Tired of your #phone tracking you? Try a Google alternative +win a Volla Phone!🤩
As we know our #community is always interested in learning about more #Google alternatives, we keep our eyes and ears open to introduce you to like-minded companies.
Answer the following question in the comments and maybe win a Volla Phone 22 for yourself! 🏆
👉 Where are Volla Phones manufactured?
Open to participants based in the EU, UK, and EFTA.
#OrganicMaps is here. Use it while offline and feel good about a #privacy-respecting app that doesn't suck you dry of your personal information. Based on #OpenStreetMap this app is gonna blow #Google#Maps out of the water (hopefully ;)
Infosec friends are unanimous: if you're using Chrome, you want to visit chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off Ad Topics, Site-Suggested Ads, and Ad Measurement.
IMPORTANT: you must do this for each of your Chrome profiles, since it's not a global setting.
Blocking variations.brave.com which is used for A/B testing could potentially break Brave's functionalities. For me did Brave's "forgetful browsing" feature broke which seems to be disabled by default if you block this domain.
After putting my account into "hibernation" for the past few weeks, I finally closed it. But I'm still looking for work. Thankfully I can still find positions (SRE and software dev) by just going directly to the company's site and finding a Jobs page.
Good luck to everyone else out there looking for work!
So #Meta's new #Threads app needs your health and fitness info. It also needs your browsing history and your location, and your purchases, and...well, it seems to need everything. If you want to get fully creeped out, here's the whole #privacy policy: https://privacycenter.instagram.com/policy/.
Folks, the reason #Facebook/ #Instagram/ #Meta/ Zuckerberg hasn’t launched #Threads in the #EU isn’t because the EU is determined to protect your privacy, it’s because the EU is determined to protect The Single Market (peace be upon it) from anticompetitive behaviour. It’s because they’re using Instagram to launch Threads and sharing data between them (and not with EU startups that might want to use that data too). It’s #antitrust, not #privacy. It’s markets, not people.
I just would like to point out that
none of the accounts I was forced to create for job applications so far had any options for multi-factor authentication or for deleting the account.
And all of the accounts I was forced
to create for job applications so far required to enter very sensitive information that was completely unnecessary to require.
We are currently witnessing the fallout from monopolization in the browser space. Back in 2007, Internet Explorer received much criticism for its phishing protection mechanism which transmitted all visited websites to Microsoft servers. Mozilla paired up with Google and designed a different system which performed most checks locally and preserved users’ privacy. That’s what healthy competition looks like.
Fast forward to 2023. Almost all web browsers in use are either Chrome or based on the Chromium browser engine. With the competition pretty much eliminated, Google is now pushing its “Enhanced Safe Browsing” down everyone’s throats – which is a nice sounding name for “every website you visit is sent to our servers.” The Internet Explorer approach from 2007 all over again, only that now it’s Google getting all this data. And they certainly won’t do anything evil with it. Yeah, sure.
Reminder: Firefox and Safari are the only remaining browsers worth noting which are not using Google’s browser engine.
"After quizzing these companies about data practices, I learned that most are sharing what’s happening in my home with Amazon, too. Our data is the price of entry for devices that want to integrate with Alexa. Amazon’s not only eavesdropping — it’s tracking everything happening in your home."
#GeoffreyAFowler, 'Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time'
#GrapheneOS: Der Goldstandard unter den Android-ROMs. Kein Zweifel: GrapheneOS ist derzeit das sicherste und datenschutzfreundlichste Custom-ROM bzw. Android-System. :android: 👇
🚨 Another EU mass surveillance attempt. Will kill privacy on web. Must not pass. 🚨
“[A]ll web browsers distributed in Europe will be required to trust the certificate authorities and cryptographic keys selected by EU governments.
These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic across the EU.”
Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Best Linux Distro Privacy/Usability for a mid level user
What do you think is the best linux distro for a user who wants to migrate from windows in terms of privacy, usability and respect for the FOSS spirit?
Is it just me, or has Microsoft gone completely crazy? They are implementing spyware that takes screenshots every second and forcing AI integration. Why would anyone willingly purchase this? Anyone with experience in computer or information security knows that it is a bad idea, even if it is locally done. Just don't do it. Yet, here we are, and they are doubling down on this idea. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/microsofts-new-recall-feature-will-record-everything-you-do-on-your-pc/#privacy#security
iOS AppStore privacy preview for Meta’s upcoming ActivityPub-based app Threads
DuckDuckAssitant is back!