It is never a requirement to perform 100% of all “Privacy best practices” 24 hours a day and 7 days a week with perfect execution. Simply put, nobody has that level of threat on average unless they are someone like Snowden, a Journalist covering a story, or are working as an intelligence agent.

It is best to assess your threat level and choose Privacy preserving techniques and tools according to what best suits your life and situation first. Don’t overdo it, don’t try to achieve perfect privacy, don’t try to keep up with the metaphorical Joneses. There will always be new threats to your privacy to assess; and you shouldn’t be ignorant of them; but you also should not ever let that growing list of threats overwhelm you.

If you need to take time to stop reading privacy news…do so. Just like regular world and national news; it can put you in a state of constant panic. Manage your mental health and state first before you ever allow yourself to address your privacy issues at hand.

Once your mental state is clear and your focus is sharp; focus specifically on little things you can easily do to protect your privacy. Maybe make sure you have a VPN set up or ensure you go over critical privacy settings on your devices to ensure none have changed or shifted since you last visited them. Then consider other small things you can do; if you can say, for example, choose a new email provider, then do so. If not, pick a new thing to address and move on. Do not make managing your privacy a chore if you can possibly help it. Take improving it one step at a time, take breaks for your sanity and make sure you don’t overdo it all at once.

No.

It sold out on it’s privacy promise years ago. Brave Browser CANNOT be trusted if you are someone who must ensure Privacy Preserving featurs must remain on at all times.

I recommend the Tor Browser. DO NOT USE THE TOR BROWSING CAPABILITIES OF BRAVE! YOU WILL BE DEANONYMIZED! Likely anything you’d be using Tor for, you don’t want your browser slipping up and leaking anything.

Personally I use a blend of hand-hardened Firefox (Via plugins), Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium (for very rare cases where the site is actually trusted and requires Chrome to function predictably)

Ironically this does not prevent technologies like Monero from becoming the next big platform; nor will it really prevent people from evacuating their coins to a more private and self-custodial wallet.

In general it really only puts a few more onerous steps into the equation where there will be fences and people who are expected to digitally mule bitcoin around.

In the same manner that organized criminals work around modern financial regulations aimed at capturing them; they can also work around regulations surrounding Bitcoin itself; and once the Bitcoin itself is fenced off into a Monero or other privacy preserving coin; it will remain there ‘burned’ or get ‘laundered’ by a group of gang members a few hundred times to re-mint coins clean enough to be re-deposited and re-used in the same manner.

It won’t matter in the long run that they are tracking the provenance of every satoshi. Especially not if it’s far too common that anyone making a suspicious move turns out to be a privacy conscious, law-abiding, yet innocent citizen.

Agreed with the dislike of Brave; but my reasons of not using it are because the person(s) running that project have proven that they do not have user privacy as a priority over their own ability to stay profitable enough to operate. This lack of principal I feel makes Brave privacy hostile at random times when their company runs low on money and is vulnerable to making deals with the devils they’re trying to keep at bay. Usually these deals are horrific blows to user privacy, or introduce unwanted and unneeded bloat to the software.

I’ve seen this when bopping around in the F-Droid catalogue. Never took it seriously because it didn’t seem to communicate well what it was doing.

In general; I usually dislike using Chrome anyways…so much so that I hard disable Chrome on my device, oftentimes via ADB, and download a wide range of alternatives; Kiwi (Plugin enabled), Hermit ([Closed source] Forced Isolation of all domains/sites along a side of ad-blocking and web-app caching baked into the app wrapping it’s renderer; which is, of course System Webview. Unfortunately this one is not open source, so I do not often recommend it here and while I trust it; your decisions may be different.) and Firefox (Plugins installed, seems to be replacing Kiwi because it’s likely a dead/gone/depreciated/archived project.) I even use URLCheck from F-Droid itself as my “Default Browser” so that I have the power to review each URL and open it in a browser I feel is most appropriate to the context of my browsing and choose the browser I feel can best protect my privacy for a given site. One-off visits often go to Hermit; which promptly isolates away and forgets I ever visited the site while blocking ads with a lighter touch than most plugins I’ve seen that exist. If a site often breaks in Hermit; usually due to ad-blocking hostile scripts; I kick it over to Firefox where I have extensive plug-in tooling to defang the beast…including tools like JShelter, Canvas Blocker, LocalCDN, Chameleon, Decentraleyes and uBlock Origin.

