I'm trying to find a good alternative, Privacy.com isn't a option since I'm living in EU.

Relevant privacy part of the article:

The Online Safety Bill is due to pass in the autumn. Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/2Y3u6

It was difficult to maintain a poker face when the leader of a big US tech firm I was chatting to said there was a definite tipping point at which the firm would exit the UK.

I could see my own surprise mirrored on the faces of the other people in the room - many of whom worked there.

They hadn't heard this before either, one told me afterwards.

I can't tell you who it was but it's a brand you would probably recognise.

I've been doing this job for long enough to recognise a petulant tech ego when I meet one. From Big Tech, there's often big talk. But this felt different.

It reflected a sentiment I have been hearing quite loudly of late, from this lucrative and powerful US-based sector.

'Tipping point' Many of these companies are increasingly fed up.

Their "tipping point" is UK regulation - and it's coming at them thick and fast.

The Online Safety Bill is due to pass in the autumn. Aimed at protecting children, it lays down strict rules around policing social media content, with high financial penalties and prison time for individual tech execs if the firms fail to comply.

One clause that has proved particularly controversial is a proposal that encrypted messages, which includes those sent on WhatsApp, can be read and handed over to law enforcement by the platforms they are sent on, if there is deemed to be a national security or child protection risk.

The NSPCC children's charity has described encrypted messaging apps as the "front line" of where child abuse images are shared, but it is also seen as an essential security tool for activists, journalists and politicians.

Currently messaging apps like WhatsApp, Proton and Signal, which offer this encryption, cannot see the content of these messages themselves.

WhatsApp and Signal have both threatened to quit the UK market over this demand.

The Digital Markets Bill is also making its way through Parliament. It proposes that the UK's competition watchdog selects large companies like Amazon and Microsoft, gives them rules to comply with and sets punishments if they don't.

Several firms have told me they feel this gives an unprecedented amount of power to a single body.

Microsoft reacted furiously when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) chose to block its acquisition of the video game giant Activision Blizzard.

"There's a clear message here - the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business than the United Kingdom," raged chief executive Brad Smith. The CMA has since re-opened negotiations with Microsoft.

This is especially damning because the EU is also introducing strict rules in the same vein - but it is collectively a much larger and therefore more valuable market.

In the UK, proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act, which included tech firms getting Home Office approval for new security features before worldwide release, incensed Apple so much that it threatened to remove Facetime and iMessage from the UK if they go through.

Clearly the UK cannot, and should not, be held to ransom by US tech giants. But the services they provide are widely used by millions of people. And rightly or wrongly, there is no UK-based alternative to those services.

Against this backdrop, we have a self-proclaimed pro-tech prime minister, Rishi Sunak. He is trying to entice the lucrative artificial intelligence sector - also largely US-based - to set up camp in the UK. A handful of them - Palantir, OpenAI and Anthropic - have agreed to open London headquarters.

But in California's Silicon Valley, some say that the goodwill is souring.

"There is growing irritation here about the UK and EU trying to rein in Big Tech... that's seen as less about ethical behaviour and more about jealousy and tying down foreign competition," says tech veteran Michael Malone.

British entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, has chosen to locate his new company InflectionAI in California, rather than the UK.

It's a difficult line to tread. Big Tech hasn't exactly covered itself in glory with past behaviours - and lots of people feel regulation and accountability is long overdue.

Also, we shouldn't confuse "pro-innovation" with "pro-Big Tech" warns Professor Neil Lawrence, a Cambridge University academic who has previously acted as an advisor to the CMA.

"Pro-innovation regulation is about ensuring that there's space for smaller companies and start-ups to participate in emerging digital markets", he said.

Other experts are concerned that those writing the rules do not understand the rapidly-evolving technology they are trying to harness.

"There are some people in government who've got very deep [tech] knowledge, but just not enough of them," said economist Dame Diane Coyle.

"And so [all] this legislation has been going through Parliament in a manner that seems to technical experts, like some of my colleagues, not particularly well-informed, and putting at risk some of the services that people in this country value very highly."

If UK law-makers don't understand the tech, there are experts willing to advise.

But many of those feel ignored.

Professor Alan Woodward is a cyber-security expert at Surrey University whose has worked various posts at GCHQ, the UK's intelligence, security and cyber agency.

"So many of us have signed letters, given formal evidence to committees, directly offered to advise - either the government doesn't understand or doesn't want to listen," he said.

"Ignorance combined with arrogance is a dangerous mix."

