This is an article written by telegram's founder and CEO Pavel Durov in 2019 on "Why whatsapp will never be secure". Your thoughts?

Hello,

I've been using GNU/Linux as my primary operating system for several years. Every year, various websites release statistical reports on their users, detailing the operating systems they use.

I've noticed that many privacy add-ons spoof the User Agent to make the browser appear as if it's on Windows. Despite using GNU/Linux, my browser presents itself as if it were on Windows 10.

My dilemma is whether I should switch the User Agent to Linux. By spoofing, I'm potentially decreasing the statistics for Linux in these regular reports, which might lead to Linux not being taken seriously due to a falsely low userbase.

However, on the flip side, pretending to be on Windows helps reduce my web fingerprint. What are your thoughts on this?

I use Canva a fair bit for work, is there anything similar that’s more privacy friendly? I don’t always want to open up Gimp, ideally it’ll be available online as well.

It is my hope that Privacy is the community for this. I think freedom to use browsers the way we intend is a privacy issue.

We have likely all seen or heard that the “Select All” option has been removed from Safari — don’t hate me, I won’t be doing apple again.

That said, manual SELECTING of text still exists.

Here’s the privacy issue:

When I SELECT a small amount of text, I am offered the COPY option.

When I SELECT a few hundred words, even at Gutenberg, I’m given zero time to hit the copy button.

Just now I shifted to Firefox and had zero problem doing what I needed to do.

Could other interested folks confirm this SAFARI bug/irritant/annoyance?

Here’s the page I was using:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/766/pg766.txt

In safari, check what happens if you try to copy five words vs. 300 words.

There are no "news", but I'm worried about this business actually. I'm in knowledge that post already exists but I'm not clear at all.

Resuming: Google is trying to add telemetry to Go's toolchain (such as .NET and Dart/Flutter). It also added the GOPROXY environment variable that uses the Google's Go proxy to... Just collect more user data?

I'm a pretty beginner Go dev, but I'd like a toolchain without these telemetry or at least some instruction of how to opt out this thing.

Sorry for repost, but I don't find enough information in any other place. :(

I wanted to delete my old oppo id account, and to do that I'll need to login into it, but I don't know the password.

Password reset requires saying when the account was created (month and year) and "tech support" can't help here either.

Is it legal to block / hide account deletion behind login in European countries? GDPR (and polish RODO) both talk about a right to data deletion, which in this case, I believe, isn't respected.

As title suggests, how do I go about stopping my phone from scanning my surroundings for extra devices?

Note: my phone was already connected to my own headphones.

(edit: removed redundant rants and added updates)

I recently got diagnosed with a condition (sleep apnea) which means I need to use a machine (CPAP) to have a proper sleep, probably for the rest of my life. The doctor wanted me use the device for a few months, and bring the "report" generated by the device to monitor my progress and discuss further treatment.

I thought it would be a simple task, like using a program or accessing a local network service like a printer would and download a file. However, as I consulted to the device distributors in my area... their sales pitch (disregarding the actual medical functions) were:

A) The machine is constantly connected via wi-fi or cellular to manufacturer's server, and user downloads the report via manufacturer's website or an app.

B) The machine has an SD card slot to which data is copied, but user have to bring its contents to the authorized distributor so they can convert them into a report file.

TL;DR: Very unsatisfied with either options. I never asked for this.

Update #1: For the reports, there's a program called OSCAR (www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/) that supports conversion of SD card data. Check device compatibility first. For sleep apnea related discussion, there is a forum (www.apneaboard.com) dedicated to it.

Update #2: From all the available brands, I'm inclined to buy a Chinese brand (Yuwell) simply because of costs alone, even if it is not supported by OSCAR. I see a lot of people recommending ResMed (which has OSCAR support) both online and offline, but the cost is prohibitively expensive for someone in my financial situation with local market prices. Still have to think about it.

Update #3: There's an asshole in the comments arguing "what's so special" about sleep related statistics being copied around. I concern was how those statistics get associated with customer identification (metadata) as distributors often do. Anyways, won't waste my time with the "got nothing to hide" type of dumbfucks.

I use Mullvad, but id like to use TC for some tracker control. However, the way it does that is thru a VPN. how can I make this work? or is mullvads DNS content filtering enough?

Edit: Ended up using App Manager (fdroid) like @badelf suggested

Almost all countries require official authentication to activate a SIM card. This seems to me as a huge privacy problem, if the country can track sim cards across cell towers and connect them to a person. It seems like a dystopian system, that we litterely can not hide from our governments without turning off our smartphones. It seems incredibly unnecessary to me and just sets up the system to be abused.

