For those of you using Proton services to protect your privacy, a new feature is being rolled out which is a self-custody Bitcoin wallet. If you have a proton e-mail address, you can now send and receive Bitcoin automatically. This is in tradition with their long-standing policy of accepting Bitcoin payments for their services.

A few key points to know:

• You and only you have access to the Bitcoin, it is a self-custody wallet. You are not dependent on proton's cooperation to access your funds and they do not hold onto the funds for you.
• Proton automatically translates e-mail addresses to Bitcoin addresses. This means you can send/receive BTC to/from any Proton user by just knowing their e-mail address
• Proton does not support Bitcoin lightning. This means transactions will take an average of 10 minutes for an average fee of 75c. Hopefully they will add lightning in the future so that can drop to under a second for pennies in fees. Lightning would also enhance privacy
• Note that using Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Using it privately and anonymously requires some effort.
• Proton has also put together a good primer on Bitcoin here.

from their blog post:

Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds, questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.

Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.

I’ve been using invidious for a few years. I recently changed up my morning routine and have been eating breakfast watching YouTube via the TV app versus on my PC.

It made me realize I kind of miss the recommended videos in some circumstances like when I just wanna veg out.

Are there any current viable yt front ends that either maintain the algorithm or utilize their own to find you new content?

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683880

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683421

The EU has quietly imposed cash limits EU-wide:

• €3k limit on anonymous payments
• €10k limit regardless (link which also lists state-by-state limits).

From the jailed¹ article:

An EU-wide maximum limit of €10 000 is set for cash payments, which will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money.

It will also strip dignity and autonomy from non-criminal adults, you nannying assholes!

In addition, according to the provisional agreement, obliged entities will need to identify and verify the identity of a person who carries out an occasional transaction in cash between €3 000 and €10 000.

The hunt for “money launderers” and “terrorists” is not likely meaningfully facilitated by depriving the privacy of people involved in small €3k transactions. It’s a bogus excuse for empowering a police surveillance state. It’s a shame how quietly this apparently happened. No news or chatter about it.

¹ the EU’s own website is an exclusive privacy-abusing Cloudflare site inaccessible several demographics of people. Sad that we need to rely on the website of a US library to get equitable access to official EU communication.

update

The Pirate party’s reaction is spot on. They also point out that cryptocurrency is affected. Which in the end amounts to forced banking.

#warOnCash

After reading such news I have an obvious question. Does anyone know a PayPal-like service, that allows to hide the destination of my transactions from Mastercard / bank, but with a good privacy policy? Or how else can I restrict the usage of my financial data by mastercard or bank?

my family is moving into a much bigger house than we used to have. we use amazon echos as an intercom system through the announcement feature. because our house is bigger, i’m being forced to get one myself for my room. i haven’t needed one for years because i use their app on my phone and i can see their announcements as a notification and i can also kill off most of its tracking by DNS. unfortunately my parents don’t understand this and are forcing me to get one. what can i do to limit its tracking?

There are many ways to describe Voice-over-IP, or VoIP. I've seen it called an anonymous, internet, alias, or throwaway phone number (and more). Regardless of the name, I personally consider VoIP to be a healthy part of a good privacy and security strategy. The advantages are endless. For one, VoIP is harder to SIM Swap compared to a normal SIM phone number. VoIP can also help provide you privacy since most SIM numbers can easily be Googled or looked up on any number of the hundreds of people search sites and return information about the carrier and who the number is registered to. On the day-to-day, VoIP – combined with other strategies I recommend on The New Oil – can help reduce spam calls/texts, prevent would-be stalkers, create healthy work/life balances, control what information people (like prospective employers) can find about you, and help compartmentalize or reduce tracking by big corporations. Sadly, VoIP is a tool that's not widely available in many countries, but for those with access to it, VoIP can provide numerous benefits and should at very least be considered. So this week let's explore some of the best VoIP options currently available for consumers.

Ive been on the hunt for a while for something like this. I started looking again since the life360 breach. This is nearly perfect. Just need the iOS app to have a little more support and be in the app store for my less techy friends/family.

Tips to keeping your identity secure, and protecting other members of your community from being accidentally doxxed or forced offline.

