https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage

I hope that my rooted One UI 7 doesn't get the update through some backdoor in the Google Play Services package... Or the next time I unblock Google Play to update the very few paid apps that I use...

Page 35. I haven't confirmed anything, so do your own research!

Happy new privacy respecting year!

Edit/Solved: Thank you for all the great input! Both on alternative solutions and on security implications. I'm going to make a draft on how I would setup the e-mail method as securely as possible as a programming/scripting exercise, but will IRL probably end up using either some reverse tunnel/shell variant.

Edit 2: or, as a hardware solution, install an extra NIC that I expose to the opennet - thus enabling remote port forwarding - while binding all my sensitive processes/traffic to my encrypted NIC.

I cannot ssh into my Linux box from outside of my LAN since I'm behind a VPN that doesn't support port forwarding. Is it possible to make my Linux box receive, interpret and execute commands through e-mail instead? I've tried looking for answers through DuckDuckGo's search engine, to no avail. If I may dream, I would like to setup an e-mail server with a systemd service or just run a script that continuously downloads the emails, prints their content to stdin and executes, perhaps through command substitution, whatever is in stdin.

Late night reading. :)

Learned a lot from this essay/presentation. One point that I "liked" is how Trump and US based big tech virtually (pun intended) hold other countries hostage, either with export/import tariffs or by threatening to stop trade ("adapt this policy or forget about trading with us") or with sensitive data.

Also, this is the organization that he is working for. They have some tools for and guides on privacy too: https://www.eff.org/

TLDR: 1) I recommend the cyber security related podcast Jack Rhysider's Darknet Diaries. 2) This seemingly (former) normie guy who got hacked and then recovered gave me some insight into how cybercrime can affect people.

Probably more related to cyber security and hygiene in general rather than pure privacy.

I follow the amazing Jack Rhysider's Darknet Diaries and came across this video in one of his playlists on his YouTube channel.

I appreciate and admire people who work with cyber security on either red or blue teams. I am also a huge fan of hackers that use their skills to stand up against oppressive regimes or for instance those hilarious guys that make videos of when they hack scammers.

I mean, I obviously realize logically speaking that it must be a truly awful and horrible experience to become the victim of a sinister and malicious cybercrime, but until I saw this video, I had never really felt it. And I still haven't been a victim myself. I've invested a lot of time and energy in learning IT and networking in order to stay safe, both against private individuals but also against state level actors. But that's a different story.

It's heartbreaking to hear how the hacker turned his hopes and dreams upsidedown, almost making him want to quit. Hats off for you (young?) man! His dexterity is fucking next level and it's inspirational!

Sorry if this is yesterday's news to you all, but I just found out about this Android app that makes it easier - as in, less steps - to encrypt and send any message in a highlight-copy-paste fashion, with automatic integration in several e-mail front ends.

It still receives security updates and the repo is still maintained, but the app is no longer being actively developed to add new features. https://github.com/open-keychain/open-keychain

Whatever

It just struck me - watching Brad Wright's Travelers for the third time - that even though we might not have developed light sabers or faster than light drives or teleportation devices yet, we might already have all the components or ingredients or raw materials "laying around" and the only thing standing between us and technological advancement is the knowledge on how to assemble and them the correct way.

Aaand while writing this I realized what an oversimplification this is. We not only had to learn how to assemble materials in order to invent, say, batteries but we also had to understand electricity and how to manipulate it.

So, never mind. 😂

There is a lot of totalitarian shit going on, this being only one of the recent tragedies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fshsk8MCAf4

I always try to say to myself: don't wallow in grief, organize and act!

Except for advocating for online privacy in one's everyday life and being politically active when I have the ability to, do you have any tips on what one can contribute with technologically, from home?

I have:

• A 1Gbps up/down connection
• An RTX 3080
• A few Raspberry Pi:s
• 20TB storage
• A static public IP if I ask for it

What I have found so far:

• running a Tor bridge or guard/middld relay - bridge for the sake of our peers living in places where Tor in inaccessible and middle relay to contribute with bandwidth
• running a Monero node - although my GPU is LHR, so perhaps it wouldn't contribute much to decentralization...?

I have been setting up stateful firewalls on various machines at home using iptables for over a year now, following the guide on the Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Simple_stateful_firewall

I would now like to learn how to tighten security even more by not setting the OUTPUT chain policy to ACCEPT. I want to allow only that which I need, following the philosophy of least privilege or default to deny, if you will. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP8j9dgpAs0

Question: is it as simple as copy-pasting the rules for the INPUT chain into the OUTPUT chain, reversing the "-s/--source" options to "-d/--destination" and changing ESTABLISHED states to NEW? My guess is... Probably not? Because I would need to add ports 80 and 443 for web browsing, for starters, right? And also any outgoing port for my torrent client? And any port that I have chosen for my ssh server? Do I need to add the loopback interface there too?

Any guidance and referral to further reading would be appreciated! Unsolicited advice to use the newer front end nftables is... Well, not sought for at this moment