I want to poison as much of my online data as I can, and I know that companies can get it anyway if I delete it, but if I were to spam sheer volume, it would cost more than it’s worth to try and sort it.

Dad uses windows and the main device I use is his laptop, and I understand that Microsoft scrapes everything they can. He’s going to reset his laptop soon, so all the junk is erased, but would it be possible to temporarily poison most data on there (from ms perspective) until it’s reset?

Would it be possible to do that on other things too, say corporate owned software, social media, etc?

I debated whether to post this as the privacy community already has excellent websites with https://www.privacyguides.org/ and https://www.privacytools.io/ (which is actually metric on the site).

However, I really tried to focus on newcomers who might be less technical. So I really hope that this can be a useful resource, whether it is for you starting this journey, or friends/family who could use the help.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7023519

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/13276

Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations, drone footage, biometric data and artificial intelligence tools.

This all-encompassing surveillance system is “reshaping how people speak, how they’re moving, how they’re even thinking,” says Mhawish. “It manufactured behavior for people, so they shrink their lives to reduce risk, they rehearse what version of themselves feels safest to present, and that creates an enormous psychological burden.”

Mhawish also describes the terror of when his family’s house was bombed, killing two of his cousins and two neighbors in an attack he says was linked to Israeli surveillance of his reporting activities. “I was being watched and tracked,” he says.

Source

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

Summary: My father, who has over 30 compromised accounts, tells me not to install Ironfox (aka one of the most secure browsers for Android) and F-Droid.

Background: I discovered that my father has a phone with LineageOS and asked if I could use it. He said yes because he no longer used it.

Today I started using it, saw what it was like, and it wasn't much different from Android.

I was having some trouble putting some songs on that phone, so I asked him for help.

He went to the Google Play Store and installed Files by Google after logging into my account.

My account has parental controls, so that phone had parental controls too.

I was supposed to use that phone maybe to use once or twice a month and see what a phone without Google services was like (which I couldn't disable now because it had parental controls).

So, after finding out what that phone had become, I tried to do a factory reset, but I couldn't.

Then (somehow) I managed to convince my parents to remove the parental controls, but my dad started saying, "Don't be surprised if your information ends up in strange places because you installed browsers from outside the Play Store (in this case, it was Cromite and Ironfox) and for running FTP servers (which I was only using to transfer some music I had on another site)."

Sorry for the long text 😅

I've heard that they ask for a Gmail account to sign up for the phone service.

I know that it's a T-Mobile mvno.

My question: Does everything people do on the internet using Google Fi mobile data get logged by Google?

Bandcamp, specifically. I already buy music there and i don't plan to stop unless the artists i like move somewhere else. Currently i have to be careful with my files and/or keep the download links for albums i buy if i want to make sure i never lose them (which i do). The main reason i might make an account is just so all those download links are in one place.

Given that i already use Bandcamp, do i stand to lose anything or give them anything extra by making an account instead of continuing to buy stuff without one? I skimmed their privacy policy and didn't see anything specific to people who do or don't have an account.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7003237

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12825

Visiting the US as a tourist could soon become significantly more onerous under a new plan being mulled by the Trump administration.

According to a Tuesday report in the New York Times, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this week filed a new proposal that would force visitors to submit up to five years' worth of social media posts for inspection before being allowed to enter the country.

In addition to social media history, CPB says it plans to ask prospective tourists to provide them with email addresses they've used over the last decade, as well as "the names, birth dates, places of residence, and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings, and children."

The policy would apply even to citizens of countries that have long been US allies, including the UK, Germany, Australia, and Japan, which have long been exempt from visa requirements.

Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Times that the CBP policy would "exacerbate civil liberties harms."

Cope added that such policies have "not proven effective at finding terrorists and other bad guys" but have instead "chilled the free speech and invaded the privacy of innocent travelers, along with that of their American family, friends and colleagues."

Journalist Bethany Allen, head of China investigations at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, expressed shock that the US would take such drastic measures to scrutinize the social media posts of tourists.

