This is original content. AI was not used anywhere except for the bottom right image, simply because I could not find one similar enough to what I needed. This took around 6 hours to make. ### Transcription (for the visually impaired) (I tried my best) The background is an iceberg with 6 levels, denoting 6 different levels of privacy. The tip of the iceberg is titled "The Brainwashed" with a quote beside it that says "I have nothing to hide". The logos depicted in this section are: - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/) - [Apple](https://www.apple.com/) - [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/) - [PayPal](https://www.paypal.com/us/home) - [Google Chrome](https://www.google.com/chrome/) - [CashApp](https://cash.app/) - [WhatsApp](https://www.whatsapp.com/) - [Samsung](https://www.samsung.com/us/) - [Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/) - [Microsoft Windows](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows) - [Ring (Security Camera)](https://ring.com/) - [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/) - [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/) - [Discord](https://discord.com/) - [Gmail](https://workspace.google.com/products/gmail/) - [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/) The surface section of the iceberg is titled "As seen on TV" with a quote beside it that says "This video is sponsored by...". The logos depicted in this section are: - [NordVPN](https://nordvpn.com/cybersec-site/) - [Bitdefender](https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/) - [Incogni](https://incogni.com/) - [Malwarebytes](https://www.malwarebytes.com/) - [Opera GX](https://www.opera.com/gx) - [ExpressVPN](https://www.expressvpn.com/) An underwater section of the iceberg is titled "The Beginner" with a quote beside it that says "I don't like hackers and spying". The logos depicted in this section are: - [Telegram](https://telegram.org/) - [Authy](https://www.authy.com/) - [Brave Browser](https://brave.com/) - [Privacy.com (Virtual Cards)](https://www.privacy.com/) - [DuckDuckGo](https://duckduckgo.com/) - [iMessage](https://support.apple.com/messages) - [Proton Mail](https://mail.proton.me/) - [AdBlock (Browser Extension)](https://getadblock.com/en/) A lower section of the iceberg is titled "The Privacy Enthusiast" with a quote beside it that says "I have nothing I want to show". The logos depicted in this section are: - [Signal (Messenger)](https://signal.org/) - [Tuta](https://mail.tutanota.com/) - [addy.io](https://addy.io/) - [Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux) - [Bitwarden](https://bitwarden.com/) - [uBlock Origin](https://ublockorigin.com/) - [Tor and Tor Browser](https://torproject.org/) - [ProtonVPN](https://protonvpn.com/) An even lower section of the iceberg is titled "The Privacy Activist" with a quote beside it that says "Privacy is a human right". The logos depicted in this section are: - [Monero](https://www.getmonero.org/) - [GrapheneOS](https://grapheneos.org/) - [Vanadium (Web Browser)](https://vanadium.app/) - [KeePassDX](https://www.keepassdx.com/) - [SimpleX Chat](https://simplex.chat/) - [Accrescent](https://accrescent.app/) - [SearXNG](https://docs.searxng.org/) - [Aegis Authenticator](https://getaegis.app/) - [OpenWrt](https://openwrt.org/) - [Mullvad VPN](https://mullvad.net/) - An illustration of physical cash The lowest portion of the iceberg is titled "The Ghost". There is a quote beside it that has been intentionally redacted. The images depicted in this section are: - A cancel sign over a mobile phone, symbolizing "no electronics" - An illustration of a log cabin, symbolizing "living in a log cabin in the woods" - A picture of gold bars, symbolizing "paying only in gold" - A picture of a death certificate, symbolizing "faking your own death" - An AI generated picture of a person wearing a black hoodie, a baseball cap, a face mask, and reflective sunglasses, symbolizing "hiding ones identity in public" End of transcription.

So, first off, to make it for daily browsing use I did some basic alterations to the browser by allowing it to keep history, caches, cookies, disabling always-on incognito, and so on. I also installed my favorite addons (Dark Reader, Sponsorblock, I try to be as minimalistic in my choices as possible). This of course harms the privacy, *but* you can just ctrl+shift+p to basically turn all of that shit off when you decide you need to get serious. I kept the letterboxing on, its hard to get used to initially but after about a month of using Mullvad as a daily driver I got used to it. It seems most sites aren't able to detect my alterations to the browser. I don't think any other privacy browser spin (Librewolf, Waterfox, Brave, Tor Browser etc) comes anywhere close to the snappiness and privacy intersection of Mullvad Browser. I'm able to skirt bans due to using anonymity services trivially and the captchas are short and quick and not a never-ending slug fest. Its good enough at faking a unique identity out of the box that most things cannot tell that its fake. I'm in such love that I'm going to swap away from my current vpn (IVPN, sub should end in November) to Mullvad due to how well polished this project is. I'm really interested if their multihop service can get around VPN IP bans better than Tor can. Kudos to the Mullvad team 🥂 I hope you make an android version soon!

