I can block you from visiting my Website, if I know your IP-Address. Your User-Agent is a string that tells the Website what device and Browser you use. A normal User-Agent might look like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:147.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/147.0

{This is a User-Agent of Firefox on Windows}

But the User-Agent of a Bot might look like this:

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.3; +https://openai.com/gptbot)

{This is a User-agent from ChatGPT: OpenAI}

2. Cookies

I don’t use any Cookies. I only ever use Local-Storage, which is a way to save small amounts of data in your Browser. An Example for the use of Local-Storage, would be the language option: If you change the language, it will be saved, so that, when you reopen the Website, the language settings stay.

Local-Storage is different to cookies, because I don’t use it to track or identify you.

3. Hosting

I host with NameCheap, which is a US based company, but since my server is in the EU, and they serve EU-costumers, they have to comply with the GDPR guidelines of the EU. (Which are pretty good for privacy)

For full transparency, here is the NameCheap Privacy Policy.

4. Avoid the Collection

If you don’t want your Data being collected, there are a few ways to avoid it.

Use a VPN:

If you use a VPN, your IP-Address is obscured and Websites can no longer track you based on your IP-Address. There are other benefits to using a VPN and in the current state of the Internet, I would recommend you use one. But, not every VPN is good, and it’s very important to choose the right one. More about VPNs
Use a User-Agent-Switcher

Your User-Agent can easily be switched with a User-Agent-Switcher, although I think it’s unnecessary. Most User-Agent-Switcher are simple Browser-Extensions. Talking about Browsers, if you use Chrome you should switch to FireFox or Zen.

5. Contact

If you have any questions, you can contact me via Email.

Let's talk about VPNs

Mika - NoisePrism

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I'm sure everyone has heard about VPNs by now. Along other things, they promise better privacy and to protect you from tracking. Are they lying?

VPN Marketing

VPN Ads are everywhere. They push the narrative that you need a VPN to be safe and have privacy online. And since I care a lot about Privacy, I take that very seriously. Although it's true that your Internet Provider can see what you do on the web (in some Counties), it's still not the entire truth: In certain Countries, including America, Internet Providers can see what Websites are visited by their customers, but not what their customers do on those Websites (at least if the connection is via HTTPS, which it is in most cases).

So in my opinion, VPN Marketing is somewhat deceptive, especially for uninformed users.

VPN Companies

There are a lot of VPN Companies, but the main ones you might recognize are NordVPN, SurfSharkVPN, CyberGhostVPN, ExpressVPN and PrivateInternetAccess.

The interesting thing is that there are just two companies behind these five VPNs: NordVPN and SurfSharkVPN are both owned by NordSecurity, while CyberGhostVPN, ExpressVPN and PrivateInternetAccess are owned by Kape Technologies.

VPN Privacy

"If you want to have more Privacy, just use a VPN", but is it actually that simple?

Since your Internet Provider can see, what Websites you're visiting, so can your VPN, that is because a VPN acts as the middle man, which hides your traffic, between you and your Internet Provider. Ultimately, this means, that you have to be able to trust your VPN.

To make it simple, you can't really trust Kape Technologies or NordSecurity with your data. If you choose one of their VPNs, you just change the Corporation which sells your data. Also, these Corporations are very happily giving your data to the government, so their promises can genuinely be dangerous for journalists or in more recent News, People, that are hunted by ICE.

What is there to do?

Not all Hope is lost! There are trustworthy VPN Companies out there, just not very many. There are really only two VPNs that I can recommend.

MullvadVPN
ProtonVPN

If you are more experienced and don't mind the only very occasional tinkering, MullVadVPN is a great Option. It's comparably cheap, at $5/mo and $60/yr, and also very trustworthy, as you don't even need to give them your E-mail to make an account.

If you are less experienced and coming from a mainstream VPN like NordVPN or never used a VPN, ProtonVPN is also a great Option. It's a bit more expensive at $12/mo and $80/yr, but offers more convince and a few extra features.

MozillaVPN is an honorable mention, but it's still pretty small and has its own set of issues.

Some helpful resources:

NoisePrism Blog