Is this some sort of a convenience feature hidden behind a paywall to justify purchasing their subscriptions or does generating the codes actually cost money? If the latter is the case, how do applications like Aegis do it free of cost?

I've been having a look for one but can't find any. Am I missing something obvious?

And what do you actually use? I know the answer is probably self-hosting but maybe there are other solutions for a decent privacy.

For some reason vpns slow it down a lot more than mobile, any privacy focused DNS I can use?

Hello, I try to keep my Debian laptop as private as possible, but for work, I need to use Windows software, so I run a VirtualBox with Windows 11. My PC runs smoothly without any issues, but I need to access my specific hardware USB ports, and it doesn't recognize them. I read that I need to install the Extension Pack, so I downloaded it, but before installing it, I get a warning message that seems to suggest I'm accepting some risk to my computer. I don't really understand this stuff, so I wanted to ask the following:

Is there any security or privacy risk associated with the VirtualBox Extension Pack?

Is there any other way to access my USB-C devices without installing it? (I've already tried selecting USB 2.0 and 3.0, but the list shows "no device available").

Thank you very much to whoever responds.

PS: Also I found this on the Internet: "The user agreement VirtualBox extension pack states of sharing a user’s data to the US govt. including the hardware information and so on. Does it make sense even if I use Tails/Whonix for anonymity?" :-/

https://privacytests.org rate Brave as the best browser.

I am looking for a solution to receive WhatsApp messages on my phone. I don't want to install the WhatsApp app on my personal phone, but it is on my work phone and its mandatory for my job. I held out for a long time but it is necessary that I answer messages on there.

Beeper.com is enticing but it appears to have a lot of trackers for an app that claims it respects privacy.

What do you guys think?

For example, I downloaded Tor network and using it for illegal activities. Can my govt track me? Can US govt track me? I know it encrypts something but if I remember correct, FBI was able to find some Tor users before.

Note: illegal activities was for example. I'm not going to do anything illegal. I'm just planning to serve my instance with a onion address.

Hi, i have been using smart lamps from aliexpress for awhile now. But these lamps force me to connect to an android app that phones-home to Beijing. Without the chinese yeelight app, i cannot change the color of the lamps. I find that kind of creepy.

Is there a good smart lamp system that is privacy respecting and hopefully opensource?

One that is locked to my local lan instead of a chinese trojan horse that spy's on me 24/7.

I'm an arch linux user and i know some basic python scripting.

Researchers said they found spyware they linked to Israeli firm NSO that exploited a newly discovered flaw in Apple devices

From a first perspective it actually looks good! I think these kind of regulation were really needed. But i would like to hear your opinions!

I’m a webmaster that refuses to use third-party assets, cookies, and tracking of any kind. When Instagram got caught inserting JavaScript in its webviews I added HTML to shoot it down. When FLoC was introduced I added HTTP headers effectively disabling it on my websites.

Does the new Topics API have a similar solution for us web developers? I’d hate to simply block the entire Chrome User-Agent because I know many of my visitors are using Chrome.

Online privacy: Best privacy related thing I've done is use a nickname. If I search my real name on Google, only two results show up (and my Instagram, but I deleted it) from the same site, my place in some school competition. That's it! But if I search my made-up nickname... Github, Gitlab, Reddit, StackOverflow, LocalMonero, fucking SuperTuxKart and A LOT MORE related results - basically my whole internet life. I stared using randomly generated username for each account in case my name is somehow leaked from my nickname account.

A month ago I also bought Pixel 7a and installed GrapheneOS as my daily driver. Separate accounts are AWESOME. I have account for personal use (family, photos, friends, etc.), (not basic) internet use (Lemmy, podcasts, torrenting, youtube/newpipe, etc.), google apps (maps, drive, galaxy wearable, etc.), finances (banking app, Paypal, crypto wallets, etc.), school apps (teams & ms office, Canva, etc.), and anonymous account (Tor, OnionShare, Session, Briar, etc.).

On personal profile I have "always on" VPN to my house, so anywhere I am, apps think I'm home and it's useful for public Wi-Fi-s. On the internet profile I have "always on" MullvadVPN. On anonymous profile I have "always

I use self-hosted Bitwarden. Can this de-anonymous me on the internet profile, because traffic from Bitwarden goes to my home, or will this know only Mullvad (that already knows my home IP, because it has to)?

