Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
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Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
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- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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Other than avoiding those services as much as possible, I use a second phone number for "machine-communication"= whenever I'm not giving my phone# to a person.
I'm in the EU, I found a provider in my country that offered a prepaid sim card (pay-per-use) with no expiry date, but never use the credit on it because it's free to receive sms. I turn it on in my dual sim phone whenever I need it.
Most plans tend to require use once every six months (i.e. send an sms or something), did you read the fine print?
I'd assume in a dual-SIM the phone's IMEI is the same?
Dual-sim phones usually have one IMEI per slot, so multiple IMEIs in total.
Did not see any requirement of the sort in the fine print, but even if there were, it's fine as long as you pick the right provider. If I had to make the occasional call it'd be still worth it. There are also providers that will keep a sim active indefinitely as long as you "purchase" one month (as little as 5€) every 1/2 years (most importantly, they do not charge you into negative credit). So basically free to operate as well.
Honestly I do it mostly to limit spam, if I did it only for privacy reasons I'd have more than two numbers but I fear one might start getting noticed by the autorities at that point :/ sms is inherently unsafe and not private.
Every sim slot has its IMEI