Or do I understand something wrong?

What can we do against this? There are some sim cards that can be bought second hand, but they will not be a long term solution.

Basically I am using mull on android and librewolf on linux.I want to use firefox sync or something line that for syncing.So how good Firefox sync is, in privacy point on view. I am not anonymity paranoid I just want privacy so basically what do they collect and for what?

The Beijing institute developed the technique to crack an iPhone’s encrypted device log to identify the numbers and emails of senders who share AirDrop content, the city’s judicial bureau said in an online post. Police have identified multiple suspects via that method, the agency said, without disclosing if anyone was arrested. “It improves the efficiency and accuracy of case-solving and prevents the spread of inappropriate remarks as well as potential bad influences,” the bureau said.

Further read: https://sfj.beijing.gov.cn/sfj/sfdt/ywdt82/flfw93/436331732/index.html

Twillio just announced they're discontinuing the Desktop version of their popular Two Factor Authentication client. Their proposed solution is for users to move to the mobile app, which of course doesn't fulfill the use case of people who explicitly chose Authy because it had a desktop client.

If you use Authy and depend on the Desktop client you will have to consider migrating to something else.

I found out about Clarity, it's a Microsoft free product. It seems to be source available on Github

Does anyone know a way to self-host it without making requests to Microsoft? Or maybe an alternative with heatmaps without counting on matomo?

Today, I noticed that Google wasn't loading on Mull (Firefox Fork). Switching useragent with the extension Chameleon makes the page load again.

I started the receiving spams messages in Signal 😂. Is there a way to automatically block this guys?

I assumed that Gboard spell checker contacted servers constantly and have it switched off for whatever good that does. I recently tried enabling it to play with other options and noticed that it works when my phone is entirely offline.

Does anyone know if it works locally or does it just send a bunch of data out once I give it internet access again?

Bonus question: Does anyone know of a privacy respecting spell checker for android? It looks like Florisboard can work with Hunspell through Nuspell but not on Android. Is that right?

TLDR: can I edit docx files on word without a subscription and if not what are some apps that can allow me to do so

Like the title says I need the ability to edit .docx for college (sadly other file formats aren’t accepted AFAIK) and my Microsoft 365 subscription is expiring and will not be renewed thanks to you lovely people getting me on the Proton family of software and obsidian for note taking.

However i created a .docx file today and and got a popup in word saying my Microsoft subscription is expiring soon (in march I believe) and that I would lose many feature.

This scary message wasn’t very helpful as to what features id lose (probably a lot of them I don’t even use) but the internet has not been helpful in telling me if I can still view and edit all my docx files that I have been collecting and creating over the years and have migrated to my proton drive

If I won’t be able to access docx files in word what are some apps that can open them from my proton drive (this is a hard requirement for me).

I started out watching some YouTube channels that claim to be dedicated to keeping me private and secure with recent news but found that some of them have a history of advertising NordVPN. Those channels sometimes sounded like they were defending Apple then telling people if they don't like the content then to just scram. Also, they would talk about custom roms for Android, then eventually when the channel got more viewers, the host makes a video advertising Google and why he now uses stock Google Android and saying that it's advanced. These channels, I sometimes find, either have bots or loyal followers on YouTube and Reddit that are ready to gaslight someone for questioning them. They don't hang out on other platforms like Odysee which is strange.

What is a good podcast about privacy and security?

Does an open source keyboard exist for iOS that respect your privacy?

Does apple get what you type on the keyboard in their servers?

Curious website that explains how pages want to deceive you with examples (save to use and not taken very seriously)

Deleting a post is simply marking a piece of text so nobody sees it, but I think the text is still stored in their servers.

Furthermore, a large company like reddit, must backup regularly, meaning there must be several copies of my posts in several SSDs. If the backup once a day… some of my posts are 5 years old.

Companies exist to make money. I suspect they just marked my posts not to be readable by anyone, except staff and they can still monetize them.

Am I wearing a tinfoil hat way too often?

Okay, it may sound like a personal issue, but I disagree with the privacy practices in developer tools. And I'm not talking about VSCode issue, but about other more elemental development tools. For example, the privacy policy of npmjs.com, pkg.go.dev (Google's privacy policy lol), hub.docker.com, and these public registries for developers, have some questionable privacy practices as well.

I wanna know your opinions about.

Disinformation is a criminally underrated technique for protecting yourself against doxing, data breaches, and tracking. But it's important to use it right to be both effective and a law-abiding citizen. In this video, I share my tips and techniques gathered over the year to protect your privacy where tools fall just a little short.