From September 2023, we will be gradually rolling out our new unique search offer. This will happen over several months and won’t apply to everyone at the same time. This means that when you search through Ecosia, we work with either Microsoft Bing or, with your consent, Google to provide you with search results and ads. In order to do this, we automatically collect data required by search partners to prevent bot attacks and ad fraud - which includes your IP address and search terms.

For a growing number of users we can now provide Google results and advertisements. In order to supply these results and ads, Google requires a cookie to be set on your browser and access to your device’s local storage to store information. We will ask for your consent before doing this and if you do not agree, we will provide non-personalized results from Microsoft Bing.

In order to provide non-personalized Microsoft Bing results and ads, we are contractually obliged to implement Microsoft Clarity to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, as well as sharing your IP address and search terms. This behavioral data is captured in individual search sessions and is not tied to a user profile unless you consent. The processing of this data is necessary for the provision of our service. Although Ecosia does not use this information, it is used by Microsoft Bing for site and advertising optimization, as well as fraud protection. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit Microsoft’s privacy statement and Microsoft Clarity documentation.

Microsoft Bing does also offer personalized search results and ads. This service requires a cookie to be set on your browser which creates a personal profile. We will ask for your consent before enabling this and you can change your choice at any time in your cookie preferences. More information on cookies and how to take control of your preferences can be found in the “What about cookies?” section.

I use wire (wire. com) for daily chatting. I like it but I couldn't find any good communities in wire. In session, or simpleX, there are privacy (and other) groups in which anyone can participate.. Can we start a privacy group in wire so we folks can also hang around?

Summary

The FBI has requested a significant budget increase for 2024, specifically for its DNA database known as CODIS. This request, totaling $53 million, is in response to a 2020 rule that requires the Department of Homeland Security to collect DNA from individuals in immigration detention. CODIS currently holds genetic information from over 21 million people, with 92,000 new DNA samples added monthly. This increase in funding demonstrates the government's commitment to collecting over 750,000 new samples annually from immigrant detainees, raising concerns about civil liberties, government surveillance, and the weaponization of biometrics.

Since the Supreme Court's Maryland v. King decision in 2013, states have expanded DNA collection to cover more offenses, even those unrelated to DNA evidence. The federal government's push to collect DNA from all immigrant detainees represents a drastic effort to accumulate genetic information, despite evidence disproving a link between crime and immigration status.

Studies suggest that increasing DNA database profiles does not significantly improve crime-solving rates, with the number of crime-scene samples being more relevant. Additionally, inclusion in a DNA database increases the risk of innocent individuals being implicated in crimes.

This expanded DNA collection worsens racial disparities in the criminal justice system, as it disproportionately affects communities of color. Black and Latino men are already overrepresented in DNA databases, and adding nearly a million new profiles of immigrant detainees, mostly people of color, will further skew the existing 21 million profiles in CODIS.

The government's increased capacity for collecting and storing invasive data poses a risk to all individuals. With the potential for greater sample volume and broader collection methods, society is moving closer to a future of mass biometric surveillance where everyone's privacy is at risk.

A viral TikTok account is doxing ordinary and otherwise anonymous people on the internet using off-the-shelf facial recognition technology, creating content and growing a following by taking advantage of a fundamental new truth: privacy is now essentially dead in public spaces.

or can I just use the desktop one somehow

Is there a GUI which I can just click and disable and enable packages debugging Samsung Android phones? I heard that there are options which are much simpler than vanilla ADB. I just want to get rid ofll the Samsung/Google/Meta bloat prepackaged with the phone. Appreciate any pointers/advice.

I'll start off by saying everyone's economic situations are just as varied as their threat models and how people make decisions on which services can be specific to themself and not one that can apply to anyone else. The services one chooses to use for free or to pay for may be based more on what they can afford vs what's the best broad reaching plan.

That being said i'd like to see what others think about the proton suit of services. I've been eyeing it as an option for a paid service for a while but am hesitant to put all my eggs in one basket. I'm interested in a vpn, mullvad seems to be the other popular choice. I'm also interested in email address anonymizing service like anonaddy. At $5 for mullvad, $3 for anonaddy, and $3 for base proton email it comes out to a dollar more than protons premium tier which gets cheaper if you pay for 1 or 2 years at a time.

As said above would the biggest reason not to use proton for all of these separate services be not putting all your eggs in one basket?

