Who actually owns your mailing list?
A newsletter is really two jobs: holding your list and delivering the mail. Whoever holds the list controls it. Here’s how to keep your subscribers yours, and the setup we chose ourselves.
Protect the people who trust you
Should you put your email address on your website?
Putting your email address on your website hands it straight to spam bots. Here’s how to stay reachable without getting harvested, the tricks worth using, and the ones that just waste your time.
How to judge a tool by its conduct, not its logo
A familiar logo tells you a company spent money on marketing, not how it will treat you. Four plain questions, privacy, lock-in, labor, and independence, let you judge any tool by its conduct.
Your website has three parts. Make sure you own all three.
A website is really just three things: an address (your domain), a building (your site and its hosting), and a key (a way to update it yourself). Name the three and you know exactly what you own.
Do Google Fonts leak your visitors’ data?
Free resources · Guide Do Google Fonts leak your visitors’ data? A font can quietly hand every one of your visitors to Google before they read a word. We found one doing exactly that on our own site. Here’s how to spot it, and fix it without changing your design. You were asked to approve … Read more
We don’t recommend what we haven’t run ourselves
Free resources · Article We don’t recommend what we haven’t run ourselves A lot of people will tell you to leave Big Tech. Fewer have actually done it. We run Desk Ready on the same independent tools we recommend, so our advice comes with real lessons, including the ones that didn’t work. A lot of … Read more
Who actually owns your mailing list?
Free resources · Guide Who actually owns your mailing list? A newsletter feels like one tool, but it is really two jobs: holding your list, and delivering the mail. Let one company do both and you quietly hand over something you didn’t need to. Here’s how to keep your list yours. Short answer: whoever holds … Read more
Is Zoom safe to use? What its privacy track record actually shows
Free resources · Article Is Zoom safe to use? What its privacy track record actually shows Zoom works, and you don’t have to quit it tomorrow. But its privacy history follows one pattern worth knowing before your next call: ship fast, get caught, fix after backlash. Here is the receipt trail, so you can decide … Read more
Why I advise you to switch to Signal
The honest case for Signal from someone who advises small organizations on tech: why it’s the messaging app I recommend, the real tradeoffs, and how to start.
Private messaging: what to use instead of texts, WhatsApp, and Messenger
Texts, WhatsApp, and Messenger feel private but mostly aren’t. A plain-language chart comparing Signal, SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and iMessage, plus why Signal is the one worth switching to.