Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How private am I? (self.privacy)

submitted 1 year ago by Rez to c/[email protected]

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I think we all draw a line between privacy and convenience and I think I found mine and settled into a comfort zone of sorts. I use Fedora 38. My browser is Mozilla Firefox with it's "strict" setting. uBlock origin and uMatrix. When I need/want to use a site that doesn't work due to blocked connections I relax the restrictions in uMatrix or temporarily disable it entirely if I get frustrated or I'm in a hurry. I watch videos on YouTube. Don't use social media, but I do use Facebook messenger (although I prefer to use Signal with the handful of people I can). I use a Xiaomi phone with custom ad blocking DNS (I'd like to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS someday). I look for an app on F-Droid first, but install it through Google Play if I can't find what I need there. I use Qwant and DuckDuckGo. I use ReVanced. I do not use a VPN. I think that's all the relevant information. My question is: how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me? Are there any suggestions you would have for a person like me that wouldn't sacrifice too much convenience?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is a very simple question to answer:

https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint
https://fingerprint.com/demo/ - visit this one in a regular tab, private tab, container tab, etc to see if the fingerprint persists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey, i used a fresh version of Tor, Mullvad and on moblie the browser Vanadium. Every time it says I am unique. How do you become "not unique"?

[–] Rez 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As far as I understand, if you wanted to not be unique you would have to not use any special privacy tools. Use default Chrome installation and Windows 10/11. There will be millions of people using the exact same setup as you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

@[email protected] This is what I would've said. Hiding in plain sight is the solution. It gets tricky when you want to send a message and not leave a trail at all, but in essence - privacy != anonymity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok so that will defeat my goal of Not getting ads.

[–] Rez 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, it would.

[–] Rez 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think the answer is that simple. I can't access my computer at the moment to test with the websites you provided, but yesterday I wanted to find out the resolution of my browser and I went to some website that prints it. It didn't work at first because it used some third party script for that which uMatrix blocked. I wouldn't be surprised if most websites don't do a lot of "first party" tracking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What you're saying here is very different from what you're saying in the OP.

How private am I?

how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me?

most websites don’t do a lot of “first party” tracking.

These are all very different questions. I guess my bad for only answering the second one.

[–] Rez 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I sorry if I came off confusing, I'm not a native English speaker so putting my thoughts into English writing is a bit of a barrier for me. I guess I'm just looking for people to point out flaws in my setup and have a discussion on best practices while keeping the comfort factor in mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In short.

You're fairly private, I don't see maths just getting broken - i.e. the stuff you do is not visible to the outside.
You're very easy for big tech to track. They don't know what you're doing directly, but inference engines are very powerful nowadays.
Most websites do not, indeed, do first party tracking.