Extremely useful, especially for people who coordinate larger protests or online communities.

I just tried changing my email on studentaid.gov to a simplelogin alias (using SL is a habit at this point) and I got notifications that emails from it were bounced while trying to verify the email change with sent codes. I looked it up and found a bunch of Reddit posts about issues with SL and iCloud.

Im considering buying a new phone and i don't really consider a Pixel. I really like Fairphones approach, with the self repairable stuff. Even though they don‘t have a headphone jack. But well… I can’t change it. I’ll definitely go with the adapter over wireless headphones.

But to my question: What private OSes are there? Fairphone sells FP4s with eOS, how is that? And does it work on the FP5? GrapheneOS only works on Google Pixels right?

I just wanted to share that you can disable google play store on stock Android and not lose that much functionality, if for any reason you use an app that require Google play store or you want to make a play store purchase, you can enable it again.

I personally disabled it and I get my apps from Aurora Store, ApkPure and Droidify.

It decreased my phone battery usage by a lot and I am less dependent on google overall.

i want to understand more about WebRTC security when using vpn. id like to know if it is more secure with VPN than without… or even if its recommended to use WebRTC with VPN.

i created a webrtc demo: https://chat.positive-intentions.com/#/webrtc (the corresponding code its created with: https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat/blob/staging/src/components/pages/webrtc/WebRTC.jsx)

if i generate a “WebRTC offer” then i see a bunch of information including my IP address.

if i do the same with VPN, i see that my ip address isnt in that payload.

following the information here: https://thehackernews.com/2015/02/webrtc-leaks-vpn-ip-address.html?m=1

and using the demo here: https://ipleak.net/

it seems even with vpn, the local ISP ip seems detected.

a recurring concern ive had on reddit about the security of my app is that webrtc exposes ip addresses. im investigating using the app with vpn. it seems to work like normal.

in the example details given above, i see while the local ISP IP is exposed, the personal ip address is still hidden. im sure what is exposed there is not worthless, but it could help users with privacy and security.

on the back of this investigation id like to see if i can add something like a toggle in my app called “enforce VPN” which will first check to see if you are on a vpn, and if you are, open the rest of the app.

my app is using peerjs-server as the connection broker. this is a third party i have no contractual agreement to provide me with a service. it could help to hide your IP from this service.

Hi! 2 and 4 months ago @Hellfire103 and @Charger8232 made a post about their privacy setup. So I though I would also share mine.

Remember these rules:

• Be respectful! Some people are early on in their privacy journey, or have a lax threat model. Just because it doesn’t align with yours, or uses some anti-privacy software, doesn’t mean you can downvote them! Help them improve by giving suggestions on alternatives.

• Don’t promote proprietary software! Proprietary software, no matter how good it may seem, is against the community rules, and generally frowned upon. If you aren’t sure, you can always ask! This is a place to learn. Don’t downvote people just because they don’t know!

-** Don’t focus solely on me!** I want to mention that this thread is not designed to pick apart only my setup. The point is to contribute your own and help others. That doesn’t mean you can’t still give suggestions for mine, but don’t prioritize mine over another.

• Be polite! This falls under “Be respectful”, but be kind to everyone! Say please, thank you, and sorry. Lemmy is really good about this, but there will always be someone.

Here is my setup:

Web browsing

• I use Librewolf for almost everything.
• For 3D stuff (games, 3d modelling) I use Brave.
• On mobile I use Vanadium.
• My preferred search engine is Kagi.
• Most if the time I have MullvadVPN enabled.

Desktop and laptop

• I have self-build Ryzen + Radeon PC and Ideapad with Ryzen CPU.
• I use Arch Linux BTW!
• I have disk encryption and Nitrokey as a decryption key (or a long password of course).
• I have secure boot with locked BIOS.
• I'm running self-compiled linux-hardened kernel.
• I'm using Gnome (Wayland).
• I have only open-source apps installed.

Mobile

• I have Google Pixel 7a with GrapheneOS.
• I have different 5 profiles: main, google, school, finance, anonymous.
• I have PIN on every profile and also fingerprint for main and school profiles.
• I always use VPN, either Mullvad or self-hosted Wireguard.
• I don’t use a privacy screen protector (for now).

