MORE communication thoughts, from Survivalblog

[The War Wagon]

Stolen from yesterday's (2/10) postings;

Communications/Banking/Web Hosting:

Virtual Private Network (VPN) — to conceal your location and search/browing history — or just to stream your favorite BBC TV shows from the U.S. or Canada. We recommend NordVPN. (A SurvivalBlog affiliate advertiser with a great track record for maintaining your privacy.)
By the way, to celebrate their 9th birthday, NordVPN is having a special sale, with 68% savings on a two-year subscription, and additional service time.  Here is how it works:

• Get the 2-year plan with 68% off and automatically get extra service time as a gift. Depending on your luck, you’ll get 1-month, 1-year, or 2-year extra subscription time, which will be automatically added on top of the plan you’ve bought. 
  
• If refunded, both the additional free service time and the regular subscription are canceled.
  
• The campaign launches today (the 10th of February) and will approximately last for one month.
  
• You don’t need to do anything to retrieve the gift – when buying the 2-year plan, you will be notified about the gift via email. You will immediately see how much extra NordVPN service time that you got  on top of the 68% discount and can enjoy it right away!
  

Reader “Klaude Flaugstein” had these great suggestions:

1. Brinks Prepaid Card in lieu of PayPal. If someone only accepts PayPal, there’s nothing we can do.
2. Linux in lieu of Windows or Mac (for seven years now.) Linux Mint is so much better than either Windows or MacOS, and this saves us thousands a year on software). And no, it’s not any more difficult than Windows or Mac. It’s actually easier. My 80+ year old grandmother uses it, as does every member of our family. For those programs that MUST use Windows, I run a Virtual Machine inside Linux that runs a free version of Windows 10 since it does not need to be registered in order to continue to use it, unlike previous versions.
3. Gab, Mewe, Minds.com, or Telegram in lieu of Facebook and Twitter.
4. Brave in lieu of Firefox.
5. MEGA.NZ (aka Mega.io) in lieu of Dropbox.
6. The phone is not so easy. Dropped the iPhone, and bought a ruggedized Ulefone. This is a very nice phone, pretty inexpensive, and heavy. I never have logged into Google on it. Alternatives for Google Play are to download the APK files and install them manually. You can find instructions on DuckDuckGo, although looking for a good alternative search engine.
7. Protonmail in lieu of Gmail.
8. Mailfence in lieu of Gmail calendar.
9. Openphone in lieu of Google Voice.
10. Epik in lieu of GoDaddy
11. Webstaurantstore.com in lieu of Costco for many items.
12. Wire.com in lieu of Whatsapp or GV. [JWR Adds:  I now use Wire instead of Skype for family and consulting video calls. You’ll need to install the Wire app on your computer or smartphone.]