Since Monero is a privacy coin, why is there no libre monero app available without any anti-features? There's a Zcash app, a couple of bitcoin apps, who no Monero? https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Monero&lang=en I don't use the standard that if something is on F-Droid then it's private. I check that an app does not have any anti-features to know that it can be used anonymously

The scariest part of this recent news is that TM Signal seem(ed) to be interoperable. People using TM Signal could interact with actual Signal users. How are you to know whether or not your groups have people using bastardized versions of Signal? Are things like Session interoperable with Signal?

Peer-to-peer as it's easier to get an app over getting a server. Must be libre software and E2EE too, obviously.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/12078124 > The author addresses the issue.

I mean Amazon is a hard service to switch from. Nearly everything you need is available to order from there. Now of course whatever is the next best thing can still get your address and name (unless you use an alt name and address) but I’m talking about apps or services that have better privacy polices regarding storing personal information.

hi, are there any cools peeps here that use RSS feed for news articles? like say i only wanted to read news about "red bees" how would u do it pls?

# Important As with all of my long-form, well organized, (mostly) grammatically correct posts that I have been writing for over a year, **no AI was used in the making of this post.** Every word I write on my own, and I spend hours writing and editing these posts. One of my posts was removed for being "AI slop", which hurt, because it was one I was most proud of writing. From that incident, I considered no longer posting on Lemmy, but I still felt my work is needed, so here I am again. It's very obvious that there are human mistakes and human additions to my posts that cannot be replicated by AI. It was not the first time one of my posts has been accused of being written AI, but I want it to be the last. There are people who enjoy writing and will put in the work to actually write a piece, such as me. I will prove that I am human by any means necessary. The content I write is not designed to be short, nor is it designed to be summarized in a short manner. If you are not someone who enjoys reading long text, or prefers reading text with a more condensed meaning, this is not for you. I am also trying out increasing the number of references I use during the post, which is different from my usual style of only referencing more uncommon topics. Thank you for your understanding. # Introduction For the sake of people with whom I still keep in touch, I will avoid referencing too many anecdotes while writing this. These individuals have taken great strides in both privacy and security, even if they have a long way to go. It is not my place to publicly degrade these individuals and their experiences, especially knowing that they are reading this. It was wrong of me to have done this in the past, especially without permission. The topic of this post will, however, cover some common experiences I have observed between numerous individuals, rather than singling out the stories of singular individuals. These stories will be used scarcely and only to help clarify the points I am making through examples. # Threat Model & Privacy Journey My privacy journey officially started around 6 years ago as of writing this. It was when I was first introduced to the [privacy risks of Google](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_with_Google), as well as the privacy benefits of [Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/) and [Tor Browser](https://www.torproject.org/). In the 6 years that I have spent learning about privacy, my preferences have changed between different extremes. I used to be a die-hard user of Firefox-based browsers such as [Mullvad Browser](https://mullvad.net/en/browser), and wouldn't dare use a [Chromium](https://www.chromium.org/Home/)-based browser. I became obsessed with [browser fingerprinting](https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/learn), and Firefox-based browsers seemed to be the only way to mitigate it. Slowly, though, my views shifted. I became more security-oriented, and became concerned with the [security of Firefox](https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html). (That topic is a whole can of worms that I have [covered in the past](https://lemmy.ml/post/21367269). Please don't fight about this in the comments.) Eventually, I switched to Chromium-based browsers such as [Vanadium](https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium) and [Trivalent](https://github.com/secureblue/Trivalent). Even though I used to be polarized, I eventually switched sides as my [threat model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat_model) changed. That's where this discussion begins. I have never, in the 6 years I have researched privacy, made a proper threat model. This should not immediately discredit me. I have come to learn that a threat model is a good idea in *most cases* for *most people*, and if you haven't made a threat model already, [you should](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/basics/threat-modeling/). I have tried many times before to define a concrete threat model, without success. The reason I have not been able to is because of how my privacy journey went about. When I began my privacy journey, I had a goal in mind: "Make myself as private as I reasonably can first, and then work backwards to see what I am actually fine with doing." It's not a bad goal, just an incredibly tedious and difficult one. You first become very experienced in privacy by learning hands-on, and then you are able to make rational decisions after gaining experience and knowledge. Of course, I never reached the point where I was *fully* private. Such a thing is not possible. Instead, I accidentally "ignored" some areas of privacy, or