Privacy & Digital Security Forum

What this board is for

Keeping your digital life your own when your infrastructure is your own: passwords and two-factor authentication, offline backups, private communications, what a satellite or cellular provider can see, and securing the systems that increasingly run a modern homestead.

It is also the board for the practical resilience side, since off grid the machine holding your records may be the only copy, and a failure there is not something a support desk fixes.

The questions that come up most

How do I back up when the cloud is not practical? Locally, redundantly, and with at least one copy somewhere else physically. An external drive in the same building as the fire is not a backup.

What can my internet provider actually see? More than people assume and less than the alarming version. Metadata, connection patterns, and destinations are generally visible; content over encrypted connections generally is not.

Are my off-grid systems a security risk? Anything network-connected can be, and inverters, cameras, and controllers with remote access are worth setting up deliberately rather than with default credentials.

How do I keep passwords safe with no reliable connectivity? A password manager that works offline, with a recovery plan that does not depend on a device you might lose in the same event.

What a useful post looks like here

Say what you are actually protecting against, because the measures for keeping a company from profiling you, keeping an account from being taken over, and keeping records safe from a house fire are three different problems.

Say what infrastructure you have: what connects, what is stored where, and who else uses it. Advice that assumes constant connectivity does not transfer well to an intermittent link.

The mistakes that cost the most here

A single copy of anything that matters. Off grid, hardware failure has no support desk behind it.

Default credentials on anything with a network interface, particularly cameras and system controllers with remote access.

Two-factor authentication tied entirely to a phone that may have no signal, with no recovery codes stored offline.

Assuming distance is privacy. A remote address does not change what an account or a provider knows.

And over-complicating it to the point where the household stops following the arrangement, which is the most common failure of all.

Backups that work without the cloud

The practical arrangement is redundancy on different media in different places: a working copy, a local backup on separate hardware, and a copy held off site, refreshed on a schedule somebody actually keeps.

Test a restore, at least once. An untested backup is a hypothesis, and the failure mode people describe is discovering at the worst moment that the copy was incomplete or unreadable.

Include the things that are not obviously files: password manager exports, recovery codes, scans of the deed, survey, well report, septic as-built, and permits. Those belong in the digital half of the systems binder as well as on paper.

Securing the systems that run the place

Modern off-grid equipment increasingly wants a network connection, and the monitoring genuinely is useful. It also means an inverter or a camera is a computer on your network, and it deserves the same treatment as one: unique credentials, updated firmware, and remote access enabled deliberately rather than by default.

Keep the monitoring separate from anything that can change settings where the equipment allows it, and write the credentials into the systems binder so that a future owner or a helper is not locked out of the house's own infrastructure.

And keep a manual path for everything. A system that can only be controlled through an app is a system you cannot control when the link is down.

How much of this is regional

Less than most subjects here, though connectivity options differ and each has its own privacy characteristics. Where satellite is the only option, the trade-offs come with the territory.

Legal frameworks differ by state on some matters, and where a household runs a business from the property there may be obligations about how customer data is held.

Mostly, though, this board's advice travels well, which makes it one of the few places on the site where a general answer is likely to be right.

Where this meets the rest of the site

The connectivity board covers the link itself, including keeping the router on the battery bank so an outage is not a communications blackout. The resilience board covers the wider question of what happens when a system you depend on stops.

The privacy section of the journal goes deeper on offline password practice, metadata, and what specific services can see.

Tools for this topic

Most questions on this board come down to a number somebody has not worked out yet. These do the arithmetic and show their working, so an answer here can be checked rather than taken on faith.

• Tools: every calculator on the site
• Learn: the free twelve-lesson course
• Off grid laws: what your county permits

How this board works

Posting needs an account, which exists so that answers have a name attached and so that the same person can be asked a follow-up six months later. It costs nothing and it is not used for anything else.

The conventions here are the ones that make a small forum useful. Say where you are, at least to the state or region, because almost every answer on this site depends on climate or on local rules. Say what you have already, and what you have already tried. Give numbers where you have them, and say when you are guessing. And when something works or fails, come back and say which, because the thread is read by far more people than post in it.

Answers here should be able to say where they came from. Experience is welcome and so is a rule of thumb, as long as it is labeled as one. Where a claim is about safety, code, or law, it wants a source, because the reader on the other end may be about to spend money or wire something themselves.

Boards next door

Off-grid questions rarely stay inside one department. A water question is often a power question underneath, and a land question is usually several at once. These boards field the neighboring subjects:

• Connectivity: Starlink, cellular, and ham radio: staying connected (or reachable) from the middle of nowhere.
• Security & Self-Defense: Keeping a remote place and the people on it safe: situational awareness, deterrence, home and property security, and sta...
• Money & Finance: The real cost of going off-grid and how to fund it: honest budgets, making a living remotely, insurance, taxes, and hard...
• General & Introductions: Say hello, introduce yourself, and anything that does not fit another board.

Asking a question that gets a good answer

The difference between a thread that gets three useful replies and one that gets none is almost always in the first post. Four things do most of the work: where you are, what you already have, what you have already tried, and what you are actually trying to achieve.

Location matters because nearly every answer on this site depends on climate or on local rules, and the same question has different right answers in Vermont and Arizona. What you have matters because advice that assumes different equipment wastes everyone's time. What you have tried stops people repeating it. And the goal matters because the best answer is frequently that the problem should be solved somewhere else entirely: a load reduced rather than a battery added, a parcel checked rather than a design revised.

Numbers beat adjectives. Give the figure where you have one and say plainly when you are guessing, because a guess labeled as a guess is useful and a guess presented as a measurement sends people down the wrong path.

Answering well, and the standard here

Experience is the most valuable thing on a board like this, and it is most valuable when it comes with its conditions attached: what you have, where, for how long, and what went wrong along the way. A rule of thumb is welcome when it is labeled as one.

Where a claim is about safety, code, or law, it wants a source, because the person reading may be about to wire something themselves or spend a large amount of money. Direct-current faults, combustion appliances, and structural decisions are not places for confident approximations, and saying you are not sure is a genuine contribution rather than a failure.

It is also worth saying when something has changed. Equipment, prices, and regulations all move, and an answer that was right three years ago can be wrong now.

Coming back with what happened

The most underused post on any forum is the follow-up. Threads are read by far more people than post in them, and a question with no resolution is a question the next reader has to ask again.

So come back and say which suggestion worked, what it cost, and what you would do differently. Say it even when the answer is that none of the advice helped and you solved it another way, because that is the most useful outcome of all to record.

If what you learned contradicts something published on this site, please say so. Corrections are logged publicly on the corrections page with the date rather than quietly edited away, and readers who have called the county or walked the ground are the best source of correction this site has.

Why location keeps coming up

Newcomers sometimes find it odd that half the replies here open by asking where they are. It is not gatekeeping. Off-grid answers are dominated by two local variables, and almost nothing useful can be said without them.

The first is climate. Worst-month sun hours decide how much array a house needs and differ by roughly a factor of two across the country. Heating degree days decide the fuel supply. Frost depth decides how deep every water line is buried, and design low decides whether a battery bank can live in an outbuilding. Two households running identical equipment in different regions have completely different experiences of it.

The second is governance. What may be built, what may be occupied while building, whether a composting toilet is recognized, and whether you may stay disconnected where utilities run past the lot line are all decided locally, and adjacent counties routinely differ. The laws section records what public sources say for each state, county, and in New England each town, and marks plainly where an answer could not be confirmed.

So say where you are, at least to the state, and expect the best answers to come from people within a few counties of you.

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