The purpose of the McKinley Park News is to serve readers like you with relevant, timely, credible and accurate information. Your trust in our news is our greatest asset, and we accordingly operate with a chain of trust that binds all operations, not just our newsroom.
Our Internet platform is a primary pillar of our operations that is also bound by this chain of trust. As an online publication, we require an electronic device with web access: common tools and channels unfortunately exploited by the corrupt to secretively track you for profit, steal and sell your personal data, and expose you to online harms.
As ensconced in our Terms of Service, we do not share, sell, or license any of our user and member information and submitted content. We operate technology that only serves resources from our own website and server, excising harmful third-party services that put you and other news readers at risk. Our membership system also supports leading privacy standards, such as those mandated by the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.
Although the McKinley Park News operates responsibly on behalf of its readers, many unfortunately do not. However, readers like you can still protect yourself — and enjoy a much better online experience — by making smart choices for all your online activities. This list provides our technology recommendations that our users may wish to consider adopting for themselves, all of which perform well with the McKinley Park News.
Accessibility
The McKinley Park News is designed to be persistently accessible to as many users as possible, across as many platforms as possible, using best-in-class, contemporary, legacy-tolerant standards for building and serving websites and Internet services. Our publication optimizes itself for both mobile devices and desktops, maintaining full functionality and access to content across all contemporary devices. This means we should still be accessible, even on technology we do not recommend.
The McKinley Park News prides itself on strong ongoing support for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which ensure that users of all abilities can access our news content and engage with us.
Open Source Preferred
In all instances, we require a preference for open source, on-site software to produce and publish the McKinley Park News and to manage our platform and business operations. These freely available tools provide better value, stability, security and ownership costs than commercial and proprietary options, all the while delivering equivalent or better performance and features.
Most significantly, open source tools can be trusted more than software from commercial and proprietary sources. Commercial software vendors, including many of the largest, have repeatedly put short-term profits ahead of security, stability and privacy for their users. Their black-box products cannot be audited, offer primary targets for hackers exploiting monocultures and present the risk of abandonment or devolution at the whim of the business that owns the code.
Open source is also the environmentally responsible choice, enabling ongoing operation of older hardware that commercial vendors often abandon or even outright degrade and disable in order to force purchases of new devices. Open source keeps electronics out of landfills.
Although our decision to use open source is based on sound business practices and operational strategy, we also recommend a preference of open source for our users, for many of the same reasons.
Web Browser
Your web browser is your primary means to access and interact with the McKinley Park News website at https://mckinleypark.news. Because we code and serve our website using contemporary and legacy-tolerant standards, the McKinley Park News is still accessible and operable on web browsers not included in our recommendations.
However, use of closed-source, proprietary web browsers can impact your privacy and security when visiting websites that use or integrate services designed to secretively harvest your personal information for profit. Also, some web browsers — including many of the most popular — will "phone home" and ship your personal browsing information into their growing databases about you that they then monetize for profit without disclosure or regulation.
Unfortunately, users of Apple and iOS devices do not have the option for an open-source web browser, since Apple forces all browsers to use its WebKit browser engine: Third-party browsers on iOS are just rebranded versions of Apple's Safari web browser. For that reason, iOS versions of our recommended web browsers are not included in this list, even though the McKinley Park News should work fine on iOS devices.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is one of our top recommended web browsers because its code is fully open-sourced and audited. It is available for all major operating systems, and it includes many privacy-enhancing features and default settings. It has a huge ecosystem of third-party add-ons to extend its capabilities, and it offers options to securely sync bookmarks, tabs and browsing history across devices.
Chromium
Chromium is an open-source version of Google Chrome that supports Chrome browser extensions, but Chromium has all of Google's proprietary code removed from it ... in theory. Users should note that Chromium is still a Google-delivered product, and because of its codebase's size and complexity, some undesirable Google code might remain undetected. Google's also denuded Chromium's capabilities as compared to its proprietary Chrome browser.
Other Open-Source Browsers
- The Brave web browser — built from Chromium code — offers strong privacy protections, but is laden with unfortunate tie-ins to cryptocurrency and NFTs: environmentally devastating practices that are primarily of use to support grift and cyber-crime.
- The Tor web browser — built on Firefox code — has a primary focus on privacy, including its integration with the Tor anonymity network. However, it may lag behind Firefox in features and is very slow when visiting websites through the Tor network.
- The LibreWolf web browser — a community-led project based on Firefox code — has deep protections for privacy, but it's currently only available on desktop, and it's a newer browser with open source's innate risks to longevity.
Web Browser Extensions
Configure your web browser to protect yourself through the use of web browser extensions: extra pieces of software that plug into your browser and enhance its capabilities. Even users of closed-source and proprietary web browsers can benefit, putting you in control of code and communications that can present privacy, security and malware risks.
Privacy- and security-focused web browser extensions commonly work by controlling which code runs when a web page is delivered to you. These extensions give you the option to enable or disable parts of the code making up a web page, such as scripts pulled in from outside, third-party Internet servers. This lets you control whether or not you'd like to be tracked by analytics, automatically opt out of data sharing, or see advertisements, as well as many other features.
Some of our favorite and recommended web browser extensions include:
- Privacy Badger. Built by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy Badger offers lots of features and self-learning that kills trackers based on their behavior. Privacy Badger can also enable click-to-activate placeholders for things like third-party videos or audio players, which are sometimes included in the McKinley Park News, such as our event listings for band performances.
- uBlock Origin. This open-source plugin is a "wide-spectrum content blocker with CPU and memory efficiency as a primary feature." It integrates lists of ad providers, trackers, pop-ups, coin miners, malware sleazebags and other sources of concern, and then stops their code from running in your web browser. uBlock Origin offers many other features and ability for customization.
