What have you done lately to increase your privacy?
In the last week: I started using Syncthing. I was using cloud storage as a way of copying files from one device to another. Syncthing is so much better. I signed up with Mullvad VPN yesterday. Deleted my Surfshark account today which I signed up with over two years ago when I didn’t care about privacy. Finally convinced my sister to start using Signal.
Was that a privacy concern?
I mean fuck Reddit, but with tracking blocked was it ever more of a concern than other websites?
A lot of the ad tech profiling is based on your interests, because it can be used to predict your purchase intent, e.g. if you are active in video game subreddits there is a high chance you are willing to buy video games.
Your Reddit history has a lot of information that can be used for targeting ads, and you can don’t know who Reddit is sharing it with or how it’s used.
You can use a VPN, fake email, block cookies, etc., but the only reason you have to do all this is that they are collecting data.
I would assume IP address, browser fingerprint, and handle if you reuse it are all being tracked between sessions, even assuming no tracking cookies.
Obviously some of these are more trackable than others, but there’s the risk of re-establishing identity between sessions-- say if your user-agent resets when you close your browser, but you sign in to a sight that keeps track of you and shares it.
I very lax about opsec places like here or Reddit, my username is enough for you to find my city without much effort, and almost certainly find me in person with significant effort, and is certainly an easy start for trying to find me elsewhere online. My main defense there is that my password is different across every site, but many people aren’t even that careful, and that’s like the barest level of careful
Hopefully they install Signal instead of just texting via SMS
Good luck with that. I got one person to move to Signal.
My work team uses WhatsApp for group messages re shifts etc. SMS just doesn’t cut it for that, so I have to use WA.
Also, we have a family group on there.
Could be worse, the part time job I did recently used Teams 😒
@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 😎.
Started using Piped/Invid or DDG Duck Player instead of YouTube’s website. I find that I dont waste a bunch of time looking for crappy content.
Likewise, I redirect Reddit and Twitter links to libreddit and nitter anytime I click a search result, link or otherwise tweet or post that was sent to me.
I’ve disabled history (when possible)on services to both protect my privacy from prying eyes and in general, I prefer this. If I bought ibuprofen from Amazon, I don’t need them to continue to push and have my Amazon homepage be a Johnson and Johnson ad.
Likewise with the last comment I posted, using user scripts or Adblock lists that hide usernames or addresses on specific websites; very useful when sharing your screen with someone.
Lastly, seeing what I shared via Google Drive, Photos and my account in general and removing. Some shared links from when I was in jr. high existed and still worked…
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.
oof, probably the best I've seen and still suffers from youtube just being total trash in general without a dozen or so extensions. there's some channels I follow I had no idea had clickbait thumbnails and there absolutely will be sponsored content.
We need something like this for peertube
Sorry for not responding sooner. Busy weekend and this thread has far more comments (which is awesome) than I expected.
Their android app has Google and Appsflyer trackers. I did make a suggestion to Surfshark to remove the trackers as a way to improve customer privacy. Not one person from techsupport saw the trackers as an issue.
They merged with Nord which doesn’t have a good reputation.
Laying out $90 to renew right now doesn’t work for me.
@FermatsLastAccount @BigTechBlows what cloud vps do you have? If you don’t mind me asking.
I’m asking cuz I’ve been thinking on self-hosting something for me and a couple of people close to me. There’s so many VPS providers that it’s hard to choose, especially when there are some expensive than others.
I'm using Oracle's Free Tier solely for the fact that it's free and it's amazing performance for a free tier. 4 ARM cores, 24 GB of RAM, and 200 GB of storage for free. I think they also have a free AMD VPS if ARM doesn't work for you, but it's like only 1 core, 1 GB of RAM.
If you're willing to pay, I'd probably go with Hetzner.
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 seaxng.
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 on my mastodon account.
I live a fucking hell but it feels great messing up with big tech. Fuck them.
Degoogling as much as possible and switching to Apple services, and from there switching to better third party alternatives where available
Stopped using gmail, switched to icloud mail, and now switching important accounts (financial, banking) to proton mail
Using Apple’s system keychain and cloud sync for password management and 2FA; haven’t found a reason to use anything else
Stopped using Safari and started using Orion with ublock origin
Stopped using Google for search (the quality is terrible now in any case) and started using DDG (also trying out Kagi)
Trying to get used to the Freetube desktop app for youtube instead of using the website
Stopped using reddit and deleted my account; now here on lemmy
Deactivated facebook and will eventually delete it; I don’t have any other social media accounts
On the hardware side I have been using iphone and I don’t plan on switching. But I hardened the privacy/telemetry settings as much as possible and turned on advanced data protection
BigTechBlows 
neuromancer
tyrefyre
v13
anon_water
Baggins
Orokos
Gorilla Thug
CifrareVerba
Evkob (they/them)
dasprii
TheUniqueOne
ShartyWaffles
kikuchiyo
Hellfire103
FinalFallacy
Tiritibambix
jwr1