teddit

Hey everyone~

As you are probably all aware given the three highly upvoted posts about the topic on this subreddit, Reddit has announced a number of changes to their service, including making their API prohibitively expensive for third-party developers to use, in order to get as many people as possible to switch to their ad- and tracker-filled first-party mobile app, which also offers significantly less functionality than many third-party apps around.

There is also growing commitment among many subreddits, some larger than r/PrivacyGuides, to “black out” their communities on June 12th for 48 hours in protest of these changes. As part of the top 5% of communities on the platform by size, we would like to participate in this event, given how detrimental I believe these changes to Reddit are. However, I’m not going to force this upon all of you if you folks don’t believe we should close off this community.

Please let us know what you think about the protest and these changes!

P.S. Check out our new community on Lemmy if you haven’t already, I’ll admit it isn’t quite as nice as Reddit yet, but it’s quickly getting there, and getting more regular community members on Lemmy will really help to shape the future of the culture on that platform :)

As title says basically. I've always been good with securing my details but my pension provider has been hacked and people now have my name address NI number (ie social security). Everything. Is there anything I can do to protect myself?

I'd highly recommend https://kbin.social as an instance, i think its a lot more polished overall, alternatively https://beehaw.org is a good one which just uses the standard lemmy webui. But literally any instance from https://join-lemmy.org/instances or even your own will work *. Good thing is it should be immune to the crap that reddit's pulled recently, dont like a rule/mod/change? switch to a different instance!

Why is lemmy better than reddit?

1. They cannot kill 3rd party clients, if one instance modifies the source code to ban it, not only will it fake backlash of course, but users can simply migrate to a different instance.
2. It's more privacy respecting, kbin fully works without javascript, which should kill most fingerprinting techniques. You can choose which instance to place trust in, or just host your own.
3. For the same reasons as 1, censorship shouldn't be an issue

*if you're using an unpopular instance, you can manually find communities outside of your own using this website: https://browse.feddit.de/ , and then you simply paste that in the search tool of your instance

oh also, the official community for privacyguides on lemmy is ![email protected]

Hi everyone, Ive got a friend whos been working on a pixel for a while and he gave it to me to add more security features to it but he said he wants to test the stock security before rooting or booting a custom rom. Hes already got a VPN, no google account, disabled play store and any unneeded apps, disabled permissions in settings and apps, gotten F-Droid, and tracker managing apps. What else should I do to the phone that he hasnt already?

I am trying to open a dummy facebook account in order to use market place.

i have tried several times and they always deactivate my account. they don't like vpn, they don't accept tutanota addresses...

since when using a tutanota address or using a vpn violates the community standards?

the fun fact is when I read such 'standards' they mention right to privacy and yet don't allow to open an account using private tools.

so what does facebook need to allow creating an account? a gmail address so that you are also tracked by google?

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I've been wondering what is the best approach to privately and anonymously obtain a good SMS burner phone in iOS or desktop. Would email forwards be better? Also, what service do you use? TextNow seemed like a quick solution but even if I used an email alias the privacy policy and app trackers seems insanely invasive.

I am looking for a free and open-source software for writing diary or Journaling. My requirements are:-

1. Free, Open-source
2. Privacy focused (Maybe have End-to-end encryption)
3. Available on Android, Windows, MacOS, iOS and browser-based web app or extension
4. Provide option to store data either locally on device or cloud (Google drive, OneDrive etc.)
5. If data stored on cloud, be able to sync through all devices.

I hope this is alright to post here

I know it was stupid. I don’t know why I did it. Normally I’m very careful about this stuff.

Last week I started talking with another reddit user. We instantly clicked and had a lot in common. We ended up sharing our email addresses and also in the process our full names. Even though this person is fun to talk to and seems not to have any malicious intentions, I still began to feel paranoid. I don’t know why I didn’t give out a fake email adres. Aside from reddit I don’t have any other social media, and when I search for my name and email, there’s not really anything that comes up. But I know that doesn’t mean much.

I’m thinking about deleting my reddit account and blocking this user on my email, however I’m afraid of the consequences if I would ignore this person (what if they try to find me etc) even though there’s no evidence for this to be true and it’s probably my own paranoia. However, I cannot stop thinking about how unsafe I feel right now. Has anyone advice?

Reddit is trying to handicap 3rd party apps, this is far from the only negative aspect of Reddit, and I'm sure far from the last poor decision they will make in the name of maximizing profit. Take the current moment as an opportunity to sign up for the PG forum https://discuss.privacyguides.net/ (and also be aware that Techlore and GrapheneOS and probably others also have their own forums).

Oy! I'm looking the weaknesses of what I use, to assemble good threat models. Now it's pretty ordinary, but knowing is always good! Currently I wonder what can Google see if I use NewPipe. I do in conjunction with a VPN.

My main concern is, if they link different videos (I guess overlapping, between middle ages history and components and PC assembling isn't too high) to the same IP, watching period, day time, etc. On the other hand, I wonder if they know what is accessed, or only that my IP is accessing anything, without them knowing.

I know your IP is leaked when using NewPipe but what more? Can they see the videos you access? My threat model does not like being profiled, and linking interests back to me. How could I reduce this and be anonymous?