- Cookie AutoDelete. "Cookies" are bits of code that websites use to help keep track of your activities on a website, and they can persist, even after you've left that website. For example, the McKinley Park News employs our own "first-party" cookies — served from our own website and server — for features like the "Remember Me" checkbox for logged-in members.
Unlike many, the McKinley Park News does not integrate "third-party" cookies from outside services into our website. We do this because third-party cookies are commonly laden with security and privacy concerns that would put our users at risk. The Cookie AutoDelete extension automatically deletes cookies from closed web browser tabs and windows, with the option to whitelist persistent cookies for sites like the McKinley Park News that ensconce member privacy protections in Terms of Service. - NoScript. The NoScript Security Suite is cross-platform, multi-browser, open-source software that lets you tune the operations of "scripts" embedded into websites. For example, "Javascript" code can both enable interactive website features like you'll see here on the McKinley Park News, as well as do all kinds of things to exploit and harm you. The NoScript extension lets you selectively turn on Javascript for trusted sites like the McKinley Park News, and keep scripts entirely or partially turned off for untrusted or unknown sites.
Many other worthy browser extensions offer security and privacy capabilities, as well as all kinds of other features to customize and enhance your web browsing.
Browser Configuration
Web browsers themselves offer built-in options to enhance privacy and security, many times in their Settings. For example, we recommend all users configure their web browsers to set themselves by default to "HTTPS" mode when accessing websites. (The "S" means there is a secure, encrypted connection between the website and your web browser.)
Click here to lean how to configure HTTPS-only mode for your browser.
Find Extensions in Settings
Web browsers commonly integrate their directories of extensions that you can review and add with a click: Look in your web browser Settings to manage your extensions and add new ones.
Operating System
The McKinley Park News will appear correctly and operate well on any computer operating system that can support a contemporary web browser, including Microsoft Windows, Apple's iOS, Google's Chrome OS and Android, Linux, and others.
However, for the same reasons mentioned earlier in these recommendations, we advise users to consider open-source software for their desktop and laptop operating systems, as open-source offers better cost, security, stability and longevity than proprietary operating systems, with equivalent or better tools and features for most uses.
For more than a dozen years, we've had fantastic experiences using Debian-based Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Pop! OS on our desktops and laptops. Many others are available. In contrast with our use of closed-source operating systems, our Linux computers keep on running through the years, supported by ongoing updates and continual improvements.
Mobile OS
With the exception of some specialty devices, mobile users are stuck using either Apple's closed-source iOS, or Google's Android operating system, which has a clouded reputation for privacy. In addition, default settings and configuration for new mobile devices are often set to exploit, rather than help, the user.
However, mobile operating systems still offer many options for privacy and security configuration, and users should take full advantage of them. Look online for the latest mobile OS settings recommendations, and set your device to start from maximum privacy and security, then make adjustments as needed.
The McKinley Park News is served through a web interface; using a mobile web browser with a good security and privacy posture will help keep you protected for all websites, no matter your mobile operating system.
Other Internet Services
Email is another means by which the McKinley Park News communicates with our users and members: through our email newsletter, automated website email messages and direct email communications. Your choice of email provider — and how you secure and use your email — can have a direct impact on your privacy and the security of your communications, devices and accounts.
In addition to following best practices to keep your email secure, know and understand the terms by which your email provider is offering this service. Many email services, especially the most popular free ones, make back their money by varying degrees of user surveillance, advertising, tracking and/or scraping messages to benefit AI or other services.
For users concerned about email privacy and security, we recommend either a privacy-focused, third-party provider like Proton Mail or others, or running your own email from your own domain hosted by a qualified managed service provider.
Search Engines
Search Engines are commonly used to discover sources of information, including what we publish in the McKinley Park News. However, search engines can also be used to track you, your searches and the websites you visit. We recommend using privacy-respecting search engines that either serve as a proxy for queries to other search engines or build their results based on their own crawling and indexing.
Some options for privacy-respecting search engines include DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, MetaGer, Swisscows, Mojeek and others.
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Another way to protect your privacy while online is to route your Internet use through a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. This pushes your Internet traffic through a different network source, masking your actual location, service provider and IP address. It's one of the strongest ways you can support your privacy and protect yourself online.
VPNs are provided through accounts from a panoply of service providers, and they can be configured for all of your Internet traffic, or just your web browser, with switches to selectively turn a VPN on or off. Both free and paid VPNs are available, however, paid VPN services often support faster traffic and more options.
The scope of VPN services and options limit our ability to make specific recommendations here. However, users will find many online sources detailing and reviewing VPN services.
Why We Make Technology Recommendations
The McKinley Park News makes these technology recommendations because — first and foremost — we care about people like you. Our greatest asset is your trust in our news and other services, and we've modeled not just our newsroom, but also our platform and business operations, around this fundamental idea.
As a commercial news publication and information service, we choose to build our revenue opportunities based on good-faith engagement between buyers and sellers in our community, with members and subscribers, and with all other customers and users. We unilaterally reject the practice of exploiting users for profit through secretive consumer surveillance, as well as unquestioningly integrating the services of predatory third parties that expose users to harm.
Through our dedication to serving actual people, the McKinley Park News stands alone in our news and information services that respect user privacy and security, especially in local media. We condemn publications and news outlets that purposefully or thoughtlessly expose their readers to harm, especially those that cloak themselves in a masquerade of community concern and charitable good while benefiting from exploitation of their users.
Fortunately, you can protect yourself from these predatory practices and bad actors by adopting the technology recommendations we provide here, and in general being aware of privacy and security for all your online activities.