didn't push further in areas that became too inconvenient. I essentially did a [depth-first search](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth-first_search) to determine my threat model. Once I was reasonably satisfied with my state of privacy, I worked backwards to restructure my digital life in a more convenient way with my newfound experience and knowledge. The way I discovered my threat model is extremely difficult and will bring you to extremely low points past [privacy fatigue](https://psychologyfor.com/privacy-fatigue-mental-health-damaged-by-social-media/). I would never recommend anyone go through what I went through, which is the main reason I have devoted my time to ease the privacy journeys of others. One thing I made sure to prevent while learning about privacy is forgetting where I came from and how I got where I am today. This comic illustrates why:  I want to remember all the pitfalls and mistakes I went through, that way I can present easy solutions and workarounds for those just starting their privacy journeys. Even still, I occasionally have to remind myself that not everybody knows what [2FA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication) is, even though I have gotten so used to using it as a part of day to day life. As my threat model has changed, so too has the advice I have given. # Convenience vs. Everything Convenience makes a lot of rich people a lot of money. If you can make something as convenient and addictive as possible, you gain the undivided attention of someone, and can dictate a lot about that person's life. [Privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy), [security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security), [autonomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomy), and a few other categories are all subcultures of the same concept: freedom, especially digitally. The subcultures often overlap because they are all sides of the same coin. Digital freedom is a broad topic, but being free digitally means breaking the chains of digital addiction and taking control over where you place your attention. For that reason, digital freedom will inherently feel less convenient. Giving yourself control over your digital life means that, in some cases, you will end up doing more work to manage it properly, but it means that you dictate how it functions, rather than being handheld by questionable entities. In other ways, however, digital freedom is far more convenient. Take a [password manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_manager), as an example. Many people are prone to reusing the same, weak, memorized password for a multiple accounts. That means if an unsavory party gains access to one account (which is more common the more accounts you have), all of your accounts are compromised. Furthermore, remembering and typing passwords is cumbersome and prone to error. A password manager is incredibly convenient because it fixes those problems. It generates strong passwords for you, changes passwords for every account, stores them all securely so you don't need to remember them, and even types the passwords for you. This is one area where digital freedom is more convenient. It's often thought that convenience and digital freedom are at whits with each other, but it simply isn't true. You trade convenience in some areas to gain convenience in others. Privacy activists can function the same as those who don't care about privacy, the difference is how they go about it. # The Privacy Hump "The first step is always the hardest" is a phrase used to encourage taking the first step towards a goal, because it gets easier after the first step. For privacy, this phrase is complicated. Some steps towards privacy, such as switching your web browser, are very easy, can be done in under a minute, and have a large benefit in privacy. These steps can be first steps, and are not hard at all. Other steps, such as fully switching to a password manager, are tedious and can get very messy very quickly. I had the displeasure of working for a company that stored *all* passwords in [plaintext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaintext) on a shared document. I immediately got to work transitioning these passwords to a proper password manager with proper [access control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control), but it was an unpleasant and tedious task. Many of the passwords were incorrect, had multiple entries, or had unclear login pages. One login page was described only by the location of the [browser bookmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmark_(digital)) on the computer of the secretary. Even if a password manager is a tedious task at first, once your accounts are transitioned to a password manager it becomes infinitely easier to manage and use. These first steps can be the hardest, but provide even greater privacy and security benefits. With that, I've found that privacy has a "hump". The first steps are easy and can hook you on privacy, and once you are in a comfortable place with privacy the steps become equally as easy, but in between those points in a privacy journey are the hardest. # Conclusion If privacy were more widespread (and it is becoming increasingly more common), there would be no need for a "privacy journey", because privacy would be the default. Unfortunately, that utopian society currently resides only in the daydreaming minds of authors and privacy activists. I could add more to this post, but I don't want it to become unbearably long. If you want key takeaways while missing plenty of the interesting portions of this post, I will not deny you the satisfaction: - I don't write using AI, even if my writing style is similar - Privacy journeys are long and difficult at times - Privacy is convenient in some ways, but not in others - The hardest part of privacy comes towards the middle of the journey If you decided to read this post in its entirety, then thank you. As always, I had plenty of fun writing this. I hope it helps at least one person. Cheers!

