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.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
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.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- 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 We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
I deleted Whatsapp but created a photoshopped screenshot of Whatsapp banning my account so that everybody around me thinks it is involuntary, going to try to get them to switch to Signal soon. Wish me luck
That's hilarious. Has it worked?
I will find out in a few days if it will work. I am unfortunately in the US so most people just use SMS/iMessage but within my social circle most used Whatsapp. Hopefully they install Signal instead of just texting via SMS
@PrivateOnions @BigTechBlows Holy fuck, this is the most funny and genius tactic i've seen. questionable? sure, but hey, still funny. I'd probably do the same, just to bypass "the persuasion phase".
has the same ingenuity as "have a screenshot of messages as your lockscreen wallpaper, that way you can sneak out of any social situation imaginable."
Nobody has questioned it yet. Here is the screenshot if you were curious:
I photoshopped the top menu and the bottom and also made the picture the same as my phones resolution so there is no room for doubt 😎.
Tended to my garden. Hard to get info if you don't post info.
Jokes on you. Now I know you have a garden.
Finally switched from from Windows to Linux (specifically EndeavourOS, an Arch-based distro with a GUI installer).
I also bought a new phone, on which I intend to install GrapheneOS and distance myself from Google's ecosystem.
I signed up for Proton Mail.
LibRedirect browser addon to switch to privacy-respecting frontends for popular websites.
I just did too but I went with manjaro. After getting it all set up I’m thinking of jumping to endeavor but I’m not sure I want to go through the entire setup again.
Stopped using google search. Started using duckduckgo, brave, startpage, or SearXNG instead. Been using SearXNG the most.
I've been using signal for a long time and managed to pull my family and close friends with me (I don't know how but fuck yeah).
I use pihole on my home network and mobile with wireguard. I blocked all meta / twitter / google / amazon domains.
I host my own instance of searxng.
I deleted all my content on Reddit and kept my account to delete restored comments / posts. I ask them to stop restoring my content under GDPR "right to be forgotten" and am waiting the 30 days delay to report them to the authorities with the proofs I gather.
I blocked ~~threads.com~~ threads.net on my mastodon account.
I live a fucking hell but it feels great messing up with big tech. Fuck them.
Replaced a lot of apps on my phone with FOSS alternatives.
Can you list a few examples?
I'll do you a few better. Others have done it before. Here are some examples of excellent posts on the subject. Search Lemmy a bit and you'll find many more.
A website that lists quite a number of Android FOSS apps:
And here is an entire community dedicated to that topic:
- I deleted all my Meta accounts and started using Signal.
- I'm moving all accounts linked to Gmail and Outlook to Proton Mail and Tutanota.
- I'm using many privacy-oriented extensions on Firefox.
- I'm trying to change all software to Open Source if that's possible.
- I have a Nextcloud and i'm using it to sync my Calendar, Task and Photos.
- I started using Bitwarden for my passwords (and deleted them from all Microsoft, Apple and Google cloud services).
- I'm setting up my home server to host Nextcloud and Bitwarden.
Stopped taking my phone everywhere, leave it in a closed drawer when I'm not using it.
I have moved my personal knowledge base and task lists to logseq and using syncthing to sync with my other devices . Finally migrated my google drive data completely over to Nextcloud and then encrypted all of the data on google drive using cryptomater(just another more reliable backup over my local host until I can get enough money to configure redundant backups). Moved to Lemmy from Reddit. And started my plan to move back to GrapheneOS from my iPhone. Just need to get some money to migrate to a pixel.
Reading up/researching, and dumped reddit.
Use Open Assistant where possible instead of ChatGPT or Bing Chat or the likes.
Also, the Open Assistant project needs practical support to train its model.
I started using the browser extension Chameleon. It automatically changes your user agent to make it look like you're using another browser or OS. As usual, this should be used in conjunction with other addons such as uBlock Origin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chameleon-ext/
This actually drastically decreases privacy and makes you more trackable. The best thing to do with your user agent is to set it to the most common one and leave it at that. Anything else (especially an ever-changing one) is a much more uniquely identifying piece of information.
I started using freetube on the desktop. It's like newpipe with how you have local subscriptions and feed without an account. I like it a lot.
last week i deleted reddit, github, steam, google, discord, facebook and probably more I forgot about
I only keep my Microsoft account cuz I got Minecraft on it, otherwise I use fedi, xmpp, irc and matrix for everything else
I re-upped my Mullvad VPN account for another 6 months.
I subscribed to the MySudo plan that gives you 3 virtual phone numbers.
I created a free Privacy.com account and made a purchase with a virtual card.
host my own next cloud and vaultwarden instances so I guess I don't have to deal with low storage limits on Google photos anymore, and get uncompressed photos, and also bitwarden is great
Swapped from Gmail to Proton.me
Avoiding Threads like the plague it is.
Trying to find an alternative to Google News that isn't a RSS reader (tried Feeder and Feedly for a few days, hated both, may be stuck bouncing between sites)
Considering Notesnook or Standard Notes as an alternative to Google Keep.
Edit: Swapped to Notesnook. 😁
Edit Again: Debating if swapping from Google Authenticator is worth the hassle.
I switched to Ubuntu-Touch, hated it, switched back to Lineage OS.
I have a phone that I am not using tn, capable to run ubuntu touch. I constantly need to remind me why I switched back to lineage os, when I get the idea that I should try it again. The most annoying is the short battery life, which hasn't been fixed for about 5 years.
I heard Ubuntu Touch was pretty bad.
finally installed a pihole, looking at other self hosted projects like Searx
I bought an anonaddy subscription. I am finally also able to use my domain.
I apologise for my ignorance, but what's the concern with Surfshark?
Would be great if some kind person could enlighten me on this, thanks!
Switched from DDG to SearX, and changed upstream DNS provider from Google to Quad9. Not much, but every little bit helps.
I don’t think that not giving Google a list of all domains you’re visiting is just "little bit", it sounds like a whole lot :)
Avoided using threads, worked on my custom blocklist on NextDNS, tinkered around with my uBlock origin settings in Brave