"Wow," she wrote in a post on X, "even China doesn't do this."

In addition to concerns about civil liberties violations, there are also worries about what the new policy would do to the US tourism industry.

The Times noted in its report that several tourism-dependent businesses last month signed a letter opposing an administration proposal to collect a $250 "visa integrity fee," and one travel industry official told the paper that the CBP's new proposal appears to be "a significant escalation in traveler vetting."

The American tourism industry has already taken a blow during President Donald Trump's second term, even without a policy of forcing tourists to share their social media history.

A report released on Wednesday from Democrats on the Senate's Joint Economic Committee (JEC) found that US businesses that have long depended on tourism from Canada to stay afloat have been getting hit hard, as Canadian tourists stay away in protest of Trump's trade war against their country.

Overall, the report found that "the number of passenger vehicles crossing the US-Canada border declined by nearly 20% compared to the same time period in 2024, with some states seeing declines as large as 27%."

Elizabeth Guerin, owner of New Hampshire-based gift shop Fiddleheads, told the JEC that Canadians used to make up to a quarter of her custom base, but now "I can probably count the number of Canadian visitors on one hand."

Christa Bowdish, owner of the Vermont-based Old Stagecoach Inn, told the JEC that she feared a long-term loss in Canadian customers, even if Trump ended his feud with the nation tomorrow.

"This is long-lasting damage to a relationship and emotional damage takes time to heal," she said. "While people aren’t visiting Vermont, they’ll be finding new places to visit, making new memories, building new family traditions, and we will not recapture all of that."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

OG title: We need to talk... about the Proton ecosystem

Ecosystem is a trap. It lures you in with the promise of convenience, only to lock you inside a walled garden. Like Google and Apple. They start with a good product, but then force you to use the whole suite to get the full experience. This is dangerous.

Ecosystems are concentrating all of your data and your digital life in the hands of a single entity. An entity that grows so large and powerful that it will start making compromises against your rights only to find more ways to profit or protect their business. The larger the ecosystem, the bigger data harvester it becomes. It becomes a bigger target for hackers and the more products it offers the more data it has to give to the surveillance state.

We know that the big tech does this, because their only moral value is the shareholder value. [4] But when a private company starts quacking like a duck in the steps of the big tech, it should worry us the same way. That company is Proton. The maker of the most renowned privacy products that have always been meant as ethical alternatives to the big tech.

Today, Proton resembles more and more the ecosystems of Google and Apple than it does its noble origins of fighting the big tech. This is a problem. It’s a problem for your privacy and it’s a problem for the whole community. But you probably never of heard of this perspective, because none of this is talked about enough. There is a reason for this.

You see, most content on Proton you’ll find, is coming from sources that are sponsored or affiliated with Proton. And I know how lucrative Proton’s deals are, because Proton even tried to pay me. Of course, I refused their offer, because taking their money would incentivize me not to recommend against Proton products. I am uniquely positioned to give you a nuanced critique of Proton and how to solve this problem.

Some good points to be said. I find the overall argument a bit weak as it is mainly one of user erorr of sorts. Btw THO has some pretty good back log of videos on privacy; check out their stuff on burners phones and anonymizing yourself at a protest.

Some people say it's really privacy-giving and that you should use it as a privacy alternative. Others say it's alao on the big tech side. What's going on with telegram, really?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40010335

In early September, a woman, nine months pregnant, walked into the emergency obstetrics unit of a Colorado hospital. Though the labor and delivery staff caring for her expected her to have a smooth delivery, her case presented complications almost immediately.

The woman, who was born in central Asia, checked into the hospital with a smart watch on her wrist, said two hospital workers who cared for her during her labor, and whom the Guardian is not identifying to avoid exposing their hospital or patients to retaliation.

The device was not an ordinary smart watch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled. She told them that, just days earlier, she had been put on a deportation flight to Mexico, but the pilot refused to let her fly because she was so close to giving birth.