As we all know, privacy starts with security, which leads many people in this community to seek out secure services / software, some relentlessly so. Then life happens, and suddenly you find yourself naked in a back alley in Hanoi (or if you already live in the region, you might instead find yourself naked in Santiago de Chile), stripped of all belongings and at best some vague recollection of an unusually good night. What is your strategy to regain access to what you need to get back home? An no, the staff at the hotel does not recognize you.

I fuckin' signed in to YouTube with my existing account damn it

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/26553553 > The author has no Instagram himself, but through his friends who photograph him at events, others still know about his activities. > > Such leakage through other parties might be the greatest risk to privacy.

Hey guys, im just got rid of gboard and im already missing the autocorrect and swipe to type features. I know there has to be a privacy friendly option out there. Thank you for your help; im fat fingering every other key, pls save me

Hey guys, I have a Google Pixel 8a Smartphone. It is a Degoogled Pixel 8a, currently with Calyxos. Is this the best custom ROM for privacy + security? I also need to try to make it an Hardened phone. Not a Spy phone..not a Surveillance phone. Basically trying to make it an safe phone, anonymity phone. What VPN could I use for this phone, and is there any other guides or settings guides you can recommend me.for my phone? The sim card is a kyc one but im stuck with it. Thank you.

Im always om the look out for foss games. Any recommendations? Gonna be on a bus trip for 5 hours. 🤣🤣

This is an open question on how to get the masses to care... Unfortunately, if other people don't protect their privacy it affects those who do, because we're all connected (e.g. other family members, friends). So it presents a problem of how do you get people who don't care, to care? I started the Rebel Tech Alliance nonprofit to try to help with this, but we're still really struggling to convert people who have never thought about this. (BTW you might need to refresh our website a few times to get it to load - no idea why... It _does_ have an SSL cert!) So I hope we can have a useful discussion here - privacy is a team sport, how do we get more people to play?

Looking for an alternative to tiles. I realize lowjacking your stuff is kind of against the idea of privacy in the first place, but the convenience of being able to find lost items is big. Are there any other locators that can use cellular service or just use BLE?

Disclaimer: This project is still in heavy development so without it getting professional security audit i wouldn’t recommend using it for sensitive stuff. Amnezichat has been updated and better than ever! I am the only person working on this project so please be kind with your criticism lol. Source code: https://nemesiscloud.ddns.net/umutcamliyurt/Amnezichat

> Today, I’m excited to introduce Waterfox Private Search, now available in open beta. This represents an important step in our journey toward creating a more independent and privacy-respecting browsing experience. > Waterfox Private Search is a meta-search engine that I’ve developed with a clear goal: to eventually serve as the default search option for Waterfox, reducing our dependency on Microsoft and other intermediaries who typically serve as gatekeepers between you and your search results. ETA: The search link: https://search.waterfox.net/

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/37022405 > This is a carrier in the USA (T-Mobile). > > I did a quick search for the other 2 carriers using the term "[Carrier Name] Family Tracking" and Verizon and AT&T also seems to have it. > > And according to https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/t-mobile-familywhere-app, it says: > > >FamilyWhere uses geolocation data from the T-Mobile network and is not affected by changes to device location settings. > > So it appears that its using cell tower triangulation. Turning on Airplane Mode *should* stop it (assuming there isn't a separate tracking app on your phone) > > Oh Wow, What a wonderful tool for abusive spouses and abusive parents. And telecom companies are making money off of it. 🙃 > > TLDR: Its a good idea to get your own separate cellular plan.

It sounds a little dire, but I could imagine if in some places of the world governments get worse and want to fuck people, it could be really easy to pin cybercrime on them. Could the titular jellyfin server be caught by shitty mac or windows (or god damn smart tv) spyware?