Messenger

• Signal for my family.
• Viber for my schoolmates.
• MS Teams for school.
• Matrix for help with some open-source projects.
• Discord for voice chat and local scouts group. I have Aliucord on mobile and Armcord on desktop.

Online accounts

• Passwords are safe in self-hosted Bitwarden (Vaultwarden).
• I use 2FA if I can. Either hardware 2FA - Nitrokey, or TOTP with Aegis.
• I use SimpleLogin for email aliases and randomly generated usernames and passwords.

Video streaming

• I watch only Youtube. Newpipe on mobile and Invidious on desktop.

AI

• I do not use AI a lot, but if I do I use locally running LLama3 8B or Duckduckgo's LLama3 70B

Social Media

• I had Instagram, Snapchat and Viber accounts, but I've deleted them.
• I use only Lemmy on clearweb and Dread on darkweb.
• I have Mastodon account, but I don't use it.

Email

• I use ProtonMail.
• One of the best privacy things you can do is use SimpleLogin (or other email alias service).

Shopping/Finance

• IRL I use cash most of the time.
• Online I use Monero if I can, otherwise just my credit card.
• Cashew app for helping managing my purchases.

Music streaming

• I use only RiMusic on my phone, that's it.

TV shows

• I use a VPN, that's all I'm gonna say...

Gaming

• Minecraft, Veloren, SuperTuxKart, and some Steam games.

Programming

• I forgot how to code in Python, because Rust is so much better.
• VS Codium.

Productivity

• LibreOffice for simple stuff.
• Typst for proper documents.

Paid services

• ProtonMail - 4$ per month
• SimpleLogin - 30$ per year
• MullvadVPN - 5$ per month
• Kagi - 10$ per month. For 5$ you get 300 searches, I use ~350 searches so I will try to lower my searches.
• Domain - 13$ per year

Self-hosted

• Everything runs on Raspberry Pi 4 with encrypted micro SD card.
• Pi-Hole for blocking ads on network level.
• Bitwarden (Vaultwarden) for storing all my passwords.
• Wireguard server (with pihole as DNS) for connecting back home from anywhere.
• Ntfy for self-hosted push notifications.
• MollySocket for Signal push notifications.
• FindMyDevice if I lost my phone.
• Cloudflare DDNS, because I don't have static IP.
• Nginx Proxy Manager.
• Watchtower automatically updates docker containers.
• My website.

Misc

• I have Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 classic. I'm trying to do something about it...
• I'm using Syncthing to sync documents and pictures between my devices.
• I don't have a car (because I can't - I'm 17) and I won't have one for quite some time. I have a bicycle and my parents have 2 (smart/spy) cars.
• I'm into crypto (mostly XMR) and I'm trading a little (making a trading bot) on MEXC. I also have Ledger Nano S Plus.
• I have a 3d printer and it's fun and usefull :)

TODO

• self-host Git repos for my projects.
• Buy a privacy screen protector when I break my current one.
• Buy a faraday bag, just in case.
• Do something about my spywatch (maybe sell).
• Make backups... Yep, I don't have any yet.
• Monitor and harden all my devices.
• Memorize cryptowallet's private key in case it gets lost.

Thanks for reading!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17746311

This release, I2P 2.6.0, continues our work by fixing bugs, adding features, and improving the network's reliability.

Newer routers will be favored when selecting floodfill routers. I2PSnark received features which improve the performance of PeX(Peer Exchange), in addition to bug fixes. Legacy transport protocols are being removed, simplifying the code in the UDP transports. Locally-hosted destination will be reachable by local clients without requesting their LeaseSet, improving performance and testability. Additional tweaks were made to peer selection strategies.

I2P no longer allows I2P-over-Tor, connections from Tor exit IP addresses are now blocked. We discourage this because it degrades the performance of I2P and uses up the resources of Tor exits for no benefit. If you are a helpful person running both a Tor Exit and I2P we encourage you to continue to do so, using different IP addresses for each. Non-exit relays and Tor clients are unaffected by this and do not need to change anything.

