Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
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I'm looking for a service, that replicates the functionality of email aliases, but with phone numbers.

I'd imagine having one number (99999) which I then could use with suffixes like 99999-1, 99999-2, ... etc for services like WhatsApp, telegram, 2FA, etc... if such thing even exists.

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I cleared up a space on the C drive and installed Linux on that partition. Can Windows see files in my Linux partition?

When i installed Linux, i didn't encrypt it but it is password protected. Thanks

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Every time I buy something online, or make an account for an example month bus ticket, they "need" my phone number. I always use alias emails, but I don't have an alias phone number. I know, there are some online phone nr service, but they mostly dosnt work, outside of the US. So I was thinking about getting me a second nr, just for thoese cases were I have to log in. I would by the nr, in cash, and there is nothing data they have to make the nr. But what are your thoughts? What do you see as pros and cons for getting a second nr.? Does it even make sense, when the simcard is in the same phone?

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Hello !

I'm wondering if there's some blogging mechanism which would allow some sort of unique digital signature (PGP perhaps) to prevent personification, but which allows non traceable and fully anonymous author. Not looking for blockchain like stuff (apart from the layer Monero adds, blockchains are totally transparent, traceable and non anonymous). Not looking for bigotry, attacking people or anything like that.

The idea is to be able to share ideas, even corporate related, without being afraid of retaliations whether at work, corporations or governments. Expressing something at pubic might bring unexpected consequences, particularly if not aligned by the corporation one works on if that's the case, or might provoke AI, bots, or paid/unpaid people looking around, to include anyone in a particular list, without even warning the writer about it.

So I was looking if such thing is possible, and if it exists. Social networks of course wouldn't be an option, they're not anonymous, and at contrary can be used to cross-reference and trace people.

If such solution doesn't exist, I'm wondering if something based on gnuNet might get close, although gnuNet is not meant to make users anonymous. Or perhaps something based on i2p.

Of course the digital signature should be used exclusively for the blog posting, and can't be associated to any real email, host, or whatever...

Feedback on the blog posts should also be allowed to anonymous people with their own unique digital signatures. But this is harder, since depending on the technology, not sure if moderation would be allowed, or even if it would make sense, in which case, no blog feedback should be allowed, though no feedback is really a down side for blog posts. Maybe allowing just the original post to remove feedback. Some other down side, but that's unavoidable, is the lack of non on thread feedback, meaning giving feedback through email or any other medium, since if that was available would make the writer non anonymous...

If such thing is not available, and eventually based on something like gnuNet or i2p, most probably clients would be needed to write blogs but another one that would offer some sort of RSS/atom functionality for the blog to be accessible from current RSS/atom readers.

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I don’t want to see PGP rejection based on usability. So, to level the field at user level we take Delta Chat, which uses PGP. If I understand that correctly.

I have no knowledge of telegram security at all.

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Some of the LinkedIn Responses are direct and on-point, and also hilariously/depressingly based depending on how you look at it:

EDIT: In hindsight, I think I should've looked into posting this in a different community.. It's closer to a silly "innovation".. soo.. is this considered FUD? I also don't support smoking or vaping, especially among kids. Original title had "privacy-violating" before the "solution".

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The cops object when their tools on turned on them

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I already know that private DNS is important for privacy. I'm using Quad9 btw.

But recently I hear a lot about NextDNS and similar providers that give more advanced features such as custom filters and domain blocking. I'm getting interested in that topic now as I have to use some proprietary apps with a lot of trackers in them.

However I'm really struggling to find useful information about what domains to block, what settings to use in one or another use case etc. I don't have much experience with firewalls and server stuff either which makes it even harder.

So, could anyone share some good resources on this so I can get started? Or should I just not worry about it and use a whole other system such as firewall?

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 
 

Git records the local timezone when a commit is made [1]. Knowledge of the timezone in which a commit was made could be used as a bit of identifying information to de-anonymize the committer.

Setting one's timezone to UTC can help mitigate this issue [2][3] (though, ofc, one must still be wary of time-of-day commit patterns being used to deduce a timezone).

References

  1. Git documentation. git-commit. "Date Formats: Git internal format". Accessed: 2024-08-31T07:52Z. https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit#Documentation/git-commit.txt-Gitinternalformat.

    It is <unix-timestamp> <time-zone-offset>, where <unix-timestamp> is the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch. <time-zone-offset> is a positive or negative offset from UTC. For example CET (which is 1 hour ahead of UTC) is +0100.

  2. jthill. "How can I ignore committing timezone information in my commit?". Stack Overflow. Published: 2014-05-26T16:57:37Z. (Accessed: 2024-08-31T08:27Z). https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23874208/how-can-i-ignore-committing-timezone-information-in-my-commit#comment36750060_23874208.

    to set the timezone for a specific command, say e.g. TZ=UTC git commit

  3. Oliver. "How can I ignore committing timezone information in my commit?". Stack Overflow. Published: 2022-05-22T08:56:38Z (Accessed: 2024-08-31T08:30Z). https://stackoverflow.com/a/72336094/7934600

    each commit Git stores a author date and a commit date. So you have to omit the timezone for both dates.