The woman’s fear only grew from there, according to the hospital workers. Her delivery wasn’t progressing the way the care team hoped, and she needed a C-section, a procedure that requires doctors to use a cauterizing tool to minimize bleeding. To prevent possible burning and electrocution, patients are instructed to take off all jewelry or metals before the surgery. The mandatory watch had no way to be easily removed, nor was information about whether it would be safe to wear during the procedure readily available. Hospital staff didn’t know how to contact ICE to ask what to do. When hospital staff told the woman they might have to cut the smart watch off, she panicked, the workers said.

Staff eventually did remove the device, and ICE agents did not show up at the hospital during the delivery. The nurses said they do not know what happened to the woman after she left the hospital with her baby.

The woman was one of three pregnant patients wearing a location-tracking smart watch whom these two workers encountered in their ER in the last few months, they said. BI Inc and alternative to detention

The watches are built and operated by BI Inc, a company specializing in monitoring tech that runs the US government’s largest immigrant surveillance operation. The program, Alternative to Detention (ATD), allows select immigrants to await their day in court at home rather than in detention, provided they subscribe to intense monitoring.

When immigrants are enrolled in ATD, they are assigned one or more types of supervision. Some have to wear an ankle monitor, some a smart watch. Some are required to complete regularly scheduled facial recognition scans at their home using a BI Inc app, others are mandated to go into a BI Inc or ICE office for regular in-person check-ins.

The smart watch, officially called the VeriWatch, was introduced two years ago by BI Inc. It was first piloted under the Biden administration and framed as a more discrete alternative to the less digitally equipped ankle monitor, which BI also manufactures and supplies to ICE. As the Guardian previously reported, immigrants wearing the ankle monitors have complained about the stigma that comes with wearing the conspicuous device as well as physical pain caused by the monitors, including electric shocks and cuts from devices that are strapped on too tightly.

Nearly 200,000 people are currently enrolled in the program, and many of them have become increasingly fearful of being considered out of compliance as the Trump administration works to deport immigrants en masse. There have been several cases of people in the program showing up to a mandated, regular in-person check-in with immigration officials, believing they will continue in the ATD program, only to be detained.

All three women encountered by the Colorado hospital staff were reluctant to take their monitors off, fearing that doing so would trigger an alert to ICE or BI Inc, the staff said, even if removing the device was deemed medically necessary.

One of the women went into the ER for a C-section and was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a complication that can cause significant swelling. Staff were worried her smartwatch would cut off her circulation.

“She was in tears about it. She had this deep fear that ICE was going to come to the hospital and take her baby,” one of the staff said. The hospital worker’s shift ended before the patient underwent the C-section. They said they do not know whether the staff who took over the patient’s case convinced her to cut off the watch.

The confusion and fear surrounding the wrist monitor caused delays in the hospital’s ability to provide adequate and necessary care for these women, the workers said, though the patients delivered their babies safely.

“Waiting and trying to figure these things out even when things are not super emergent can cause something emergent to happen,” one of the workers said. “Sometimes in birth, doing a C-section 20 minutes before something bad happens can prevent it.”

The workers pointed out that when they treat patients wearing a monitor issued by the state Department of Corrections, there is a protocol in place to remove it ahead of medical procedures. Trump’s chaotic crackdown

Hospital staff from across the US who spoke to the Guardian say the confusion brought on by monitoring devices is just one of several ways Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is affecting medical care, and comes as immigrant patients are increasingly fearful of seeking out treatment.

One of the staff at the Colorado hospital said she’s had at leastthree pregnant patients show up for their first-ever prenatal appointment at anytime between 34 and 38 weeks – well into their third trimester and long after pregnant women are recommended to begin going to consistent doctor appointments.

In California, hospital workers have also noticed a drop this year in immigrants not just seeking emergency care but also showing up for regular doctor visits or vaccinations, according to the California Nurses Association president, Sandy Reding.

“Obviously it has a cascading effect,” Reding said. “If you don’t see your doctor regularly then the outcomes are worse and you wait until you have a crisis to go to the ER.”

