Hi everyone,

I'm currently facing some frustrating restrictions with the public Wi-Fi at my school. It's an open Wi-Fi network without a password, but the school has implemented a firewall (Fortinet) that blocks access to certain websites and services, including VPNs like Mullvad and ProtonVPN. This makes it difficult for me to maintain my privacy online, especially since I don't want the school to monitor me excessively.

After uninstalling Mullvad, I tried to download it again, but I found that even a search engine (Startpage) is blocked, which is incredibly frustrating! Here’s what happened:

• The Wi-Fi stopped working when I had the VPN enabled.
• I disabled the VPN, but still couldn't connect.
• I forgot the Wi-Fi network and reset the driver, but still no luck.
• I uninstalled the Mullvad, and then the Wi-Fi worked again.
• I tried to access Startpage to search for an up-to-date package for Mullvad, but it was blocked.
• I used my phone to get the software file and sent it over, but couldn't connect.
• I searched for different VPNs using DuckDuckGo, but the whole site was blocked.
• I tried searching for Mullvad, but that was blocked too.
• I attempted to use Tor with various bridges, but couldn't connect for some unknown reason.
• I finally settled for Onionfruit Connect, but it doesn't have a kill switch, which makes me uneasy.

Ironically, websites that could be considered harmful, like adult content, gambling sites and online gaming sites, are still accessible, while privacy-tools are blocked.

I'm looking for advice on how to bypass these firewall restrictions while ensuring my online safety and privacy. Any suggestions or alternative methods would be greatly appreciated! (If any advice is something about Linux, it could be a Problem, since my school enforces Windows 11 only PC's which is really really igngamblingThanks in advance for your help

edit: did some formatting

edit2: It is my device, which I own and bought with my own money. I also have gotten in trouble for connecting to tor and searching for tor, but I stated that I only used it to protect my privacy. Honestly I will do everything to protect my privacy so I don't care if I will get in trouble.

edit 3: Thanks for the suggestions, if I haven't responded yet, that's because I don't know what will happen.

More in physical privacy space than the usual post. Whenever I get mail, I shred it before disposal. Whenever I get a package, I black out the label.

But my method for blacking out the labels is basically turning on the gas range and holding the label over it until it turns black. It's not even that good of a method, because I can still see a black-on-black print.

So, I'm wondering if anyone has any better ideas for this sort of thing.

I just went to use nvcc for the first time and this nonsense hit my firewall. Make won't compile but it has to do with my unwillingness to use the proprietary toolkit. This network activity only happened once on startup.

I know this will sound paranoid as fuck, but I've really been thinking about Microsoft lately. Like, they're pushing their Recall shit whether we like it or not. The fact that it even made it past the concept stage tells me that no one at Microsoft gives a single fuck about their users anymore. The final shreds of any trust I had in them as a company are gone and I've started thinking of them as an adversary.

Today I was considering Teams in particular. My company has been using it for maybe six years. When our email provider went teats up, I did some research and realized we had Microsoft cloud stuff included in our Action Pack subscription. We started using their email, and about the same time we started using Teams.

Teams offers EEE but only on Teams Premium, which we don't pay extra for. Microsoft has access to every message and chat. They could be saving transcripts and voice calls. They might have accumulated billions of hours of voice data by now.

What could they do with all this data?

1. Sell to LEO
2. Commit corporate espionage
3. Gather government secrets
4. Use for AI training

Something else just occurred to me. I did research a while back on the software stacks that big tech companies use. Not one uses IIS.

I've been a Windows developer for thirty years. I used to like Microsoft. I looked forward to new versions of Windows and Visual Studio. Now I feel like they've lured us all in slowly until we put our throats in their jaws. Fucking mental.

Talk me down, if you can.

I'm mightily tempted, finally, by this month's Prime subscription's giveaway of the game KeyWe, which requires Epic Games account-linking.

I'm not really sure of what data risk to expect should I finally expose my real Amazon account to Epic Games (which is pretty much a dummy account that I've only been using to collect their giveaways ever since they began). I have refused to link accounts all these months so far. What do you think?

We currently pay for the Family plan as a couple so this will be good for us. I tried downgrading but it still doesn't appear for me.

Been using searx.be for a bit now and they had many results in Dutch and German, which can be expected for a site based in Belgium. But does anyone notice an influx of results in Russian? Did they change the server location or are users in Russia catching on to it? Yandex isn't toggled on in the settings either.

Not trying to judge security by language. I just kinda liked having results in a mix of languages I could read.

"Google will have to face a class action lawsuit that accuses it of collecting users’ data through Chrome without their consent. In a decision on Tuesday, a federal appeals court reversed a December 2022 ruling that dismissed the case, saying the lower court should’ve reviewed Google’s disclosures and determined “whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection.”...

It seems really cool but I'm a bit wary of it due to the crypto stuff.

https://github.com/zorggomat/FractalCryptGUI

Not only does the credit bureau max out their password length, you have a small list of available non-alphanumeric characters you can use, and no spaces. Also you cannot used a plused email address, and it had an issue with my self hosted email alias, forcing me to use my gmail address.

Both Experian and transunion had no password length limitations, nor did they require my username be my email address.

Update: I have been unable to log into my account for the last 3 days now. Every time I try I get a page saying to call customer service. After a total of 2 hours on hold I finally found the issue, you cannot connect to Equifax using a VPN. In addition there is no option for 2FA (not even email or sms) and they will hang up on you if you push the issue of their security being lax. Their reasoning for lax security and no vpn usage is "well all of our other customers are okay with this".

My brother seems to not care about his online privacy. He registers to services too easily without pondering, he’s not outraged we need a fucking account to use a vacuum cleaner, it seems he doesn’t care about all the potential risks of having videos of our indoors saved in a cloud. I don’t have strong arguments to convince him that privacy matters other than “if someone gets that, you could be in trouble” and “it’s like having someone watching you h24” and so on. How can i persuade him?

Please suggest somewhere else I should post this. I took an OTA update last night for Lineage4microG and my OnePlus8T just bootlooped. I tried downloading and manually side loading both the most recent and previous versions, but they keep failing with a kInstallDeviceOpenError. I am desperate to get back into my device without wiping the data.

This is aimed at iOS users more, but do any of you use any firewall apps like 1 blocker fire wall or adguard dns.

The reason I’m asking is if you have all them things at router level what good does it do on a device level?

"The TV business isn't just about selling TVs anymore. Companies are increasingly seeing viewers, not TV sets, as their most lucrative asset..."

I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn't even say anything.

A: what's your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don't have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok

And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes

I was listening to a Bazzell podcast where he mentions his company self hosting and maintaining a database of personal data and credentials for use in OSINT investigations. Some acquired through public sources but others acquired through leaks. Then of course there are data aggregate companies that do the same but are going on to sell this data for a profit.

What is the legality of this? Obviously acquiring publicly available data is legal, but how are these companies able to hold on to leaked usernames, passwords, and other confidential personal information. Especially those that were initially acquired through illegal means?

Neither newpipe nor libretube work for me anymore for a while now. Is there an alternative?

Edit: when using my vpn it is blocked. Without von it works fine