This post is not political By Any Means. It’s not meant to be pro or con of any US laws. Those opinions are up to you. This post is only concerned with the fact that in many places in the US, vigilantes are or will not only become legal, but can seek a bounty of $10,000 per head. There are plenty of unscrupulous people – that’s both fact & common knowledge – and depending on the laws where you live, any woman or girl of child-bearing age is a potential target. While laws vary from state to state, the Texas model, which is being copied more and more, allows anyone to sue anyone who provides any aid in an abortion, with plenty of free legal support available. State legislatures are proposing & enacting tracking laws, and even mandatory registration of pregnant women that make it even easier. You don’t have to do anything to become a target if you’re a female of child-bearing age…
If you do a Google search &/or wind up on a web page that has links &/or ads having anything to do with abortion, that’s been considered evidence. If someone hacks your phone, they have 10,000 reasons to plant evidence. The GPS data recorded by your phone can also make you liable -- if you spent time *near* an abortion provider that’s evidence, though you could have been shopping or dropping off laundry in the same strip mall, or even been stuck on the road in a traffic jam or because of an accident. In fact, forget the word evidence – think and use excuse instead. And by all means, delete ANY health tracking apps on your PC & phone. Someone(s) can still try to manufacture excuses – it just takes a phone call to a friendly lawyer with your name & they may get a share of that $10,000 bounty – but don’t make it any easier for them.
Advocates, Congressional Reps, Senators etc. have been pleading with big tech companies like Google to stop tracking anything that might be used in the prosecution of vulnerable women, but there are measures every at-risk woman can take. I’m not expert regarding cell phones – please seek out those who are – but at least turn off GPS, remove any app that tracks you [consider the Duck Duck Go privacy app to block them], and use encryption, ideally not based on fingerprints or facial recognition, as those can be compelled. Use a VPN, and on a PC / laptop / tablet consider disk encryption [possibly VeraCrypt, with its hidden VHD within an encrypted VHD]. You can run Windows 10 or 11 on a USB drive [Windows to Go], preferably an SSD, leaving the installed copy of Windows untouched. You just have to worry about someone getting their hands on that drive. Particularly for anything that might entail more risk, consider using a VM…
A Virtual Machine [VM] is a copy of Windows or Linux running completely in software, stored on a VHD [Virtual Hard Disk], which is a single file pretending to be a real hard disk. That VHD can be stored or copied most anywhere, like an easily hidden or disposable micro-SD card, or you can store a copy of the VHD with a newly created VM, then copy it over the VHD you just used to put things back to square one. Bear in mind that any data that’s not overwritten may in some circumstances be at least partially recoverable. Linux does not tie you to any accounts, but Windows by default will, unless you use the Enterprise version inactivated – it will look for a nonexistent local license server instead. Sign up for Microsoft’s Insider program and you can download the Enterprise ISO with set up files.
Stay safe, Please, and as possible, out of harm’s way.