    I solved this for my self with the help of the following Git alias:

    [alias]
    co = "!f() { \
        export GIT_AUTHOR_DATE=\"$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z)\"; \
        export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE=\"$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z)\"; \
        git commit $@; \
        git log -n 1 --pretty=\"Autor: %an <%ae> (%ai)\"; \
        git log -n 1 --pretty=\"Committer: %cn <%ce> (%ci)\"; \
    }; f"
    


Cross-posts:

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This is a guide I wrote for Immich's documentation. It features some Immich specific parts, but should be quite easy to adapt to other use cases.

It is also possible (and not technically hard) to self-host a protomaps release, but this would require 100GB+ of disk space (which I can't spare right now). The main advantages of this guide over hosting a full tile server are :

  • it's a single nginx config file to deploy
  • it saves you some storage space since you're only hosting tiles you've previously viewed. You can also tweak the maximum cache size to your needs
  • it is easy to configure a trade-off between map freshness and privacy by tweaking the cache expiration delay

If you try to follow it, please send me some feedback on the content and the wording, so I can improve it

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by baxster@sopuli.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 
 

Chat control is back on the agenda again and the works is kept in secret.

Link to document

Take Action!

Edit: More information about the meeting

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AOSP with MicroG vs Nextdns with good lists

How better is AOSP or Graphene OS with MicroG or Sandboxed google services compared to just using NextDNS with some good filters.
I mean microg or graphene os will still connect to internet for google stuff I use. Also I can block internet access for a domain using NextDNS which is quite similiar to cutting network access in graphene OS. So how come stock android with NextDNS is less private than MicroG/GrapheneOS.
@privacy

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For Android users seeking a privacy-focused browser, Privacy Guides recommends Mull:

Mull is a privacy oriented and deblobbed Android browser based on Firefox. Compared to Firefox, it offers much greater fingerprinting protection out of the box, and disables JavaScript Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation for enhanced security. It also removes all proprietary elements from Firefox, such as replacing Google Play Services references.

Mull enables many features upstreamed by the Tor uplift project using preferences from Arkenfox. Proprietary blobs are removed from Mozilla's code using the scripts developed for Fennec F-Droid.

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During the past few years I was avoiding the increasing number of products or services that required biometric verification, specially face recognition (FR). But the things are getting harder are harder in my country:

  • The largest e-commerce platform in latin america and the most used in my country requires FR to use it. It was possible to use cash if you buy from its website but since a couple of weeks it's requesting me to identify using it's app.
  • The telecoms demands FR from now on if you want a new SIM card in case you lost your phone or it's been stolen.
  • The bank is now pressing me to use their app with FR as a 2fa when using homebanking from its website, something that wasn't necessary up to some weeks ago.
  • The government is in the same direction as it's moving to digitalizing many burocratic procedures and also requires FR.

and the list is increasing quickly.

I've never used any private social networks and I've degoogled many years ago, the only non free software that I use is Whatsapp because in some countries in latin america is almost imposible not to use it, you need it even to call to the car towing service.

Anybody that is well informed knows the dangers of allowing such an amount of private information now tied to our face be available for hackers now equiped with AI, but frankly it seems a lost cause to fight against something that 99.9% of people dont worry about and give consent to do so to corporations (that sell all your data to whoever wants it) and governments (who use it as a tool of control).

I don't know, may be I'm also worring to much and it's not that serious, after all if tens of millions of people do the same the chances of being targeted by hackers is not different of being robbed in the street (at least in latin america) and with the obiquitous surveillance cameras plus the almost unavoidable need of a phone, the government probably know exactly where you are and how you look, so the information may be already available. Perhaps it's time to give up and adapt to the world we now live in.

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Pavel Durov's arrest suggests that the law enforcement dragnet is being widened from private financial transactions to private speech.

The arrest of the Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France this week is extremely significant. It confirms that we are deep into the second crypto war, where governments are systematically seeking to prosecute developers of digital encryption tools because encryption frustrates state surveillance and control. While the first crypto war in the 1990s was led by the United States, this one is led jointly by the European Union — now its own regulatory superpower.

Durov, a former Russian, now French citizen, was arrested in Paris on Saturday, and has now been indicted. You can read the French accusations here. They include complicity in drug possession and sale, fraud, child pornography and money laundering. These are extremely serious crimes — but note that the charge is complicity, not participation. The meaning of that word “complicity” seems to be revealed by the last three charges: Telegram has been providing users a “cryptology tool” unauthorised by French regulators.

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All the recent dark net arrests seem to be pretty vague on how the big bad was caught (except the IM admin's silly opsec errors) In the article they say he clicked on a honeypot link, but how was his ip or any other identifier identified, why didnt tor protect him.

Obviously this guy in question was a pedophile and an active danger, but recently in my country a state passed a law that can get you arrested if you post anything the government doesnt like, so these tools are important and need to be bulletproof.

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Basically the subject is in title. I recently discovered lemmy.world doesn't allow commenting/posting from VPNs. Some VPNs are working, but it seems to be a matter of time until they appear on publicly sourced lists and banned.

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