Privacy Is Personal: Finding Your Bespoke Solution
We love the 1995 comedy The Brady Bunch Movie for several reasons. First, it delivers a hilarious spoof of the campy original TV show that still pops up in reruns everywhere. Gary Cole’s version of architect Mike Brady is spot-on, especially his signature running gag.
No matter what the client actually needed, Mike would offer a slightly tweaked version of the same famous Brady house. (Side note: the real Studio City house used for exterior shots was bought by HGTV in 2018. They renovated it to better match the iconic sound-stage sets from the series.)
The point is simple. Mike Brady gave every client the same basic solution, just with a few cosmetic changes to make it look custom. Need a gas station convenience store? He’d slap a big sign on the roof and add pumps out front. That’s a long way from a true Buc-ee’s!
Another side note: we’re loving the reactions of international soccer fans experiencing their first Buc-ee’s while in the US for the World Cup. If you’ve never been, it’s an unreal and indescribable experience.
Back to our point: It was never a real bespoke design built around the client’s actual needs. It was one house, dressed up differently each time.
When we share our Privacy Toolbox we get tons of questions about why we chose solution X over Y. Many people ask before they even reach the part in the introduction where we explain this is a bespoke setup for our families. Our needs are local or spread across the globe. Regardless of where they are, we really don’t want to become our family’s personal help desk. (Shout out to all of you who are! We know your pain.)
We drew on years of corporate IT/IS experience selecting the best tools to fit many different needs and platforms when building our own bespoke solution. We will also share that not every tool was a perfect fit, so we sometimes go back and look for better options. That’s exactly what we did when moving from Google Keep to Notesnook.
In sharing the importance of privacy, we discovered a big gap in how everyday people (including our own families) understand it. This gap gets even wider with all the new government privacy intrusions we’re seeing around the world. So our goal is to help close that gap through clear, practical education.
For example, a Google survey found that 65% of people reuse the same passwords across multiple sites even when their device offers a free password manager. That shows just how many of us still need better guidance!
Before we go any further, we want to be very clear: we are not sponsored in any way, shape, or form. We encourage everyone to find the solutions that work best for them. Maybe some of the tools we use will fit your needs perfectly. Maybe there are even better ones for your situation. Everybody’s needs and skill levels are different, and every situation is unique.
With that framing, let’s walk through how we developed our own bespoke privacy solution.
Situation Analysis
The original iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, and released to the public on June 29, 2007. It wasn’t the first smartphone, but it changed everything. We had already been developing for mobile platforms for nearly a decade by then.
What made the iPhone special was that it delivered an internet device that just worked for everyday people right out of the box. It gave you a real web browser, phone, contacts, email, messaging, calendar, music, photos, and much more. Over the years, the platform has continued to evolve to meet growing needs - from tap-to-pay to fitness tracking. Google responded with Android in 2008 and grew it in similar ways. Desktop operating systems also evolved to match changing customer expectations. That's what our solution will be competing with.
All of these solutions are designed to make users successful and to feel secure. But privacy? It rarely gets more than a passing mention. And when it does come up, the most common reaction is: “Well, we’ve been using this platform for years… so what’s the big deal?”
Our first hurdle was educating people on why privacy actually matters. We’re sure many of you have had those same frustrating conversations with family and friends. It’s tough to talk about it without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, even when you have today’s headlines about data breaches and new government policies to back you up.
The next part of our analysis focused on the user base. We support four generations in our families, all using a wide mix of platforms. The most common setup is an iPhone paired with a Windows desktop or laptop. We also have some Android users, a few Mac users, and the occasional Linux person (we’re all raising our hands). That means decades of different lived experiences and tech habits across many devices.
One interesting thing we noticed is that many people learned how to do something a certain way years ago and never updated their approach, even when the tools became much simpler. If a solution evolved to make life easier, they often stuck with the more complicated method they originally learned, as long as it was still available. Sometimes they even gave up completely when their old method stopped working. People are creatures of habit, and that is an understatement.
Building Our Solution Criteria
Once we understood our audience and the platforms they used, we created a clear set of requirements. We already had some strong ideas about what we needed:
- End-to-end encryption
- Minimal to no data collection
- Full portability across devices and ecosystems
- The solution had to be as easy to use and feature-rich as the one it was replacing
That last point is the most important. If a tool isn’t easy, people simply won’t use it. We’ve seen (and heard from others) that even the simplest privacy-friendly options face pushback because they represent change. Many people never notice the lack of end-to-end encryption or how their data gets collected to build marketing profiles with their current solutions. They especially don’t see the requests from authorities for things like their search history. The protections offered in the new solutions had to be just as unnoticed.
From our family “survey,” we knew we couldn’t rely on self-hosted tools or anything with a complex setup. Everything needed to work smoothly across all platforms, behave predictably, and come with real support. We didn’t want to be the 24/7 family help desk. We also looked for solutions with strong longevity so we could avoid “privacy fatigue” as much as possible.
We knew we would have to share some guidance too, such as turning on Apple Advanced Data Protection.
Regular Reviews
Picking the right tools doesn’t mean we stop there. We revisit our choices regularly. A solution we selected for its strong features two years ago might now be outpaced by a competitor that offers better value.
Sometimes a tool no longer fits our needs, so we either replace it or decide it’s no longer necessary. Technologies, threats, and our own requirements keep changing, so we make an effort to stay ahead of them.
Our Bespoke Solution
We’ve shared our setup in the hope that it helps others see there are better, more private alternatives available that people are using daily. We’re not saying our choices are the only ones - they’re simply a starting point.
Whether you take a similar ready-to-use approach like we did or prefer self-hosted options, the important thing is finding the solution that fits you.
The more people who embrace privacy, the more privacy everyone around them can enjoy too.
Remember: We may not have anything to hide, but everything to protect.