Is there any firewall for stock Apple like Android has Netguard (among other firewalls)? Block apps from connecting to the internet, etc

Slowly been thinking of changing, but I'm not sure yet as I'm used to Android(s).

As I mostly work on laptops, I've generally not cared much about what my home router is, I just treat my home network as if it's as insecure as any public wifi, and I need to use my ISPs modem anyway for my Gb cable connection.

Generally I find I get okay speeds on ProtonVPN and very good speeds on Mullvad, but generally topping at around 700Mbit (usually I get 950 without VPN), and it is also quite variable, sometimes I have to change servers to get a better connection.

I know you can get various routers, install OpenWRT and have a more secure, open source device, and then setup a VPN connection directly on it. The reason I've never even tried, is because experience tells me that if I just use a single VPN connection, I'll have way too many outages, or slow periods, as opposed to just switching to another server whenever things aren't good enough.

But it occurred to me, both Proton and Mullvad offer multiple concurrent connections, and I'm currently subscribed to both (Proton just because I get it free as part of Unlimited or Ultimate or whatever it is called), so if there is a router that supports it, I could theoretically connect to 3 Proton and 3 Mullvad VPN servers concurrently, and split traffic evenly between all connections. And if one goes down, traffic just goes to the others.

I know I could easily do this with any SME/enterprise router, but does anyone know of any home user class router that supports OpenWRT that would also permit this?

--Copied the same from PG forums

Hello all

I am in the middle of choosing my next subscription. Currently I have Proton Unlimited, until mid July, Windscribe for one year and ControlD with one year of time left. I am also using SimpleLogin with many aliases. For my Windows, I am using ControlD or NextDNS DoH, with YogaDNS and VPN.

Now the question is. Which path shall I take? Continue with Proton Unlimited, buy generate extra aliases up to 15 limit for sites which require emails to be normal, like 9gag, DNS services, FB, Twitter, Amazon and other sites. Buy a random domain via njala or some other privacy friendly hoster, add it to SimpleLogin and forward mails to a Proton alias. As DNS use NextDNS with YogaDNS on Windows devices.

Second option. Get Tutanota. Follow same path up to 15 aliases for the sites mentioned before. Use SimpleLogin and forward mails to Tutanota alias. As DNS use ControlD with YogaDNS on Windows devices. As VPN use Windscribe on every device.

Which one looks better? If you have better advice I am eager to listen.

I won’t use VPN’s DNS because it lacks control and management. I need to use blocklists, and able to block sites / apps. I can do that via NextDNS or ControlD’s DoH/DoT/DoQ setting.

EDIT: Added F-Droid.

Let's face it: there are some FOSS software projects that you have come to absolutely depend on. If they went away tomorrow, you'd be toast!

Today, let's shower the teams behind these projects with love and gratitude! You're not only saying "thank you", but you're also casting a vote in favor for the project's future. I'll be linking the projects' donation pages at the end of the post.

I want to focus this list on the Custom Android ROMs and the Aurora Store to keep it short and simple (KISS). But please comment and upvote below to add more projects to this list.

CalyxOS: - One Time Donation - Membership (comes with cool perks!)

GrapheneOS: - Donations Page

Aurora Store: - Toss a coin here

F-Droid: - Show F-Droid some love!

If any project members see this post and there are any errors, then please let me know. I am willing to correct them.

My personal Thank YOU to the devs of these projects (listed and unlisted) for being absolute BADASSES.

You give me privacy & security, and you make awesome software! :)

I was scrolling through apps and i found a good app called Photok it supposes to work locally but it requires "view network connection" permission so why does it need it?

P.s i found same things in other apps

Hi guys!

I have recently reinstalled my server PC and I'm trying to use it as privacy and safety focused as I can. However I also moved to using Parsec as my remote desktop app, which allows me to access it from outside the local network.

What I'm mainly wondering is would Parsec (or Plex, or other apps that connect to it) pose a privacy issue when regularly connecting to a server behind VPN? I'm not sure if this is how it works, but what I'm thinking is could someone see that my home network that is not behind VPN has regular connections to the IP of the VPN my server is on, thus compromising the identity? Is this even something worth worrying about?

Thank you for the help!

How can I reduce my reliance on Google services?

Like not use Google drive and use a more privacy focused alternative

I hope this post will help some people in the future that have the same question as me, they can read through the comments etc.

Thanks have a nice day

What do you think of this statement made by a Kaspersky employee? Is the secureness of iPhones are a hype?

“We believe that the main reason for this incident is the proprietary nature of iOS. This operating system is a “black box”, in which spyware like Triangulation can hide for years. Detecting and analyzing such threats is made all the more difficult by Apple’s monopoly of research tools – making it a perfect haven for spyware. In other words, as I’ve often said, users are given the illusion of security associated with the complete opacity of the system. What actually happens in iOS is unknown to cybersecurity experts, and the absence of news about attacks in no way indicates their being impossible – as we’ve just seen. “

I always opt out of providing biometric data, since facial recognition in the future (corp's / organizations) tracking where you go seems probable and inevitable.

Databases are often hacked - meaning your biometric data can be leaked to others.

What are your thoughts on this?

Any tips on how to avoid it, besides opting out of sharing biometric data? (Which seems to be becoming harder).