Apathy Tree
I aim to be more human. I aim to be less apathetic as a human. Apathy grows, like a tree, and I aim to prune my own.
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I think Mozilla has something like this as well (also a subscription).
I’m of the opinion that, at this point, one of the best infosec things a company could do is include a subscription like this (assuming they are safe and work as intended) for all employees as part of their compensation package, much the way they sometimes provide financial consulting services or gym memberships. Maybe one of the providers will start offering enterprise packages.
If we could purge large quantities of data on employees, it would be that much harder to use social engineering for hacking. As a bonus, if enough people got themselves purged, it would entirely disrupt the data harvesting and selling models, potentially making them worthless. That would be a huge win.
But I don’t think many people are going to pay for it themselves. They just won’t care that much. So as a work perk, it incentivizes them to use it by being free.
I’m not in IT or anything, but my close friend is in security, so it’s something I consider quite a bit.
Edit to add: obviously I’d rather see it illegal to collect data and sell it and all but that’s not going to happen any time soon, and this could be a lot faster. And if it becomes a business expense, businesses might just push for legislation…
Apple tracks all of my data on their own. I know this, and do what I can to limit it.
I still have control over what the apps have access to. For example, only a handful of apps have access to my cellular data. Nothing else needs it, and I am prompted when I launch an app to change the setting if I want to. This prevents them from doing anything unless I’m on Wi-Fi. Same with location, I have it enabled for 4 apps, and get notifications frequently that I can change my settings.
Sure, I have to trust them that they aren’t sharing that data even when I ask them not to, but given apple’s track record, I’m reasonably comfortable with this until a Linux phone is good as a daily driver.
It’s the same thing. And frankly they are probably just playing catch-up to what apple already does.
If you trust google with that info, you should trust them not to share it when they say they won’t. If you don’t trust them with it, you need to get off android, because they have it anyway.
You could check out ghostery bowser if it’s available, it has a pretty robust design for trackers. Idk if it would be a privacy score, persey but it tells you all about the trackers it sees on the site, what they are for, how often they are seen, etc. (like a space dot com article had 71 total trackers: 46 advertising trackers, 9 site analytics, 6 cdn, 3 auto video player, 2 misc, 2 essential, 2 social media, and 1 hosting). If you click into the details it gives a hefty report of who is collecting the data, so it breaks down who each of the 46 advertising trackers are, for example.
It’s not forgiving at all, in my experience. But the iOS ghostery dawn browser hasn’t been updated in a while (in favor of their safari extension) and I’m not sure what the android version is like.
Might be worth a look if that’s something you are interested in. The dawn browser also lets you open everything in ghost tabs by default, and when you clear those, it clears all trackers that may have been set. It also seems to spoof location information, because every site I visit thinks I’m from a different part of the country.
https://linuxstans.com/linux-phone/
“Although debatable, most of these Linux phones can’t be used as a daily driver and they can’t really replace your current daily driver. They do lack a lot of features and apps you’d need. They’re meant for developers and enthusiasts”
Thank you for the detailed reply, and that’s actually something I hadn’t really considered. I know I baby the fuck out of my phone, so I’d probably be one of those people 😁 but also phones themselves have gotten a lot more durable and harder to break.
And that’s a good point that in other countries, unlocked gsm phones are just the norm even with regular upgrade plans, where here (Midwest us) it’s kinda hard to find because a lot of the larger carriers are CDMA, so my standard experience is just different. I haven’t really looked too much other than refurbished, and those aren’t cheap-er enough to be worth it, but I’ll take a look.
That is very true, and I have actually bought used before but it was a miserable experience because it wasn’t listed as carrier-locked (it was, however, a long time ago, well before carrier unlock was required/universal unlock was commonly available).
Perhaps I’ll look into getting a used phone while I have a working one and play with it a bit, if I can find one for a reasonable price, as long as they don’t have the same replacement lockout apple has. I’ve been using GSM carriers exclusively so I can bring my device if I ever (need to or can) emigrate, so probably a decent market of devices available.
Not a stupid question and thanks for reminding me that’s an option. I tend to distrust used/refurbished tech -replaced for a reason sort of thing, especially when warranty replacements of major models tend to be refurbished and have their own problems… but I probably shouldn’t assume others treat their tech the way I do - my forever precious. Like cars, I run them until they die, and someday I’ll make a fucking sculpture with all the broken old phones I have. I recently found my first semi-smart phone, which I had when I was… 22-24, I think? The Motorola rival A455 in purple. Fuck was technology pretty!