What I do know is that Android System Webview is far more configurable than you might realize; and that it is absolutely possible to build a browser on top of it. Most importantly; Android System Webview IS NOT Chrome! Yes, it is extremely similar and it behaves mostly the same; but it is based on the Chromium project; which is basically what Chrome is before Google applies all of its own Branding, Customization, Policies and Application touches on it. Does Chromium project mirror what Chrome needs? Absolutely yes, but it does not follow Chrome exactly. In general; Android System Webview is a Web rendering component that other applications can call on and wrap their own code around. This means you are basically free to implement whatever other features you want around the webview; including adding plugins and other things like ad-blocking. My favorite closed-source lite-app browser Hermit does this; and I’m not seeing any significant privacy concerns with that one.

As the Messages RCS implementation is supposedly E2EE from device to device; No. It is not possible that a log of your messages’ contents are being kept.

Can it stop them from storing your encrypted messages to decrypt later if law enforcement should be able to confiscate your phone and extract the encryption key? Also No. It is not possible for E2EE to prevent “Store ciphertext and decrypt later” attacks.

It also cannot prevent companies from logging who you are conducting an encrypted conversation with; even if the contents cannot be seen and this information cannot be used to infer anything about the contents. It cannot stop companies from making inferences about your messaging activity due to timing of messages sent or who they are sent to.

If these kinds of attacks are on your threat model; you need to ensure you are not sending messages or information via electronic means via your phone to begin with, wherever possible.

It is absurd to assume that they have backdoored the RCS protocol without proof or evidence. This isn’t saying it’s a verifiably secure or private protocol; but I think you could trust an E2EE RCS message for long enough to help you get someone else onboarded on to Signal or another more properly encrypted messenger without needing to worry about being put on a watch list. I would trust it with my grocery list or trivial communications with family; even if I wouldn’t trust it with my truly personal or private conversations.

I second tailscale. But this requires you to be using it at home as well.

I don’t like it. It screams “FINGERPRINT ME!”

A symbol for privacy should imply privacy. Not show things that which should be protected. (like your handprints or fingerprints)

If you have to ask that; you really must have been living under a rock for the past 3-5 years.

I personally use Firefox still; and keep a fresh copy in a (Pixel only feature) Private Space (Basically an implementation of Android alternate user profile) as well. It works and accepts any privacy addons I throw at it.

Currently using:

• uBlock Origin
• Chameleon
• Privacy Badger¹
• LocalCDN
• Decentraleyes¹
• CanvasBlocker¹

¹ - May duplicate functions of other plug-ins; but provide additional protection layers and cover for the limitations of other addon(s)…

Being worried about addons adding to your fingerprint is something that I quite honestly find is not a significant issue usually…unless you’re explicitly doing something truly spooky if found out…then you should use Tor Browser ONLY.

As someone who formerly modded on reddit for over a decade; I do know what trips the alerts typically. The steps I give are important to establish a fresh account with nothing an idle internet sleuth can link back to you; as well as preventing Mod(Bots) from detecting you. Reddit Automoderator has ‘Admin eyes’…even if it lacks the permissions to act like one. It can, and will use algorithms on those eyes to assess your ‘threat level’. Knowing the trajectory of reddit when I quit; it probably uses AI now. Before it was a dumb blackbox of algorithmic rules the Admins never really made fully clear about how it worked. This dumb blackbox made frequent mistakes.