I've noticed that dark reader on occasion phones home to darkreader.org, also with a increasing amount of sponsored links on their page. So what does everyone think, are they safe right now or should they not be trusted?

I just discovered this amazing app! It lets you remove (or just disable) preinstalled apps like Facebook, Netflix, etc. and system apps like samsung knox apps, diagnostic, bixby, and even One UI (but you must have installed other launcher). You can’t brick your device, worst case it falls into a boot loop and after 5 reboots it will factory reset.

Debloating your device will make it faster, more private and more secure (less atack surface).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5635914

Back at FOSDEM we announced the idea of Matrix 2.0 - a series of huge step changes in terms of Matrix’s usability and performance, made up of Sliding Sync (instant login/launch/sync), Native OIDC(industry-standard authentication), Native Group VoIP (end-to-end encrypted large-scale voice & video conferencing) and Faster Joins (lazy-loading room state when your server joins a room).

Now, we’re excited to announce that as of today everyone can start playing with these Matrix 2.0 features. There’s still some work to bring them formally into the specification, but we’re putting it out there for folks to experience right now. Developers: watch this space for updates on the spec front.

Practically speaking, this means there are now implementations of the four pillars of Matrix 2.0 available today which you can use to power a daily-driver Matrix 2.0 client. The work here has been driven primarily by Element, using their new Element X client as the test-bed for the new Matrix 2.0 functionality and to prove that the new APIs are informed by real-world usage and can concretely demonstrably create an app which begins to outperform iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram in terms of usability and performance… all while benefiting from being 100% built on Matrix.

I know it's an odd question, but where I live phones get stolen often. My phone doesn't have the option for an eSim, which is a problem because 90% of the time when a thief steals a phone they take out the SIM card immediately, meaning I wouldn't be able to remotely lock or wipe my phone.

Should I consider glueing the SIM tray shut? Or are there alternative less permanent measures I can take to keep my device secure?

Hey /c/privacy,

Similar to the idea that was proposed a month ago by @[email protected], I built a little web app that allows one to "emulate" EAN13-based loyalty cards. I call it the Loyalty Card Emulator. 🪄

The app allows you to either select one of the built-in card numbers that I have found on the internet. (Only for demonstration purposes, of course!) Or you can just enter a code manually and create the loyalty card from it. The link to a card can be shared (e.g. if you and your SO use the same loyalty card).

At the moment, it is very basic and only has one single design that is supposed to visually mimic one of the biggest loyalty card providers that I know.

Architectural-wise, the app is written in TypeScript, powered by React and Vite. The app does not transmit and/or store your codes anywhere but on your device; it's a single-page application that runs entirely in your browser, without any server component.

The source code is publicly available here. The hosting is taken care of by Codeberg Pages - cheers for that!

Adding new card designs and/or preset codes can be achieved quite easily, so feel free to fork and contribute!

Trying my luck here since I really couldn't get an answer on the grapheneos forum. I see thumbnails from videos not available to the currently used profile for the audio tracks that are playing, only on the notification popup though. Not sure if this is a bug or whatnot but I'm kinda concerned if this indicates that data is being leaked between profiles. I already checked the metadata/tags for the audio tracks and confirmed that they are correct also storage scopes are enabled. Should I be concerned? Any help will be appreciated.

Edit for some more information: vlc (permissions removed and not setup) is installed on the default "main" profile, where the video files are at, since I use it to install updates downstream to other profiles where vlc is also installed.

Edit #2: whatever bug was causing this seems to be taken care of after the latest update.

I'd like to think he did. That way when he comes back, he'll have a bunch of stories about being on the roads of South Korea.

I should have known if the apps free, you're the product. Duolingo appears to harvest the most data compared to other language learning apps.

Source: Surfshark Research

The table is quite big (190+ lines of hand-written HTML) and it doesn't fit on mobile phone screens unless you zoom out. It should be fine on desktop. It also specifies the criteria followed and has analysis of some of the IMs in the table (not close to all of them, I hope to add more analysis in the future).

Counter-arguments are always welcome. Sources and additional information too. Note that the typical privacy recommendation (Signal) is not recommended here. It does not meet our criteria, being centralized and requiring a phone number. I don't want to hate on Signal since it's doing a decent job spreading the importance of E2EE, however we can not recommend it for the given reasons.