Now that Skype will shut down, i see a good chance to geht my family to switch to a better solution. In order to even have the chance to be accepted instead of just switching to teams i think it has to check the following goals: - easy to use - reliable - direkt calling (called device will just ring) - multi paltform (iOS, Android, iPad, Windws) - group calls - free to use (unfortunately) I tried: - Jami: unfortunatly was unreliable in my first two device test - Jisti Meet: no direct calling - Signal (already failed to convince all family members a view years back switching from Whatsapp, mabye this can be an new chance. But Videocalling infortunately is too often unreliable)

I try to use "private DNS" option in my phone's settings, but it often does not work, and therefore privacy cannot be protected all the time. Sometimes I just cannot even ping other servers by IP (like 1.1.1.1) because of it. My question is: WHY this function requires hostname (so you need to query some other plain text DNS before reaching encrypted DNS)? Also if I understand well, it uses DNS over TLS, but I'm curious why not DNS over HTTPS (which seems like a reliable solution since I have it configured in my browser and there is never a problem with it...also it uses IP address instead of hostname). Why no one is seeing this problem and no one wants to address it? I tried downloading Quad9 app, but it does not work either (I guess some IPS is filtering TLS requests in my network, but again why DOH is not used then?).

Hello, all I'm sorry if there is an FAQ somewhere. My VPN is about enter it's yearly billing cycle and I thought I would come over here and see if anyone had a better suggestion. I've been using IPvanish for the last 10 years and have been pretty satisfied. I picked it by going into the darkweb and seeing what the criminals recommended to each other. If anyone has other suggestions or tales before I renew, I would love to check it out.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62673770 > * In December, an investigation by Tom's Hardware found that Recall frequently captured sensitive information in its screenshots, including credit card numbers and Social Security numbers — even though its "filter sensitive information" setting was supposed to prevent that from happening.

I put my old Gmail accounts on websites like haveibeenpwned.com osintleak.com pentester.com and osint.industries And the results had a lot of personal info like old usernames I used, old passwords, IP addresses and other info What can I do now? I deleted all of my old Gmail accounts. I changed all of my usernames everywhere or deleted the accounts associated with them and changed all the passwords. I use Proton and Email aliases when signing up for services and random generated passwords with fake info everywhere(if possible) and I do use a VPN on all of my devices. Is there anything more I can do? Because those Emails had my full real name in them and I used them literally everywhere.

Originally this was a reply to [this article](https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/04/microsoft-is-putting-privacy-endangering-recall-back-into-windows-11/) about a Windows feature called Recall, but there's a good argument the author's concerns resonate far beyond Windows and Meta to proprietary generally.

I created an [infographic of privacy-forward alternatives to Google products](https://7f54e89c-0a1c-403e-9166-51d1fa2a27b9.usrfiles.com/ugd/7f54e8_2ba9906c03c9496b836feabe0c5a1b6d.pdf)...and would love your feedback. Is it easy to use? Enough white space? Intuitive? Sharable? Is there anything I'm missing? The infographic image in this post is NOT clickable. The link above will give you a downloadable PDF with working hyperlinks. Re: the legend, "easy set-up/use" means either that this is a big part of the alternative product's branding, or I've used it myself and found it easy.

Google is somehow the only company that is able to completely ruin a *calculator* app. Even before installing, Google outs themselves with how much data they collect: - **App info and performance:** Crash logs and Diagnostics - **Personal info:** Email address - **Device or other IDs** - **App activity:** App interactions And of course the encouraging message: > **Data can’t be deleted** > > The developer doesn’t provide a way for you to request that your data be deleted As soon as you try to install it, the app requests network access. I'm glad to be using [GrapheneOS](https://grapheneos.org/) where this can be restricted. The app doesn't crash on launch, which is a new concept for Google, since most of their apps won't even start without Google Play Services installed. Maybe that means the *calculator* app can calculate 1+1 without requiring installing the most invasive software known to man, right? Of course it can't. It crashes the moment you press the plus sign. Thank you, Google, for requiring Google Play Services for your calculator app to do *basic addition*. You know what calculator doesn't require Google Play services to do math?  In all seriousness, [OpenCalc](https://github.com/Darkempire78/OpenCalc) is a near 1:1 match to Google Calculator, so I suggest anyone use that instead. The cherry on top is Google's calculator app is bundled with a privacy policy, which on its own is a treat to read through: https://policies.google.com/privacy Congratulations, Google, you can spy on *math* now.