I’d say you can try do it; but I caution you on doing so. It will be problematic

You cannot be completely undetected if using the reddit app. You must avoid using a mobile device; these are too easily trackable and the browsers on mobile devices lack sufficient privacy protections.

• First and foremost you’ll have to setup to access reddit from a completely unique device. I recommend a virtual machine on a computer using a privacy respecting browser like Librewolf.
• Secondly, you’ll need a good paid VPN…I recommend Mullvad. Do not create your account with this VPN! It will trip alarms.
• Third, you’ll need a laptop with a similar private browser. do not use your main Windows user account. Create a new local account. This is to enforce that you do not access reddit for account creation using a “known” browser fingerprint.
• Fourth, you will need to travel. It must be somewhere out of town; and you should be using a public wifi network when creating the reddit account. Be aware of the ISP coverage in your area and travel far enough that you do not use the same ISP as your own. If you don’t know their coverage area; look it up online. Travel to a place they don’t offer service.
• Fifth, Once you have traveled, use the clean windows account you created to create the new reddit account. Do not name your account similar to your banned account, or subscribe to any subreddits that are outside of /r/popular.
• Farm some karma. Ideally 1k is enough. 100 will do in a pinch but you’ll need to keep farming it; which is a dumb idea to do on a VPN.
• Verify a fresh email address. Use only tuta.com as your mail provider.
• Stay off the reddit account on your home PCs and network. Use reddit only in a public wifi setting on the laptop as described above. Do this for no less than 30 days while farming karma. No need to travel out of town; local public/private wifi will do. (Just not yours).
• Once the account has aged a month; you can log in with the VPN as mentioned above at home using the virtual machine at home. Continue using the VPN for the foreseeable future. Enjoy sticking it to Spez.

I would recommend resurrecting it.

Once you do so; Lock it down, make everything private that you can.

Secondly change all the privacy settings and opt out of any AI training.

Then slowly go back through your history and scrub out your posts; replacing them with gibberish and junk. Do not use AI text IMHO; use something like ‘lorem ipsum’ or some kind of ‘Markov chain babbler’.

I would just suggest scrubbing back through your history slowly once a day; editing a few posts here or there. Look into what exactly the rate-limits might be; so that you can avoid triggering whatever automated suspensions that exist and edit one or two posts less than that a day.

Avoid using automation, as this too can be detected possibly…but do remember you can use other tools that run on your PC only to help streamline your editing.

In general, it’s better if you can manually review and scrub over your old posts slowly. That way you can best decide how each posting and image will be scrambled. Maybe one post gets lorem ipsum in strategic places and the other gets 1000xTranslated into a barely plausible word salad.

Perhaps other times you feed the post into a markov babbler and let it babble on for a few minutes. Perhaps you leave a few otherwise innocuous posts alone so that the poison doesn’t look so suspicious while you sanitize anything that you might consider sensitive.

Once a few months have passed and you’ve deleted all the sensitive information from the account that you can possibly edit or change; then you can proceed to deleting the account and waiting out that process.

1. Get help. Your mental health and physical health must always come first.
2. Privacy is not an all or nothing thing. Your mental health and physical health must always come first.
3. Continue practicing good privacy habits at a rate, level and depth that fits your situation and needs. No need to constantly adhere to Snowden levels of privacy seeking and hiding under rocks. There never was a need for this unless you are in a situation like Snowden. Your mental health and physical health must always come first.
4. It’s totally fine to be as genuine or as pseudonymous as you feel as your needs and wants demand. However, Your mental and physical health must always come first.
5. Relax. Current events have a way of making you paranoid but there truly is not usually a state level actor hovering over you waiting for your tiniest of mistakes. If you usually obey the law and do no significant harm to others, I doubt you have any significant worries. Your mental health and physical health must always come first though. Don’t obsess over it if it makes you feel mentally unwell.

lol

There’s something you need to know about the “anti-features” flags on F-Droid.

