bbbhltz
Music lover and English teacher with an interest in slightly geeky things
mastodon / blog / listenbrainz
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Relevant info about the username/accountid implementation: https://fosstodon.org/@link2xt/111965597727225353
I use MuPDF but there is also the GrapheneOS PDF viewer available on their GitHub
https://github.com/GrapheneOS/PdfViewer
You can install it using Obtainium or jus grab it from the GitHub page.
Did you delete them outright or modify the text and then delete it? That is the tinfoil hat way! If you lived in Europe you could request your data to be deleted. You can also request your data and they are supposed to comply at some point. If you did that you could see what they have.
The rabbit hole will drive you a little bonkers so maybe don’t overthink it for now and take a look at https://www.reveddit.com/ and archive.org to see if your username pops up.
Not a complete answer, but I stand behind Privacy Browser. The dev has a great blog explaining how the browser works:
https://www.stoutner.com/webview/
https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-android/core-privacy-principles/
https://www.stoutner.com/privacy-browser-android/permissions/
I appreciate the transparency of the Dev and I am looking forward to the long-teased 4.x series that will ship with its own webview.
If you decide not to use it, keep it on your watchlist.
Neat. Thanks.
I don’t agree with all the sources listed on the website, but that’s ok. The information should still be on the list.
What I think most beginners need is a simple way to determine their threat model. Otherwise, someone just stumbling down the rabbit hole might see a list or a site like this as a “to-do list” and drive themselves crazy.
You can run LanguageTool locally. While it isn’t as great as the paid version, I use this to check nearly everything I write for work in my native language, and in the other languages I speak
https://caderek.github.io/gramma/ is a cli spellchecker that has the option of installing a LT server locally. Not ideal if you are writing things with Pages/Word/etc., but a possible backup.
A regular user like myself finds it easier to answer this question with 3 options:
- Centralized
- Decentralised
- P2P
Signal and Threema are centralized options. With Signal planning on rolling out usernames it will be an excellent choice, hopefully.
Matrix, XMPP, Session, DeltaChat and others are decentralized, and some allow for self-hosting.
Briar is P2P.
I have done this before. And, yes, you can just delete apps from your smartphone and carry on…
But, the fact is that McLuhan was right, the medium is the message. So, the having the smartphone will change your behaviour.
A smartphone in your pocket is just a communication device, but it can be used to access content. As such, it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a smartphone enables people to create spaces that would otherwise be moments of calm, socialising, rest, work, or boredom. A smartphone creates an environment by its mere presence.
This person used a TCL Classic, which is a low-powered Android device. You can even sideload apps with adb.
It likely also includes Google components/packages. So, if someone wants to use this to escape big-tech, data is still being collected. The keyboard app on these types of phones is usually Kika. According to exodus, there are 14 or so trackers built-in (see https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/kika.emoji.keyboard.teclados.clavier/latest/).
Like I said, I tried this different times: I had a Nokia 800T, and 2 versions of the Punkt. phone. It is a fun experiment. I did spend less time on social media. I was more present. But, at some point, you do need a full smartphone for banking, work, and so on.
- Password manager
- Adblocker
- 2FA
Next steps are a Quick software audit: how do you check your email, what chat apps are you using, what browser are you using, etc.
Always keep things low-friction to stat out
https://bbbhltz.codeberg.page/blog/2022/03/low-friction-introduction-to-digital-privacy/
Is it opt-in or opt-out by default? I think I would be against it. But then again I am not a rule breaker so it is hard to imagine.
Given the choice, it would be a hard no for me. It isn’t 100% perfect yet, mistaken identities and discrimination are good reasons to not bother with it. Beyond that, if insurance companies had access to it, it would be a disaster.
It’s Friday night, you go out for a just a drink or perhaps the camera catches you smoking. Now your life insurance policy is messed up.
Obviously, that is an exaggeration the likes of which only happen in Black Mirror. Power and greed have never pushed anyone to any single unethical thing ever.
Whe I moved away from Gmail it was the only one that had an offer that I liked: email, cloud, contacts, calendar, office stuff (groupware) AND it had (at the time) a very flexible price. I didn’t need lots of storage and Mailbox was the only one that had the option to change capacity. Now it doesn’t. Either way, still very good. The web client is a bit slow and I’m not a fan of how they handle 2FA, but still better than Gmail for me.