I've seen a lot of people on the community say that brave is bad and has made quite a lot of questionable decisions. But Firefox itself also has made equally bad decisions. Mozilla has faced ongoing criticism regarding their default settings, their approach toward users, the high compensation of their CEO at over $3 million USD annually, and their investments in various companies that may not align directly with their core mission. Additionally, there have been instances where Firefox has implemented a temporary, one-time tracker that transmits certain data to Google during the initial installation on Windows or Mac systems. Brave has also undoubtedly made such decisions as well but the point here is that **Both Firefox AND Brave have made questionable decisions** and to specifically dunk on brave just because it's chromium is unfair in my opinion. That's all, thanks for reading my post :)

Example, WhatsApp, use the **whole 25 character** profile name **limit**: ``` Bob Moved To Signal.org Alice MovedTo Signal.org CharlieMovedTo Signal.org ``` Say Signal.org, not Signal, so they see it is an app. Use your about section too. Same on Discord, Steam, Instagram, everywhere.

Honestly, Phi-4 is just 8GB, which even my laptop 2070 can do and it's not that much worse that ChatGPT for most stuff. Runs pretty well as an AppImage on my linux boxes. On my workstation I run it with a 3090 and the new Gemma LLM has like 20GB and that's a really good model in my experience so far. It's also by microsoft (disclaimer: absolutely fuck microsoft), which owns chatgpt, so makes sense that it's somewhat capable.

Hello. I don't know where to post this and thought this would be the best place for my question. As of today, I am no longer able to stream music on Qobuz when I have a VPN enabled. At first I thought they had a problem with their servers and tried to re-login, but then Qobuz told me that I am not allowed to log in with an active VPN. I tried changing the country, but nothing worked. I hope this is not the case. I switched to Qobuz because they are based in France and pay the most per stream. I don't want to go back to Tidal (based in the US) just to be able to keep my VPN enabled.

How viable is crypto as a private medium exchange in the modern world? I see the value of using cryptocurrencies as a form of digital cash (from both a personal privacy point of view and a broader political/economic point of view) but am also put off by a) all the scamming and speculation and moreover b) the friction and privacy tradeoffs involved in getting any of it. One of the obvious problems is that not many sellers accept it as payment. I can accept that. But AFAICT, in order to pay those that do, I must either do the legwork of conducting a peer-to-peer exchange of fiat currency for crypto (PITA) or use an exchange, which will have records of my personal identity. I'm aware that I could launder exchange-bought crypto to obfuscate my ownership of it but that is also a PITA. I suppose I could also mine coins but that has the most friction of all options and is a poor use of electricity production in my view. Is there a solution that I'm not aware of, where I can buy (or indeed sell) crypto easily and privately?

Knowledgeable privacy aficionados of Lemmy, perhaps you can help. I'm searching for a U.S. English speech to text program I can use for note taking, dictation, and internet searching that runs locally on Windows and doesn't collect information or send it off to either the software company or third parties. I'm looking for an out-of-the-box easy option first- if needed I can explore writing scripts and using an LLM to craft a UI, but I'm not looking for something that would require a significant amount of extra building or coding. Ideally it'd be FLOSS and be light on compute, but I'm not averse to paying for a solid product that meets the privacy requirement and if it's not ludicrously heavy on compute, that's okay. Vosk seems a good option, though in my brief exploration, I haven't found a UI or scripts to use it easily. WhisperAI, while very accurate, doesn't natively support real-time speech to text, though there are some mods that try and address that. Anything I'm completely missing?

[glitr.io](https://glitr.io/) im working on a p2p file transfer app. at the moment its a close-source webapp, but i hope to work towards some selfhosted options as seen on my other projects. the storage is local-only from your browser/device. so like "the cloud", but the cloud storage capacity is made up of your devices. ive recently updated the landing page and i hope ive got it as simple as possible to transfer a file from one device to another. im looking for feedback on the experience. (Note 1: its still a work in progress. if there is an issue, you can usually refresh the browser and try again) (Note 2: it seems important to mention: this app is not libre software. This needs more consideration to see if I can align to this. For information and open-source examples of the code in action, take a look at the docs and github for [decentralized chat](https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat))

The title says it all. I want to wipe my phone and then only use open source apps. The thing im afraid of is not backing up my data correctly and losing things like my keepass. I have to make sure the data from the open source apps is downloadable as well so i can reload them to my phone. Any tips to assist me with this process?