In Chicago, CommunityHealth, one of the largest volunteer-based health centers in the country, documented an overall drop in visits per patient and patient retention between 2024 and 2025 due to immigration enforcement activity in the city. In June, the organization observed a 30% dip in patients showing up for their appointments and around a 40% drop in patients picking up their medication since Trump took office.

Neither ICE nor BI Inc responded to requests for comment. ICE previously told the Guardian that there is no evidence the ankle monitors have caused physical harm and that the ATD program was effective at increasing court appearance rates among immigrants facing removal. skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion Vague procedures, concrete problems

The lack of procedure to have ankle or wrist monitors removed in medical emergencies has affected more than just pregnant women. In one July 2025 case, ICE responded to a man’s request to remove his ankle monitor because of a medical issue by detaining him, according to a court petition filed on his behalf by immigrant rights group Amica, which the Guardian reviewed.

The man came to the US from Bangladesh to seek political asylum, and was told he had to wear an ankle monitor while his claim was pending. Suffering from nerve damage in one leg, he obtained a note from a medical clinic requesting the monitor be removed. His lawyer sent the note to the ICE officer on the case but never heard back. During his first check-in at the BI offices, the man brought the medical note to the BI Inc employee assigned to the case, who suggested the man might be able to move the ankle monitor to his other leg. But after the man’s lawyer called ICE to inquire about moving the ankle monitor, the BI case manager informed the man that ICE officers were coming to the BI office to speak with him. They arrested and detained the man, according to the petition.

“He explained that he was just asking for the ankle monitor to be put on the other leg, and the officer told him it was ‘too late’,” the petition reads.

In 2009, ICE discontinued the use of ankle monitors for pregnant women and people whose medical conditions made it “inappropriate” to wear them. But former BI Inc staff as well as immigrants rights groups Amica and American Friends Services Committee said they are concerned that these exceptions are not always enforced. That exception also doesn’t apply to smart watches, a June 2025 ICE memo shows.

The ICE memo instructs agency staffers to put ankle monitors on anyone enrolled in ATD. Dawnisha M Helland, an ICE acting assistant director in the management of non-detained immigrants, wrote that the only group who would not be given ankle monitors were pregnant women. Instead, pregnant women in ATD would wear the smart watch.

Though it resembles a typical consumer smart watch, the VeriWatch is not less restrictive than the ankle monitor. Like the ankle monitor, the wrist watch can’t be removed by the person wearing it. ICE had the option of using a removable version of the watch, according to a 2023 request for information DHS published. The agency chose a different direction; it currently only uses a watch that cannot be removed except by an ICE or authorized BI agent, according to two former DHS officials and two former BI employees.

Immigrants in the program are not told what to do with their ankle or wrist monitors in case of medical emergencies, and BI staff were not authorized to approve the removal of the monitors without first speaking to ICE, the two former BI Inc. staff recalled.

There’s not always time in emergency cases to wait for approval from ICE to cut off the monitors, the Colorado hospital workers said. One of the Colorado staff said they’re deeply concerned about how this unremovable watch will continue to impact vulnerable pregnant women.

“They’re looking at people who literally can’t speak up, who have no legal resources, who are not American citizens, and are pregnant. They’re asking themselves what they can get away with in terms of violating civil liberties for these patients,” the employee said. “That’s the true pilot program: How far can they overreach?” Internal alarm

Healthcare workers are not the only ones sounding the alarm over surveillance’s interference with medical care. Two former Department of Homeland Security officials told the Guardian that the lack of protocols for immigrants surveilled under ATD with exigent medical issues is a symptom of a larger issue with the way BI Inc and ICE run the program. As the Guardian previously reported, immigrants surveilled under ATD and BI Inc employees alike have long complained that the program is highly discretionary. They said that many of the decisions about how, why or how long a given person was mandated to wear an ankle monitor or a smart watch were left to individual case workers.