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said that it had "worked hand-in-hand with industry and experts from around the world to develop changes to the tech sector", including during the development of the Online Safety Bill and the Digital Markets Bill.

I used to use Atom as my primary code editor, and it was really easy to disable telemetry in it (just two clicks). Now that Atom is no longer supported, I decided on using VSCode or VSCodium. However, I don't really know which one to choose.

• How much privacy am I losing? I also use Pycharm for Python most of the time, so I am wondering which would be the less privacy invasive one.
• I also heard that VSCode still sends telemetry, is that true (in the sense that it is sending more than a "no telemetry" flag)?
• Also, is it possible to make vscode.dev run without telemetry?
• Will VSCodium support C++ and CMake with compilation, or will I need to use VSCode for that?

(I know there is a "Code - OSS", but I just need to know about VSCode and VSCodium)

Hello everyone,

I have discovered SimpleX Chat (nothing to do with XChat or HexChat, or the favorite letter of some dumb billionaire), and it appears being a legit good effort at providing good privacy while retaining "mainstream" usability.

And it has been audited (by one company so far, it seems).

The only concern I have is with regards to battery life (given that it has to maintain roughly as many open connections as you have contacts, AFAICT).

Has anyone here used it? Any opinion?

We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.

And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already 'good little pets' of these giants.

Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don't have individual opinions.

Although the fight still continues, It's time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It's time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it's almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.

PC

For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Mobile

For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.

Yattee has recently dropped support for iOS 14, and was already extremely buggy to begin with. I currently use the uYou tweak on YouTube, but it isn't as private. Are there any native alternatives that don't involve a PWA?

Although i am quite a lurker in Lemmy, i don't have the time to be an active contributor, nor i wish to give away too much personal information nor i want to add an unnecessary addiction into my life, which is why i don't maintain a permanent account. However i do periodically have questions that I feel like only communities from Lemmy would be able to answer to my satisfaction, which is why i create burner accounts in my private window which i close after i am done with it.

But after creating many such accounts for this purpose, i feel like i am not doing it properly. I feel guilty abandoning accounts that take up space in servers of instances which are constantly fighting against spam and DDOS attacks; it feels like i am participating in the attack too. However i believe i should not delete the posts, for it may come useful for me in the future and for other people browsing the communities.

What methods should i adopt to further make my use of burner accounts in Lemmy more beneficial to me (in terms of anonymity and future account creations) as well as others (instances in terms of spam and members in terms of posts/comments)? Should I maintain a single account or permanently delete these accounts once i'm done with them?

For context, I use a VPN and Tor Browser and a disposable email for instances requiring email for account creation.

I've been using Adobe Acrobat (cracked) for around 2 years, and i have recently started switching all of my proprietary apps with privacy respecting and/or FOSS apps, however i could not find a PDF viewer/editor desktop app that could scan and create documents from my printer/scanner, which i use quite often, thus i came here looking for a recommendation.

Apart from scanning, i don't have much uses with a PDF editor. I haven't had to sign documents, share or work with it along someone, add watermarks or add read-only modes, though i wouldn't say i need them, for i may some time in the future.

I just need a PDF viewer/editor which i can rely on. It should at least be able to scan documents as well as edit those scanned pages (cropping, color shading, rescanning etc.) and have a nice UI overall as i am not a power user who works with compact view modes or terminals.

Thanks for the suggestions in advance.

Note: This post now archived and as such no longer works

I've been using SwiftKey for over a decade now, and I didn't really realize how potentially horrible it is for privacy. What are some good alternatives you guys can suggest, ideally open source?

My ideal keyboard includes swipe to type and a notepad (to paste certain emoticons like shrug emoji and such).

Thank you!

Edit, for any future lemmings/internet people who want the definitive answer (so far, as of October '23), OpenBoard works great.

Download the latest release apk from here

And if you want swipe typing as well,

Download the "libjni_latinimegoogle.so" file onto your phone from here

Then when you open OpenBoard, go to Advanced and select "Load gesture typing library". When it asks you to select a file, select the "libjni" file and swiping should work just fine.

I literally haven't seen anyone even mention it anywhere on the internet as if it never existed, when it comes to Ad blockers I always see uBO recommended with absolutely no mention whatsoever of ABP why? What makes it better than ABP? What happened to it? or maybe I'm wrong and ABP is not as well known as I think it is.

I have been using ABP for many years until someday don't remember when I switched to uBO because I read that it is "the best ad blocker".

