In the first part of the series, the focus was on the more technical aspects of OPSEC – making sure your devices are secure. In this part of the series, we will go over some basics of online behavior. It should be emphasized again that this series does not cover everything exhaustively. It is a primer for those new to the concept of OPSEC and a basic overview. Like the previous entry, this will be in a list format and while more in-depth explanations and reasoning are available, for the sake of brevity, it will be minimized to the greatest extent possible.
- Keep your digital personas separate. All of your normie accounts should never have anything to do with any of your dissident ones. Do this to the extent of not having a normie and dissident account on the same platform. If you want to keep up appearances by having a normie Facebook account, do not also have a dissident Facebook account.
- Do not use your normie persona to post, share or comment on content that could arouse suspicion. This means swallowing your pride and not responding to something with a fact bomb that you know would infuriate and or crush the original poster. It also means keeping your comments, likes, shares and views somewhere to the left of Molyneux.
- While flat out dishonest, posting things supportive of causes (BLM, transgenderism, Confederate and Heritage America iconoclasm, etc.) you don’t believe in is one way to build a plausible cover; however, it is not recommended. It requires consistency and a false enthusiasm for lying and that is not good for the soul. It is better to remain quiet than to lie.
- Do not join “secret” groups on normie social media platforms (particularly, Trump “patriot” groups). They’re not secret and are not beyond the reach of the platform’s administrators. Those groups exist because they are allowed to. Additionally, they are all infiltrated by antifa cyberstalkers.
- Do not use Google to search for dissident terms, even if you log out of Google first. Use a privacy friendly search engine.
- When naming your dissident accounts, do not use names or naming conventions you have ever used anywhere else. This includes gamer tags you used when you were a child and have not used since. They were at one time linked to a non-dissident email account and therefore are considered “burned,” to use an espionage fieldcraft term that sounds cool. If your real name is John Smith, do not name your dissident account “John” and/or “Smith.” It needs to be a completely different name and one never associated with your identity.
- When in dissident circles, maintain your anonymity and paranoia. When engaging with those who seem to believe as you do, it is important to not offer personal information, provide it, or ask it. That includes where you are going/went on vacation, where you live, what high school you went to, where you work, etc. It is considered bad manners to ask about such things and anyone who does ask is not to be trusted, generally speaking.
- When posting in dissident realms, DO NOT FEDPOST. DO NOT AGREE TO OR WITH ANYTHING ILLEGAL. While a certain amount of spicy language is accepted, do not engage in a conspiracy to commit a crime, do not advocate for illegal activity, do not say anything you do not want an FBI agent to read unless it is in obvious jest and can easily be proven as such during your trial. This may sound melodramatic, but that line of thought will keep you out of trouble should the unthinkable happen. Additionally, fedposters are unhinged weirdos that you shouldn’t associate with anyway.
- The bottom line, oversimplified, is this – keep the two personas separate in as many ways as possible and do not cross pollinate the two. Before posting anything on either, ask yourself if this could be used to piece together a link to your other persona.
Not everyone will always be perfect about following all the rules, and some may even choose to never follow some of these rules. That is up to the individual and their assessment of the risk inherent to them being outed as someone on our side of things. For some people, it will make for an uncomfortable Thanksgiving. For others, it can be career ending.
Remember what is at stake for you, act accordingly.