BI Inc, which started off as a cattle monitoring company, and its parent company the Geo Group, which develops detention centers, private prisons, and rehabilitation facilities, have been given the exclusive DHS contract to operate all aspects of the ATD program since its inception in 2004. That’s despite previous attempts by ICE leadership under Joe Biden’s administration to break the contract up into three parts rather than awarding the entirety of the contract to Geo Group, a company that has served as a landing spot for former ICE and DHS officials.

At its peak, BI Inc monitored approximately 370,000 immigrants under the Biden administration as part of a policy that put every head of household crossing the border on ATD. The tally decreased in 2025 to about 180,000 people, due in part to high costs of putting so many people on ATD, former DHS officials said. As Trump’s second administration supercharged immigration enforcement and greenlit a $150bn surge in funding for ICE, though, Geo Group executives expressed confidence they could reach the same height by the second half of 2025. The goal, the executives have said, is to monitor all 7.5 million people listed on the federal government’s non-detained docket, the list of non-citizens who have not been detained but are subject to removal.

However, the Trump administration has focused on deportation and detention rather than monitoring, and the number of immigrants enrolled in ATD and wearing ankle monitors or other GPS tracking devices has hovered around 180,000, much to the dismay of Geo Group executives.

“Now the count has been fairly stable, which is a little disappointing, obviously,” George Zoley, the GEO Group founder and executive chairman of the board, said during the company’s November earnings call.

ICE awarded another two-year-contract to BI Inc to manage ATD in September. Executives have said they’re pleased that the agency is prioritizing using the company’s more expensive ankle monitors on those immigrants already in ATD rather than the more cost-effective tools like the company’s facial recognition app, Smart Link.

Under the Biden administration, several departments within DHS attempted to address the lack of consistent policy around how ICE should run ATD. In December 2022, DHS hosted 100 non-governmental organizations as well as members of academia and private industry to discuss how to bring more “uniform standards to govern” ATD. That two year effort to draft guidelines in a document, initially titled Non-Detained Management Standards, was ultimately scuttled by ICE and BI, said Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director for regulatory affairs and police at ICE under the Biden administration. Another former DHS official confirmed his account. The draft standards were never made public.

“The program is really structured for the benefit of BI and not for the benefit of the non-citizens who were going to be managed through it,” said Shuchart. “Therefore ERO [ICE’s enforcement and removal arm] was extremely resistant to bring rationalization and consistent policy into it.”

Are there any open-source tools that allow me to disable telemetry for Adobe, Windows, Microsoft, NVIDIA, AMD, GitHub Desktop, Docker Desktop, VS Code, and other applications? How can I disable telemetry and enhance my overall Windows experience?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40009551

https://www.404media.co/man-charged-for-wiping-phone-before-cbp-could-search-it/

A man in Atlanta has been arrested and charged for allegedly deleting data from a Google Pixel phone before a member of a secretive Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit was able to search it, according to court records and social media posts reviewed by 404 Media. The man, Samuel Tunick, is described as a local Atlanta activist in Instagram and other posts discussing the case. The exact circumstances around the search—such as why CBP wanted to search the phone in the first place—are not known. But it is uncommon to see someone charged specifically for wiping a phone, a feature that is easily accessible in some privacy and security-focused devices. 💡 Do you know anything else about this case? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co. The indictment says on January 24, Tunick “did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control.” The indictment itself was filed in mid-November. Tunick was arrested earlier this month, according to a post on a crowd-funding site and court records. “Samuel Tunick, an Atlanta-based activist, Oberlin graduate, and beloved musician, was arrested by the DHS and FBI yesterday around 6pm EST. Tunick's friends describe him as an approachable, empathetic person who is always finding ways to improve the lives of the people around him,” the site says. Various activists have since shared news of Tunick’s arrest on social media.