As usual, we recommend that you update to this release. The best way to maintain security and help the network is to run the latest release.

RELEASE DETAILS Changes

• Router: Increase minimum version for floodfill routers

• Router: Disable I2P over Tor

• Address Book: Cache locally hosted destinations

Bug Fixes

• I2PSnark: Peer Exchange Tweaks

• I2PSnark: Bugfixes

• Router: Peer Selection Tweaks

Other

• Translation updates

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/17104927

After the news about FBI accesing trump shooters phone some people are speculating that they copied the phone storage so that they could bruteforce it without getting locked out if that is true is there anyway to make it so that your digital device can't be copied without the passwd if someone has physical acess to it and all the bruteforcing etc have to be done on the original device itself so we have a better chance of privacy . I am a layman but i use a good enough password on my phone and encrypt some sd card storage (which i knoe can be copied bcause i do it myself) but if the phones whole storage can be copied it seems kinda pointless . so my questions are :

1 Does new smartphones do it by default ?if so how is wiping the phone when forgetting password possible ?

2 does full disk encryption do this ?

3 Does windows (8) have any thing that could do this for micro sd card and smartphone ? (some background is i only have a windows 8 craptop and it takes ages to load and Microsoft appstore nor sideloading works now encrypting the laptop is not needed as i barely do anything on it but was thinking if i could encrypt my phone or sd card using it (it is really really slow (think can't even load MS word in an hour slow) ) if not see question 4 )also before you ask can't install linux tried and failed.

4 beside from encrypting certain files using file manager encryption can i encrypt my sd card on android itself by using any app ? (preferably from fdroid ) .

5 is all these even possible or is our only option hoping that our passwds are too complex to be bruteforced ?

6 also many people talk about updating your OS to increasing security but what about outdated hardware ? do they posses a risk or things like USB,sd cards etc which doesn't get any update ? Do they suffer security risk as time moves on ? is that even a thing ?

Try to answer questions in these format pardon my ignorance and grammer even if i delete my acc feel free to still comment so it can be useful to others and i may still drop in to see the answers .

idk how crossposting works but i have also made this post on asklemmy .

I have Galaxy Watch 4 and Pixel with GrapheneOS. Currently I have second profile with galaxy wearable and google play services for connecting to the watch. Before I've installed graphene I was using my watch as any other person, for notifications, sports, etc. Now I use it only for checking what time is it and developing apps. I can see my sports activity only for a week back, because samsung health only works on main profile.

Is there a way for me to use my watch on main profile without google and samsung apps? Maybe with some alternative app? Or should I sold my watch and buy a new one? I've heard good things about garmin and polaris? I would love option to develop my own apps on them.

I want to keep a timeline of the places I go like Google Maps can, and export it to mac for my diary*. The maps app doesn't have to be great, it just needs to keep a timeline in the background, I would still use Apple Maps as my main navigation app.

*(ideally I can automatically export it somehow, perhaps with the Shortcuts and Scriptable app but just tell me any apps with a timeline and export feature)

I've just been playing around with https://browserleaks.com/fonts . It seems no web browser provides adequate protection for this method of fingerprinting -- in both brave and librewolf the tool detects rather unique fonts that I have installed on my system, such as "IBM Plex" and "UD Digi Kyokasho" -- almost certainly a unique fingerprint. Tor browser does slightly better as it does not divulge these "weird" fonts. However, it still reveals that the google Noto fonts are installed, which is by far not universal -- on a different machine, where no Noto fonts are installed, the tool does not report them.

For extra context: I've tested under Linux with native tor browser and flatpak'd Brave and Librewolf.

What can we do to protect ourselves from this method of fingerprinting? And why are all of these privacy-focused browsers vulnerable to it? Is work being done to mitigate this?

What is the general consensus on trusting data removal services with the data you provide them?

I’ve spent 5 years telling myself I’ll go through the long lists of data aggregators and one by one manually send removal requests. But it’s such a massive undertaking. I’d like to finally get it done through one of these services, but my gut tells me it feels wrong.

Has anybody used them and how do you feel about it? Is DeleteMe a good choice?