I maybe need a history lesson as everything on the matter seems so vague to me and the whole situation is super weird

Best Linux Distro Privacy/Usability for a mid level user

What do you think is the best linux distro for a user who wants to migrate from windows in terms of privacy, usability and respect for the FOSS spirit?

I'm thinking to give a chance to #ElementaryOS https://elementary.io

#Linux #Privacy #FOSS @privacy @linux

Data | Philosophy Tube

I found this vid from a few years back on Philosophy Tube's Channel. Every argument about Data Privacy I've ever heard or had is here. Kind of a depressing ending though.

I'm going insane. I cannot for the life of me find a suitable way to listen to music privately. I'm on iOS, and I don't know whether to just stick to Apple Music or give up on music in general (I tried, TRIED to go local, but all the apps are shitty). Any way to listen to music and not have your data compromised? Should I just stick to Apple Music and hope that laws change (maybe something like EU's DMA?)

Edit: Hey all! First of all, thank you so much for all the recommendations! I've discovered so many great apps and tools I didn't even know existed (and it has also brought my hopes up for privacy in general). Even though it's still not perfect, I've been using foobar2000 on iOS, downloading music I find (I'm still using Apple Music for discovery, but will probably stop when my subscription ends this month). For desktop I'm using HyperPipe, which although a little buggy at times is so awesome! One thing I do miss about this system is the lack of lyrics. Apple Music has such a beautiful UI when it comes with lyrics, but you can't have it all when it comes to privacy it seems. Thanks for the amazing discussion! I'm so far loving Lemmy ;)

Today I realized that is possible login on twitter with a temp mail through VPN in a complete anonymous way. I think it's a very good thing. I don't understand why here a lot of people criticize Elon Musk. I think that now it's a platform more open to debates, it's almost free speech. No other popular big tech platform allow anonymous login.

Hello fellow c/privacy members.

I'm not new to privacy related things but I had a hard time persuading my family members and friends to switch to Matrix/Element. It is a reponse to UK's Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act that may soon in effect.

While it is just a preperation and planning in case those actually became law, I already face resistance from them. When I ask them would they switch, their first reaction is "Why one more app?" then follows with "That's cumbersome." or "I don't want to learn a new app." and suggest something more popular like Line, Telegram or Discord. Sometimes they would "Install WhatsApp because X is on there and he/she won't install one more app just for you."

What can I do to persuade them to use a new platform? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I think I should elebroate more of what Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act does[1]. As far as I understand, OSB will break E2EE by require scanning data on client device, like CSAM but much more generic. IPA requires companies to submit security funcition to the government for approval before releasing, and disable such feature upon request. Apple[2], Single[3] and WhatsApp made the announancment of exiting the UK market totally or partically if two were signed into law.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/thenextweb.com/news/uk-investigatory-powers-act-default-surveillance-devices-privacy
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2023/07/21/apple-threatens-to-pull-facetime-and-imessage-from-the-uk
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230809125823/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65301510#2023-08-09T12:57:48+00:00

"RoS discovered a number of new findings, and we would like to thank them for their thorough and detailed report. They stated , amongst other things that: that whilst they found some issues, that: “The Mullvad VPN relays which were the subject of this test showed a mature architecture…” and “During the test we found no logging of user activity data..”

so Android is mostly developed by google so I assume it also sends a lot of data over to google. Is there an OS that's privacy respecting?

Hey all, hoping we can share some of our favorite privacy resources. I do not believe this has been talked about on Lemmy, so it will serve as a good thread to get diverse takes on privacy, and how to accomplish the mentioned.

Personally, I liked reading and using these:

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonimity
• EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense
• Michael Bazzel's Guide to Extreme Privacy

Looking forward to the contributions!

This may sound a bit dumb, but eh.

So when that WhatsApp privacy policy change thing happened in early 2021, I tried switching from WhatsApp to Signal and Telegram. Telegram kinda stuck with me since i still get news from there, but Signal... not really because I didn't care about privacy back then. Now, I want to make the switch from WhatsApp to Signal, and I have a few plans on how to do that. But, is it worth it, since most people in Türkiye use Whatsapp and even if I switch my family and friends over to Signal, they'll still use WhatsApp since most people are on there.

So, yeah. Should i try, or is it not worth doing? Let me know, also, thanks in advance!

(Note: Most of my family and friends don't really care about privacy.)

(Note 2: This was also posted in r/signal and r/privacy subreddits.)