14 DAY TRIAL // Documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed several social networks are in the back pocket of the NSA, thanks to the companies they are created by.
After PRISM was revealed, it was obvious some truth was in the things reported by the press, despite express denials from companies and their officials.
Since the US government didn’t even bother to deny any of the allegations, despite making a point in saying things weren’t “that” bad.
Regardless of this, there are several social networks that would be best to be avoided by those who want to protest the NSA surveillance programs, even though they might not have anything to hide.
Facebook and Google+ were specifically named, while LinkedIn and Twitter fall under the same category solely for having American headquarters.
However, there are several alternatives you can use to chat with friends and still keep your privacy intact. Here are some other social networks able to serve as replacements for the aforementioned services, according to Prism Break.
For instance, Diaspora is a distributed network run by community members. Similarly, GNU Social is a self-hosted, decentralized social network which should help keep things private.
RetroShare is also a free and secure peer-to-peer communication platform that doesn’t let anyone else view any of your messages. In this manner, users can chat in a secure environment and share files with friends and family.
Pump.io is another solution that lets users simply post messages and other things, while letting friends view their messages. The service is quite similar to Twitter, although, obviously, not as popular.
What you need to keep in mind is that, unfortunately, the NSA has other means to grab your data from the Internet without making use of servers belonging to Google, Facebook or whichever else service.
Aside from PRISM, the NSA was revealed to have the ability to syphon information straight from the data flow, which means switching to one of the private networks above can only help to a certain degree.