this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023

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Privacy

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For the past year, I've been immersed in the topic of Privacy. I switched to Linux, flashed my phone to LineageOS, changed all my software to one that respects privacy, switched my family and most* friends to Signal, started hating megacorporations and pretty much every government in the world, asked a lot of questions on tiddeR and here. Everything makes sense to me now. I'm a privacy guru🥹. How to move on? What's the next step? 😁

P.S. if you're just at the beginning of your journey, I don't think you'll find a better resource than PrivacyGuides. Highly recommend it!

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (5 children)

unironically and without bad intentions saying this: touch grass. what good does maximum privacy when you don't do anything with it? one major take away for me from caring about privacy was the realization, that i tended to be "terminally online" (given my job needs me to sit in front of a computer during most working hours) and started to live more in the "analogue world". enjoy reading books again. take your family more out, explore your city, the countryside - and turn your phone off. just pretend it's 1998 again. good luck & see you out there, space cowboy!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

what good does maximum privacy when you don't do anything with it?

Soo, if I understand you correctly, the next logical step is to become a dark market drug dealer?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

well, i'm not endorsing it but if your take on (online) privacy is pursuing a career in that field, i won't talk you out if it :>

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re not endorsing it? But I already bought a black hoodie.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

i hereby baptize you by the 31337 hacker name "zer0 coOl".

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

It's true. The number of hours behind electronics needs to be reduced. It hasn't worked so far, but it's obvious that I need to ❤️❤️❤️

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

what good does maximum privacy when you don't do anything with it?

There is absolutely something to be said about increasing the noise level for interesting signal. If only the people who truly have something to hide (activists, whistleblowers, journalists, etc) use privacy tools, then they stand out like a beacon in the night. If we all take the same measures they are much much harder to pin point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They also can't steal your data if you aren't online. Great advice.

[–] Lightning66 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's best to be in between. Use the stuff in such a way that it doesn't break.

Don't be too damn into it, that you can't use anything. But also don't just not care about anything and go on...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

the internet and it's tools shouldn't be the centerpoint of our private lives. use it when you want/have to or just feel like it, but don't let it dictate your personal habits and relationships. if you want to fuck over big tech and the all-seeing eye of the glowies, just stop feeding them instead just trying to avoid them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I was already in my thirties when the internet was opened up to the general public, and to me there was a kind of sweet spot around 2000 where the internet was really useful to ordinary people, but people didn’t spend all their time online. I guess the introduction of smartphones is what made the difference.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Wait, all the family and friends switched to Signal? what? how?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Well, they just stopped contacting him. Same thing.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah I love how "switching friends and family to Signal" is just a thing OP did, almost reads like satire

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

A lot of people have a lot more problems with it than I do. I guess I'm lucky. And I'm very happy about that. I like Signal, the way it works, looks, etc. People like it too, by the way. Especially the sound quality when talking. Compared to Telegram, it's heaven and earth.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It used to be way easier to get people to switch before they eliminated SMS. No idea why they thought getting rid if their key differentiating feature was a good idea.

[–] JubilantJaguar 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In America maybe, and even there less and less. Outside America, nobody uses SMS for socializing any more.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

SMS support was a big part of that. I could install Signal on my 70 year old mom's phone and say "here, this is where you message people". Sure she had a hard time distinguishing when a conversation was private, maybe. But that was irrelevant the people who used signal on the other hand knew. That move was truly awful. And now six months later here we are still without non phone number accounts. 😡

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I just told everyone from this list that I would only correspond with them on Signal from now on. And I explained why, of course. Everyone understood and downloaded. At first they wrote in Telegram by habit, but then they got used to it. We have good relations with our parents, so there were no problems.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Everything makes sense to me now. I’m a privacy guru. How to move on? What’s the next step? 😁

Teach.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

tiddeR? Ohhh, tiddeR!!

doesn't a guru hang around (usually on a rock on top of a mountain) and guides noobs?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If my ass could make it to the top of a mountain, I wouldn't need a guru.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You really believe that you've become a privacy guru over the past year? You better teach then. Write blogs about your journey, make it easier for the common but interested folk or even make it tangible for the common folk so they will begin to show interest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's more of a joke than something else. I am already spreading the idea of the importance of digital privacy among my relatives, friends and acquaintances like a virus. And I'm pretty good at it. But I recently recommended a Pixel 6A to a friend of a friend of a friend to use without flashing custom rom, so I'm an amogus in some sense 😆

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I am already spreading the idea of the importance of digital privacy among my relatives, friends and acquaintances

And just like Cassandra, nobody will listen to you.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is not my beautiful wife.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know, you seem to be asking a lot of questions and that makes me suspicious...

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Imagine privacy online was like these glass doors that turn opaque once you turn the lock, so Facebook stops tracking you everywhere when they detect that you are currently taking a shit (they probably already know when you do)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they would stop tracking at least in this case, it would be already much better. Instead of a toilet there would be a request not to track. But unfortunately in our dystopia this is not foreseen at all, so we continue the resistance 🙂

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Really, I would want a web 10.0 that enforces anonymity, privacy and good UX by design by restricting what features "web" developers can use to a minimum nescessary set. And ideally it would all be P2P or at least some form of decentralized. Like if Tor, I2P, Zeronet and the Fediverse had a baby.

You could do 99% of all the things you might want to do on it as a user on a daily basis. You could have a search engine, a wikipedia, a facebook, a reddit, a youtube, etc and whatever else people use the internet for 99% of the time, but the features of this Web 10.0 are restricted to only the minimum ones to enable those sites. And the only way to be tracked is if you intentionally or unintentionally reveal your own identity.

Then you might also have hardware that exclusively only connects to this Web 10.0, ideally on a hardware level.

That would be the dream.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is pretty hand wavy. "Yeah so all we need to do is totally change everything about the Internet top to bottom, which to this point has only ever been successful specifically because it is a technology stack built to be iterated on slowly and additively."

Even minor additions like requiring SSL (ironically a Google effort) basically caused millions of companies headaches for weeks. That was a technology that had been around for decades that just needed to be dropped into place and if developers had been a bit more forward thinking, things would've just worked. Guess what actually happened.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm saying that would be the optimum. I never said it would be easy or actually happen.

But without the goal to aspire towards, it will never happen.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Wrong turn. Next glassdoor left, not right.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interpersonal communications will have a tremendous uptake in the confines of this fine glass shithouse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Shithouse... such a name!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy shit you did it! Congrats man..

I couldn't do the transition to Signal because of the family/friends. And the LineageOS thing, I couldn't do that to my brand new Pixel7, lol. But others are pretty much done at this point. Thanks for PrivacyGuides, didn't know that!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was not so simple, but kinda ultimatum take worked out. Talk here or nowhere. There is way better option for Pixel phones, GrapheneOS. Truly awesome peace of software. You should definetly try it. PrivacyGuides is basically the best and biggest portal to privacy as of now. Competent explanations, recommendations, criterias. It is successor to privacytools.io which was turned in to trash by main dev in 2021 with ads based recommendations of software that have nothing to do with privacy. All biggest contributors moved on to PrivacyGuides 😉

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yep I know the GrapheneOS. My plan is to use my phone for a bit (it is not that cheap in Azerbaijan 😄 ) and then switch to graphene.

Well, good luck to both of us!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Switch now, it's worth it!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Chance of phone brick is kinda zero so I think you should flash it. And it is very easy through web installer, just 5-6 button clicks. Good luck! 😃❤️

[–] Lightning66 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey the door of one is open. Common guys. We can't let that be.

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