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=motorola+a455+purple&form=HDRSC3&pc=MOZW&first=1
That’s pretty smart, but I have no social life and live on the internet (have since the 90s when I hit my teens, because I changed schools every year from 5th grade on, which is no way to build stable relationships), and drinking alone… well it seems slightly better with internet company. Even if that’s detached in time. I kinda miss the chat rooms that were around when I was 13-20, but at the same time, I definitely don’t (a/s/l was nothing but pervy old dudes scoping targets…)
I don’t really think I’ll ever be sober, because I like brewing beer and have nothing to fully quit for (based on family history, I’m pretty likely to die young, so either 50s young, or 80s old no matter what shit choices I make, so I’m splitting the difference), but it’s fucking with my stomach and increasing my anxiety, so I’m def trying to moderate it. I’m down to mostly not drinking during the week… it was a lot easier to quit when I was 24 and had a drinking problem (lasted about a year after my mom died, she was the only family I had), wtf?
And thanks! It’s a reminder to be a better person and not let it grow out of control. You need to tend a tree for it to be healthy and constructive (nature does this as well, with storms and cycles and sun), I need to tend my apathy so it doesn’t overtake the beautiful, rich, and diverse garden of thoughts and feelings it tries to shade out. My mental health writ large.
My Reddit handle was related to what I used the account for (wasting time) which led people to have a 50/50 assumption I was trolling so I… reassessed myself and my goals.
Pardon the wall of text incoming -
The reason I didn’t do that is my last two devices (cumulative 5 years of use) had no recovery partition, I didn’t want to brick them until I had a replacement (I did brick one of them -my first ever full bricking 🥹!-, the other was already broken beyond normal use but it took the flash, and I learned), and I didn’t want to buy a new device for the sole purpose of changing the os. There’s a ton of research that goes into doing that which I simply didn’t have the energy for when my last device bit it.
Maybe I should have, but I figured I’d try iOS first. I hate it passionately, but I’ll probably keep it until my phone dies, apple fucks up big dog (I’m aware of the slave labor, almost no tech is spared that, though, and I didn’t know about fairphone) or a good Linux os/device comes out. Hell bonus if I can jailbreak and flash a different OS on this fucker, but I know alllll about how locked down apple is… can’t replace components, can’t even change a fucking ringtone without a gob of work… it fucking sucks after a decade on android using it as fully as I could. I even switched to Linux (ubuntu) because it felt like android for my pc. (Also fuck windows 8/10/11. Windows 7 was the last reasonably good iteration, and I formatted my drive and reinstalled that shit every 6 mths -bootleg master disc, took about that long for windows to flag me as not genuine- to keep using it until I swapped to Linux. Learned good data management habits in the process!)
I used to use cyanogenmod and a couple others waaaay back in like 2012-2018 or whatever, and I really liked rooting and flashing os, but privacy focused OS weren’t available for my devices. I’m poor, so can’t afford good phones, especially if I’m gunna fuck up the warranty immediately by rooting (only reason I paid as much for an iPhone as I did is they do support devices long-term, which is sorely lacking in stock android and, to me at least, entirely unknown for custom). Especially since a lot of better devices, to my understanding, have a rooted flag that can’t be un-flown by disabling root.
As for proton, I’ve heard good things, from a lot of people. I’m currently looking into self-hosting options for various things to un-dependent myself from services run by unknown entities (it’s gunna be a blast learning everything from square one… but so much better than my shit being “owned” by someone else), and haven’t really decided if I want to try hosting my own email or not. Probably not but it might be fun to play with while I decide.
Haha if only!
My Reddit history was deleted weekly because I have a drinking on the internet problem. Mostly an internet problem (jk, I’m seriously working on the drinking). I’m even leaving my history here intact (few minor exceptions, unrelated to drinking) to push me to do better. Even drunk I don’t really say anything bad, I’m not that sort of person, it just kills me with anxiety to have my drunk thoughts available forever.
So maybe, if you don’t do it frequently or build enough of a tolerance to start to remember stuff when you should be blacked out, and then have that feeling spiral into your other mental health issues… 😁
Also I like your username :) it’s pleasingly unpleasant!
I’ve been seeing a lot of shit about google being evil lately… I’m actively transitioning off their products. I’ve now got Firefox on my phone (I fucking can’t do safari, it’s so trash), I’m off android (about a year now) which was super fucking difficult. iOS is much worse, and they aren’t that much better as a company, but it gets updates for more than 2 years…but I hear Linux phones are improving so that will probably be my next move.
My next step is getting rid of gmail which I’ve been on basically since it was launched… that’s going to be painful.
Well shit.
Good to know, thanks.
When you say they reversed course, do you mean they scrapped the project entirely, or went back to the model they were going with when they announced it?