this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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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.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 238 points 3 days ago (11 children)

What's reddit? Is that like a new alternative to Lemmy? ;P

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Reddit who?

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

I like how the original OP mention in passing that Reddit is bad for privacy.

Like, no shit? How can a privacy community be even remotedly healthy in such an environment?

It's like having a club for how to avoid the police within a prison, regulated by the guards.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Browsing reddit while using a VPN is verboten.

Good grief I despise that smug, winking snoo with a effing fedora that goes along with the error page.

[–] ohellidk 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

yeah, seems like they really don't want site visits or something! oh well, its cooler here.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

woah there pardner!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

If you only talk about privacy on already private platforms, it will become a circlejerk in no time. You need to tell people who have no interest/experience in online privacy about it so you can further the cause. This is similar to why the FSF is on Twitter/X.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Reddit was open source until 2017, and one of the founders was Aaron Schwartz. So it didn't look like that for a long time.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

OP is the original OP. Probably. Reddit poster's name is the same as the Lemmy poster's name.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

While I hate Reddit isn’t the fediverse basically horrible for privacy? It’s super easy to see everyone’s posts and IP addresses no? I thought anyone could basically download everything with very little effort and do whatever they want with it.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

"Welcome to Reddit! A community where you can determine what the mood and biases of the mod(s) are so you can safely post without getting banned or comments deleted."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Unsurprising behavior from a community where the coolest person is the one who can put on the biggest tin foil hat. I appreciate the privacy community here but I think the concept itself leads to users decrying anything as insecure just because it makes them feel more knowledgeable.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 days ago

My guess is, the people who care didn’t stick around. As s result, quality went down.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Nerdy communities always seem to attract some very opinionated people, which is a turn off for people just trying to do better.

[–] [email protected] 112 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago (2 children)

As an older hobbyist, exactly.

I'm as guilty as anyone, but I promise I'm trying to be better.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago

I'm trying to be better.

Unlike those dang noobs

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Tbh I am done with reddit as a whole, back then a lot of mods were power tripping, but now most of them are. You can't say anything, do anything, it would be better for them if no one would even visit their communities.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

This is completely unsurprising tbh. A lot of the old mods were enthusiasts who grew a community from scratch due to their love for the subject. In the reddit API shutdown, a lot of those mods left in disgust, or were replaced by the reddit admins, or were driven off by the leftover toxic userbase calling them "entitled jannies" or whatever. A lot of the mods who took over their place were just power-hungry users who were chomping at the bit to get the chance to run a big community as their personal fiefdom because they were too toxic to grow one themselves.

This is the inevitable culmination of these events.

Anyway, welcome to lemmy. We become more powerful from every user who writes off reddit forever.

PS: if you see power-trippin' behaviour around these parts, you can always post about it in [email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago

Only reason I'd recommend signal to anyone is that its one of the few encrypted apps that doesnt have awful onboarding. A boomer can figure it out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

The "little steps" idea, though helpful in other places, doesn't really apply under surveillance capitalism. If one company gets some small bit of info about you they will sell that data to everyone else, and the government has access to those data as well. Being a little safer sometimes doesn't do much. You really have to go all the way or don't bother

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Wait, what's wrong with Proton Mail?

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 days ago (6 children)

They gave meta information like IP to the government in Switzerland, where they are based, after the government forced them to with a court order. Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that, just the additional information they have on a user like email and IP.

Because of that, a lot of redditers on r/privacy think they spy on their users for the US government. It’s a stretch, yes, but you have to remember they take turns using the one brain they collectively have.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that

Just want to point out for anyone new that ProtonMail does not use E2EE for email headers. That means they CAN access your subject lines, to/from fields, and other email headers. That means they CAN be forced to hand it over to the government.

Source: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained

Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted.

Personally I am disappointed in a lot of Proton's wording about this. They frequently promise they can't access "your data" and "your messages" when they do, in fact, store potentially sensitive data in a format they CAN access.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A bit more context is important here. They aren’t E2EE, but they are stored encrypted. In the case of the person whose meta information was turned over, ProtonMail wasn’t forced to hand over the information right away, they were forced to collect it the next time that person accessed and used their email. That tells us that they didn’t store the information beforehand and could not access it without preparing to intercept it the next time their service was used.

Ultimately, though, if something like that’s a dealbreaker, it’s likely you’re doing something that would benefit from a more secure way of communicating than email.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I agree, sounds a bit excessive. If that's correct, it doesn't sound like they're reading your data and at the end of the day they have to comply with things like warrants. Thanks for the clarification.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It was a terrible sub for years much before the apicalypse. It was full of apple fanboys who believed every marketing bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago

Apple fanboys pollute privacy comms on this side of social media too, tbh :/

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What’s the background here? Do they censor stuff?

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Mention VPNs are forbidden due to spam and stuff, GrapheneOS mention forbidden because of drama

2nd part, community recommend too often just extrem stuff, not seeing that someone just moved away from Google or iOS or whatever big data service

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Mention VPNs are forbidden due to spam and stuff, GrapheneOS mention forbidden because of drama

Defeats the whole purpose of the subreddit, it’s like saying you’re not allowed to talk about yellow in a community about colours…

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

We love lemmy ❤️

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

I also got DMs asking why it's removed or if I got banned, + someone asking and saying in topic it's the 3rd in short time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oh I remember r/privacy, this comment is spot on. You expect something like the Linux communities where it is okay what ever you prefer. But privacy-nerds sometimes goes the spying government/tech-firms rabbit-hole to deep.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i can agree on a few stuff, and can't on some others. I just choose the most private options aviable that still serve the purpose i use them for. Like if you can find something on Google Play, Aurora, F-droid, obviously, it is better to download from f-droid, but if you have a bit more time, it is even better to download from source or even compile it yourself. But it always upsets me when people ask for privacy tips when using ios or windows, like are you joking or what? ditch those lol. And obviously, as a gamer, i wouldn't use purist linux oses, like PureOS, because it can have serious issues with games. But i won't buy nvidia if i want to game on linux, when i can get amd with open-source drivers on distros like Garuda. So i think a reasonable privacy can't hurt anyone, but moving on just the next little step or going into the extremes are both not good ideas

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I can't recommend downloading from sources to normal people, and the problem is no, one step after step is better, as you can't have a perfect solution for privacy btw, but moving from one service to one service lets say in one day, week or maybe even month is not realistic. Its like recommending a password manager, great, but then saying theres immediat need to change all password... Like, technically true, but realisticly, bank and mail firsts, then step by step some passwords, without forgeting new accounts should have now strong passwords.

As I said, ie my girlfriend knowing Im interested into privacy tell me that she just installed and created a protonmail account and she used Drive a bit, if I just say thats useless because there need compartimentalization and Proton gave IP to police, thats fckd up

The most private, the most secure option isn't for everyone, first to threat model, second to personnal daily life

A person interested can still have Gafam apps, for some needs, required, but can limit the settings.

If you are a gamer, you mostly still need Windows computer (Linux got better and better, depends on games tho), then you can choose to say fck, or you can use it with limiting the stuff you can (turning off maximum settings you can, OsU10, etc.). Thats the same with iOS.. Most people wont buy right now a new phone because of privacy, but maybe the next in few months or in 2 years ; doesnt mean during this period you can't choose apps to use, turning off iOS features, etc..

For some projects I needed TikTok, I wrote myself a guide, to use it as anonymous as possible, to TikTok and to people, instead of using it raw, defaults

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