I did want to go with disroot, I forget why I didn’t. Proton didn’t have a calendar when I was shopping around. Do you still need a separate app for Proton or does it have IMAP now?
Some discussion here https://community.mojeek.com/
I was never a fan of the privacyguides forums—too much bickering and infighting—and others use Telegram or Discord and that’s a no for me.
This appears to be (geo)blocked for me.
I read the AI summary: https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyqNYGCmkQU
Wonder why it isn’t available for me?
It is truly a rabbit hole …
I use Alpine on my desktop. I would like to know more about why it was cited as a good choice. I’ve used many distributions since I switched to Linux (in 2006) and I never had the impression that Alpine was a hardened distribution. I will say that I have had no issues with it and feel that the community is quite friendly, reactive, and helpful.
In the end, it depends on you threat model and use. Containers are a good idea, flatpaks are regarded by some as a good way to protect privacy… I am regularly updating my extremely basic guide because little things change so frequently.
I get that argument. Perhaps the fact that I’m a professor influences my thinking. And, since we are in a privacy community, something like ChatGPT and privacy don’t mix.
Meredith Whittaker (Signal) says[1]:
The Venn diagram of privacy concerns and AI concerns is a circle
(I do keep on eye on their progress because it is interesting https://benchmarks.llmonitor.com/)
Mostly the hype and because artists and creators are being hurt by its existence.
I feel as though using AI is a cop-out. If I want to do something good, I also want to be proud of it. So I would rather not take that away from myself by doing it with AI. However, progress marches on, and I am neither an expert nor an authority on the subject. Asking someone like myself that question is nearly a trap. If I tell you that Generative AI is a bubble, like cryptocurrency and the Metaverse, that is just my gut feeling.
I have a personal site.
It isn’t great. Don’t even have a domain name. My robots.txt is here
https://bbbhltz.codeberg.page/robots.txt
Why bother? I just don’t agree with AI.
You can use yt-dlp to download entire channels. I’ve noticed that this can sometimes cut out the ad entirely. Other times I will get a targeted ad.
Anchor.fm is part of Spotify and most of the time you will receive some sort of targeted ad no matter if the app is open source or not.
What you are describing may be an instance of Cross-Device Ad Targeting.
Depending on where you live, you can request data removal and they are supposed to oblige.
Never create an account unless it is seriously necessary.
Delete old content.
https://justdeleteme.xyz/ has direct links for removing your accounts. You can also make requests to places like archive.org to have things removed.
Been using this for a long time. Great tool. Great idea.
If for some reason you cannot get this to work on your system, the database on this GitHub is still useful for doing it manually.
Just to note that the Murena One is the same phone as the CoolPad Cool S
https://m.gsmarena.com/coolpad_cool_s-10685.php
Not a great buy. /e/OS is interesting as a OS though. Some of the visual aspects are leagues ahead of vanilla Android.
Are there better brands?
Probably. I’ll echo the thoughts and opinions of others, sorry for the repeat.
Pixel phones will continue to receive updates (and GrapheneOS supports Pixels as long as Google supports them). If you go full tinfoil hat, you’ll see that there are people out there accusing Google of being an NSA partner and more.
Fairphone is a neat idea for reparability reasons. They also try to support their devices for a long time. But, they can be expensive for less than premium hardware.
Try to find devices that ship with very little bloatware:
- Nokia makes some cheap phones that might be tempting, but HMD Global (licence-holder for Nokia) has messed stuff up in the past. My Nokia 5.3, for example, received a bad update. What was bad? Well, if you tried to factory reset it bricked the phone. I did not read the forum before resetting my phone (https://community.phones.nokia.com/discussion/66312/warning-do-not-factory-reset-nokia-5-3-bricked-phone) so that cheap little guy didn’t even make it to year 2. Probably for the best as they were once accused of sharing data with [2 very large countries].
- Motorola, like Nokia, makes some cheaper devices. And, like Nokia, tends to ship with little to no bloatware. But, they are notorious for abandoning devices.
- Sony and Asus does not fall under the cheap category, unless you buy used.
If you really want to save, buy a broken phone and fix it. Rounded.com sells spare parts for different phones, so you could even find a phone for cheap and make it last using spare parts.
Nah. Not an issue really for me.