I also switched to ProtonMail, LibreWolf, and Startpage. I self-host Nextcloud, Syncthing, Monero node, Pi-Hole, etc.

Recently I started deleting all my accounts that I don't use anymore. Now I'm pretty happy about my anonymity online.

Physical privacy & security: I weak ago I got a RFID blocking wallet. I bought it in a store where I am signed in for news and sales, and I also get a lot of cheaper things because of it. But they basically track everything I buy, where and when. And that is with all stores if you have the stores card (I only have one, because parents pay for everything currently). Does anyone know if this stores share data between each other or with someone else? I live in Europe, I know we have better privacy laws than US but it's still bad, right? I am also joined in club of students in my city - cheaper movies, skiing, tickets, etc. Is that also a privacy concern?

Payments: For privacy reasons only pay in cash, I know. What about if there is no cash option? I've heard of prepaid debit cards, but they only work in US. Is there any way for private payments in Europe? If not would something like Revolut be more private than traditional banks?

For online payments I can buy prepaid debit cards for US services in XMR. And for not US services like ProtonMail? Is there something like privacy.com (with virtual cards) in Europe?

Thank you for all comments :)

Hey, I tried to get used to gimp as advanced image editor for a long time, but is just nothing I can work with, so I wanted to ask if you know some alternatives (for Windows).

The lawsuit argues that Google has effectively ‘bought’ the UK mobile phone search engine market. Google forced mobile phone handset manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search and Google Chrome browser apps on devices that use Google’s Android operating system in order to obtain a licence to use Google Play.

Google also unlawfully paid billions to Apple to ensure that it was the default search engine on iPhones and other devices that used Apple’s iOS operating system. In 2019, Google paid £1.2 billion to Apple in the UK to be the default search engine on the Safari browser.

It is claimed that Google has used its market dominance to effectively charge advertisers over the odds. Costs were then passed on to such an extent that all consumers ended up paying higher prices for goods and services sold by brands that have advertised on the platform.

I aways wondered if the communication channel between my wireless keyboard and the usb receiver-antena is secure. I never bother to reseach this. Today I figured out the practical way. I turned on my pc at work and I tried to type the first letter of my password. Nothing hapened. Then I started spamming that letter. Still nothing, until the person next to me said "my keyboard is typing all by itself". It turns out she has a wireless mouse with a seemigly identical receiver-antena usb.

The moral of the story. If it was so easy to almost leak my password unintentionally due to this flaw of wireless keyboard communication, imagine wad a bad actor can do intentionally. Why try to brute force, social engineer e.t.c. when your password can be stollen in transit from your keyboard to your pc.

I wish to convince my friends and family to avoid using privacy-invading ad-based services and apps. Seeing people discuss how much data these companies collect off of us, I want to know if there is a way you could get a sample of that data by yourself and show it to them for them to realize the gravity of the situation themselves.

The closest thing is Google's ad personalization panel in the Google Account Dashboard. It literally lists out the information of the account holder by the things they've browsed, including their gender, age, occupation, interests etc. I could've used it to show to my family but I turned off ad personalization for all their accounts a few years back so they aren't even aware of it.

The next closest thing to this could be browser fingerprinting tests but they wouldn't be able to understand the tech jargon from the results anyway. Also I am not planning to go to the 'deep web' for this. Is there any other way I could get this done, like a website/app specifically designated for this purpose, for opening some sort of userlog in the accounts page?

4get is a metasearch engine, similar to Searx and SearXNG

You can find the source code here: https://git.lolcat.ca/lolcat/4get

And use it here: 4get.ca

Honestly the lack of ad blockers in Vanadium pushes me towards Firefox even though the devs say that Firefox is far less secure. So many web sites are just hard to use on mobile without an ad blocker so I'm curious what the rest of you are doing.

I heard a lot of bad stuff about Brave and their CEO lately and am now unsure if the search engine is any good? Do they censor stuff? Is any data collected? Can it be considered private?

If you'd not recommend it, what are good alternatives and why? I was a long time duckduckgo user before, so anything similar to it or brave search would be great. I'm not into self hosting.