There’s a reason that cookies and privacy policies (in the EU at least) have become such an online nuisance. These assurances of your safety and privacy are nothing more than a pretext to get consent. Your “anonymised” data is sold to an infinite regress of third parties, analysed, correlated and de-anonymised again. Any smart device you use, your browsing habits, banking transactions, your GPS position are all used to deduce fine grain information about you. Then weaponised against you for as much profit as possible.

I'm looking into getting my own domain to use for email for both my partner and I. I was initially considering using both or first initials followed by our last name (example: ajsmith.tld for Ann and John Smith) but then got to thinking about it and realized that might not be best for privacy. It looks great in a professional setting (like job applications, bills, taxes, etc.), though. So I'm unsure. I'm curios what other privacy concerned people are doing. The main goal is to not have to worry about changing account emails when we change email providers.

Edit: thanks everyone! Lots more replies than I expected and lots of good advice. I ended up going with lastname.tld domain and will combine that with aliases for privacy where needed. I might buy a fun domain later as well but for now this works.

Are VPN good for privacy today, should we used them to protect our privacy?

Not free, none have all advantages and wouldn't let my ISP only know my traffic so these times I'm really overwhelmed by all of this

Used Tor for a bit but it's not practically useful, slow (okay but not the main problem) and blocked by a lot of websites..

Maybe a chain of VPN could be good? I really don't know, can you help me?

Basically I don't want to have no protection but don't think VPNs are really the solution...

PS: maybe a rented machine with self hosted like VPN could be good?

Because it's kind of hard! Even if I follow their instructions. Maybe I'm just dumb . . . 🙁

Tor is off the table for me because it's so slow. If you can point to some test sites or documentation that supports your choice, please include!

I have had PIA for years on desktop and mobile with firefox and it's been fine. Any reason I should consider switching, or is it still generally good for privacy?

I occasionally torrent. But I'd like to browse and post politically sensitive content safely. Here on Lemmy, but also other non federated places.

Thanks

How come?

I have 2 concerns:

1. I recently read the firefox Terms Of Use paragraph that people are posting which doesn't sound nice in terms of privacy.

2. Back when Mozilla had their own Mastodon instance called mozilla.social, every time I signed in I would be blasted with trackers according to uBlock Origin.

I'm no expert in these things and I want to ask if anyone recommends that I switch away from Thunderbird Mail and if so, which open source email client? Thanks in advance.

Hello 👋

Disclaimer I would switch to try grapheneos if I could currently my phone from Verizon apparently can not have it's bootloader unlocked so...

I am looking for launcher suggestions that are maybe less intrusive if that's possible. I mostly just want to get rid of the Google search at the bottom and the 'at a glance' at the top of the home page I can't figure it out.

Edit: forgot my phone model 'Pixel 8 Pro'

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/23170564

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/

To replace everything. Mail, calendar, drive, vpn, password manager, documents etc. What are the pros and cons relative to proton? What are the mobile apps like? What assurances do you have they won't go full proton in the future? And other questions

The DHS quietly updated its policy manual earlier this month, removing LGBTQ+ identities from the section prohibiting surveillance based solely on immutable characteristics.

With the recent news of Apple disabling iCloud encryption in the UK I'm wondering if now is the time to switch from iOS to GrapheneOS, however I have a few questions before I consider switching.

Firstly I know the ideal way to use it is without Google play services, however it looks like thats needed for my banking app (which also apparently only works under the owner profile so I don't have the option of having a separate profile for Google play apps). I believe it would also be needed for notifications on Whatsapp and Facebook messenger (I know they're shit but I can't convince everyone else to move). In terms of how much data Google/Apple can harvest how does GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google play services compare to iOS which I believe also sandboxes all apps by default? I've always used iOS previously so I don't fully understand what Google play services does on stock Android or how much better the sandboxing truly makes it.

Secondly what are the best options for backups? It seems like seedvault is USB only, ideally I'd like to be able to backup to my home server. The main thing would probably just be my photos and Whatsapp messages if its not possible to do full device backups.

I also have a couple of questions about the pixel hardware. There's currently an offer on so I can currently get a pixel 7a for £280, that seems like a good price but I know the pixel 9a is releasing soon, is the 8a likely to drop much in price after that? I don't know how quickly the prices drop but considering the 8a is currently £500 I can't see it dropping to <£300

Also I hear a lot of good things about the pixel cameras, is that still the case with GrapheneOS or is that just because of Google's proprietary camera app? I'm not a massive camera user so its not a deal-breaker either way.

Lastly, I know this will mostly be speculation but I'd be interested in people's thoughts on the future of GrapheneOS and alternatives with stuff like the play integrity API. Do you think it will get to the point where 90% of apps no longer function or do you think most developers will ignore it?

Flock Safety’s car-tracking cameras have been spreading across the United States like an invasive species, preying on public safety fears and gobbling up massive amounts of sensitive driver data. The technology not only tracks vehicles by their license plates, but also creates “fingerprints” of each vehicle, including the make, model, color and other distinguishing features.

Through crowdsourcing and open-source research, DeFlock.me aims to “shine a light on the widespread use of ALPR technology, raise awareness about the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties, and empower the public to take action.” While EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance project has identified more than 1,700 agencies using ALPRs, DeFlock has mapped out more than 16,000 individual camera locations, more than a third of which are Flock Safety devices.

Flock Safety’s cease and desist later is just the latest in a long list of groups turning to bogus intellectual property claims to silence their critics.

I'm using Proton right now. Someone suggest I should get a Gmail instead for higher chance of success. Is that true? How risky is it for Google sanning those mails in terms of privacy?

I use LineageOS with MicroG on my phone. If I quickly press the Power On/Off-button repeatedly it plays an alarm and dials a call for help. This is probably in all android versions, I don't know.
I know biometric unlocking is dangerous, because it can be forced. But it's incredible convenient 99,99% of the time. Wouldn't it be rather easy to implement an option to switch off biometric unlocking when doing the emergency clicking? Or is there already another option? I'm sure I'm not the first genius to think about it.

No photo

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/18846267

I've been trying different search engines and was pleasently surprised by startpage so i started looking into startmail too and then when i searched for startmail i saw they have a link directly to their dan bongino section https://www.startmail.com/bongino so thats a huge pass from me

EDIT: looks like they saw this thread or something and decided to have the link redirect to the homepage with the discount applied and removed his picture etc from their website. Here's an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250120094905/https://www.startmail.com/bongino/

Hi guys As the title suggests Bitwarden's Inline autofill doesn't work in Brave Android for me but it works flawlessly in Other browsers (DuckDuckGo and vanadium) and apps (via Android autofill framework) I have in my phone (pixel running GrapheneOS). Is there any setting I need to change in Brave? Is this a common Brave issue?