They’re too “greedy” and widely defined. What you really need to do is examine the app and how the developer might use said “Anti-Feature”. Not all internet access and telemetry is an anti-feature, and neither is reliance on a “third party service” where you can simply configure your app to use your own self-hosted server instance.

An app having no “Anti-Features” flag on F-Droid is absolutely not an informative indicator that it respects your privacy. Merely, it indicates common privacy foot-guns may not be present.

Frequently F-Droid also is far too opinionated in it’s application of the anti-feature flags; giving developers no reason or chances to appeal or change the decisions. It does not matter if the anti-feature flag is mis-applied in any specific situation; nor does it matter if the developer shouldn’t be getting an anti-feature label because they have everything open sourced and it’s clear to see there is no anti-feature there.

False.

The ad attribution system was proposed but never implemented due to user outcry.

Some telemetry has been a part of Firefox for quite some time now; but it has always been privacy respecting and they self-host all of it. In general you can easily turn most, if not all of it off. The telemetry thing has been around since before they even started seriously fast-cadence releases. Some of my memories of this date back to the Firefox 34 days even. None of the telemetry collected is mandatory, and it can be shut off in preferences as well as through advanced config; which is what most forks do if they don’t specifically rip the code out. You should read their source code sometime; it’s quite interesting.

I will however agree that Brave is way more intrusive than any misstep made by Mozilla in developing Firefox.

No.

Brave is factually bad. It’s a failed attempt at monetization of users seeking some form of privacy in browsing. From the entire crypto integration with BAT tokens to the weird VPN stuff and more; it’s clear that the company who makes the browser is pivoting rapidly and iterating the software to make money from somewhere, somehow.

Brave does treat it’s users like a product, and the company has made privacy-impacting decisions. They are very clearly a for-profit company with a well known CEO who operates on a for-profit basis only and never on a non-profit basis. You cannot say that Brave is operated on a non-profit basis. The entire concept of the Brave browser itself is to enable monetization methods that users and privacy advocates clearly want to see depreciated.

Mozilla on the other hand; has only recently begun to take some weird steps. Given that their exclusive contract with Google is likely to be dissolved in courts; they are simply stuck in a financially challenging situation. At no point has Mozilla or Firefox actually done anything actively hostile to privacy or users. While Mozilla does make mistakes; nothing notably wrong that they’ve done has actively been anything but a simple mistake. They have not yet crossed the threshold into malicious profit motive as of yet. Although many privacy enthusiasts are watching Mozilla very closely for any sign of them crossing that line right now.

And this is why Fwyfwy refuse to move away from Windows 10. Fwy refuse to use any version of Windows that truly integrates their AI bullshit…and Fwy actively breaks and blocks installation of it too; during updates via NTFS security, policies and other tactics to otherwise deny or break their store app from installing anything automatically. If I need some shitty UWP packaged app; I will pull it down and manually install it myself using PowerShell kthx.

Fuck your AI shit Microsoft. If I want AI; I’ll choose the models and run it locally on my own hardware and train it to my needs. If I need a screenshot; I have several app options to do so on command with a single keypress. I don’t need my PC taking timelapse photos of what I’m doing.

I don’t personally cut my usage of YouTube content at all; I just simply use necessary tools to prevent the apps and services from over-sharing too much data at a network level. DNS and IP level filtering is done typically to prevent well-known domains and telemetry targets from being utilized and any account preferences are set to minimize consent given. NewPipe and FreeTube are used interchangeably with yp-dlp if needed. No account is necessary…my viewing patterns aren’t being recorded except in a generalized aggregate manner which enforces a reasonable amount of privacy.

I’m of the opinion that a completely de-googled device lacks critical features I use often; and restoring equal function is oftentimes made difficult. Unfortunately this also covers video content; there’s no real viable FLOSS alternative with enough content. The creators typically do not have a motivation to use PeerTube or other viable FLOSS software that does exist currently and do not publish videos there; which introduces a heavy timelag; even if the creator or even someone else IS willing to export the YT content out to PT.