The indictment says the phone search was supposed to be performed by a supervisory officer from a CBP Tactical Terrorism Response Team. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote in 2023 these are “highly secretive units deployed at U.S. ports of entry, which target, detain, search, and interrogate innocent travelers.” “These units, which may target travelers on the basis of officer ‘instincts.’ raise the risk that CBP is engaging in unlawful profiling or interfering with the First Amendment-protected activity of travelers,” the ACLU added. The Intercept previously covered the case of a sculptor and installation artist who was detained at San Francisco International Airport and had his phone searched. The report said Gach did not know why, even years later. Court records show authorities have since released Tunick, and that he is restricted from leaving the Northern District of Georgia as the case continues. The prosecutor listed on the docket did not respond to a request for comment. The docket did not list a lawyer representing Tunick.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54712925

According to the document, the CPB also plans to request numerous additional personal data in the ESTA application. This includes all – including professional – phone numbers and email addresses used in the past five or ten years, names and phone numbers of close family members, as well as their birth dates and places. Biometric data is also included.

It appears that even if you don't have the app installed, it is in Settings > Apps. But there's no option at all, to customise its privacy settings.

Downloading the app also doesn't let you customise its privacy settings. In fact, the app then disappears altogether from the privacy settings! It doesn't even appear anymore in the "Hidden Apps". Removing it again however, shows the app popping up again in the settings.

What's more, it's deliberately erroneously labelled as "Start Screen" when you don't have downloaded it.

Ridiculous. One more reason to go to a Fairphone or something like it.

However, you can edit it... but very cumbersomely, only by going to Settings > Siri > App Access ... and then suddenly, you see the app!

This seems like it's straight up illegal.

Manyverse is a social networking app with features you would expect: posts, likes, profiles, private messages, etc. But it's not running in the cloud owned by a company, instead, your friends' posts and all your social data live entirely in your phone. This way, even when you're offline, you can scroll, read anything, and even write posts and like content! When your phone is back online, it syncs the latest updates directly with your friends' phones, through a shared local Wi-Fi or on the internet.

We're building this free and open source project as a community effort because we believe in non-commercial, neutral, and fair mobile communication for everyone.

( Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39867783

When seeding a file. Let's say a movie, and all I see are a lot of connections where others try to download that movie. However, they remain at 0% and never download anything.

Almost feels like its something watching, logging connections to everyone connected to that torrent. Just a theory.. No idea. (Privacy conscious)

Maybe someone can shed some light?

SearxNG instances are not working as well these days and I want something more reliable. I will just pay a subscription. Swiss cows is pushing subscriptions and I'm good with paying. Never tried Kagi.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39947303

Cities: Eugene and Springfield, OR

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39835035

Privacy is worth fighting for.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I've decided to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS as my next phone and I'm trying to decide the pros and cons of putting a SIM card in it. Convenience vs privacy, public wifi with a VPN vs using phone data, etc.

I can't get a SIM card where I live without ID and I'm looking to reduce being tracked as much as possible. Does anyone else do the same thing?

I want to use PGP in Addy.io so I can at least encrypt the subjects (full encryption strips HTML) before it sends onto my receipt address @customdomain.tld in mailbox.

I also want to encrypt everything received to mailbox (encryption at rest, but not zero knowledge)

I'll won't use the mailbox web app and will use the private key(s) in my mail client.

Should I use one key for both services, or two keys?

I know both services could make a copy before they encrypt with the key, but I'm ok with thst risk. I also know about proton and simple login, but I'm not a fan of proton at this stage.

A followup. I might want others to send an encrypted email to name@customdomain.tld hosted at Addy.io

Should I make an individual public key linked to the email address I give the sender?

Although new to PGP I understand the basics of i, and that a key can have any email address. I'm just not sure what's best practice in this setup.

I was looking for a Google Drive alternative. Its mainly for storing small documents. 10GB is Filen's limit on their free plan. Its more than enough.

But I am concerned about their privacy. Have anyone used it? I am ready to pay for a really good service but if they are giving it for free than I why should I pay if they are private enough?

They also have paid ones but they are an overkill for me. I mainly use offline HDD backups. These are for some quick access files. I don't need an app or anything. Simple web login would be fine.