Depends on your threat model, the degree of interest in you from states, the resources and competency of the states interested in you, etc… Also, I think privacy for privacy’s sake and without any real threat to which it’s responding to, is entirely fine and understandable. If nobody were interested in my data at all I’d still practise a reasonable level of privacy because I think it’s creepy for other people to know my business.
What do I use the most or what do people use the most? I use Matrix the most as most of my friends are on it (+ have it bridged with some chats that aren’t on Matrix). Then after that SimpleX. I don’t know what the most popular encrypted messengers among the general population, except for the ones you listed, are.
I think if you just publicly practise decent privacy, people will be more inclined to do the same. e.g. all my friends know I’m not on WhatsApp and don’t use proprietary software in general. They know to talk to me on other platforms, and the fact that I’m like this means that others will likely feel more able to do the same if they are inclined. Nobody ever told me to care about privacy; I have always thought it was creepy if others can see all my personal business. I can’t imagine that that’s such a rare innate mindset to have, so other people who feel the same way should feel more able to put that into practice if they see you doing so. If they really want to broadcast all their personal data to the state and tech companies then they are within their right to, and I don’t see the point in trying to convince them to not do what they want to do.
I prefer Mullvad. I’ve found it a lot more reliable. I was a paying Proton customer but still had connectivity issues a non-negligible number of times, whereas I’ve literally never had Mullvad be the cause of connection issues in my years of using it. It’s great that they take cash and have literally only an account hash associated with your account.
I’ve also found that Mullvad customer support are responsive, helpful, and know what they’re talking about. I’ve had experiences with Proton’s customer support that were ok, but occasionally had the typical customer service hiccups along the lines of being assigned a new support agent who doesn’t read back all the conversation (understandable—I had one bug I was dealing with for months) and you have to explain again what the original issue was and what has been done since.
I think both options are perfectly fine, but I definitely prefer Mullvad, and it’s what I recommend to people if they ask me to recommend a VPN service.
I think yt-dlp allows you to use your browser’s cookies to appear as a signed in user for downloading videos. I never bothered trying that.
How easy is it to make a throwaway google account nowadays?
I make throwaway Google accounts semi-frequently, though I don’t remember what they require. If you have a phone number it’s definitely sufficient but I don’t remember if you can make one without a phone number. If they require a phone number you can just buy a cheap sim card (in cash if you care about privacy) and use that. It costs money so if you need hundreds of throwaway accounts maybe not, but if it’s just one for downloading videos then it’s probably NBD, you’d be spending money on the VPN anyway.
I never made a MS account, so I no longer own Minecraft since they stopped accepting Mojang accounts. Sometimes I wish I had just bit the bullet and made one so I can still own Minecraft—I know I can pirate it, but it’s less convenient, and also I don’t know how well pirated Minecraft works with multiplayer. In any case I’ve just not played Minecraft in a long time, and not since Minecraft stopped accepting Mojang logins.
I am surprised you can’t transfer your licence to another account though. Since when they were making the switch to Microsoft accounts, they let you just transfer your licence from Mojang onto any old MS account.
Ultimately it’s up to you. I guess in your shoes I would be more erred towards deleting just because of all that personal information sitting around. Of course you can’t guarantee MS will “forget” it, but storage costs money, and they likely don’t want to keep around all your old data when most of it is not very profitable data to have. In my case, in hindsight, I’m now erring on the side of wishing I had just made an account, since there’d be no other data tied to that account and I wouldn’t have used it for anything other than Minecraft.
Cops confiscate devices all the time without good reason lmao. It’s commonplace to seize devices on a person upon arrest. Judges also grant search warrants upon very little evidence too. Cops absolutely don’t need to “prove” anything to a judge to get a warrant; there is no standard of proof at all; it’s a standard of evidence, which is not the same thing as proof, and a low standard of evidence at that.
in addition to what others have said, also have your browser fingerprint as fairly generic, and what is unique should ideally be randomised upon each start of your browser. There’s nothing stopping a Lemmy instance from running clientside code that gathers your browser fingerprint, and if they are well-resourced enough to have access to fingerprint data from other sites, they could correlate it to de-anonymise you.
Self host email and nextcloud. Keepass for pw manager. I use davx5 and fossify calendar for mobile calendar. Nextcloud mobile just manages your files and doesn’t have the other Nextcloud apps.
Idc about Proton either way though. Imo if proton was fine for you before then it’s fine for you now. I just prefer to have control over my own services.
Protonmail is a widely used and common email provider. There is no reason why an employer would be prejudiced against your application based on you having a Protonmail address. I think a far more common thing employers think about when seeing applicants’ email addresses are things like “haha, they’re still using their email address from when they were 8 of alexdaboss at gmail dot com”, but I highly doubt they care about what domain it’s on unless you’ve got like a pornhub.com address or something.
It’s not hard to obtain someone’s biometric data. My concern wouldn’t be Amazon knowing my handprint (my government has my handprint, Amazon can just ask them if they want), but how incredibly easy it is to just get a print of someone else’s palm and charge them for your shopping. Pretty silly to use any biometrics as a primary authenticator rather than as a 2FA option.
If it’s low privacy needs (ie you don’t have a state threat model), Signal is completely fine. I use it to talk to my friends. I also use Matrix, though federated Matrix isn’t the best for privacy either due to the amount of metadata that leaks through federation. But federated Matrix is also fine for the kinds of things you would use eg Discord or IRC for.
If you do have a state threat model, I personally think SimpleX is ideal for that, but it doesn’t have as much of a userbase so you probably need people who care enough (eg people actively under threat) to switch to a new platform. Whereas most people I know are already on either Signal or Matrix, and I’m not having particularly sensitive conversations with them either so both work fine.
If no one’s on any kind of private messaging platform, SimpleX is good and fairly easy to use. But I mostly use Signal just because everyone’s on it.
Also consider your threat model; Signal is appropriate for just casual personal conversations, but it is centralised and not self-hostable. The servers are run by the Signal org who are based in the US. If the potential of message metadata (which can be used to eg create networks of who’s messaging who) getting into the hands of the US state could create significant issues for you, you may want to at least find either a decentralised or self-hostable solution which is not so US-centric. I assume, though, since you’re talking to these people on non-private platforms, that these are not super sensitive discussions anyway.
Moreover as I know that it is no open to sign up how to get a RiseUP account?
Invite. Last time I checked, they weren’t allowing invites because of abuse.
Tbh if you don’t know anyone with an account you are almost definitely not the target demographic. If you need just email then there are plenty of more general privacy email providers that aren’t specifically for organisers, or you could self-host.
we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups
Insane equivocation. One of those is a national and ethnic group; the other is a political movement whose pet project is currently on trial for genocide… “we refused pressure to deplatform both Jewish student groups and National Socialist student groups”
Unless you specifically look for jobs at politically oriented organisations (eg companies that pander to the privacy-conscious crowd, non-profits, etc), I just keep my professional life and my political life separate. I’m sure most people just have a “work profile” for job stuff and keep their personal life private.
Someone forked and is maintaining Mull: https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox
Will have to see long-term if this is a good option of course, as it’s not been long.
Someone forked Mull and is still maintaining it: https://gitlab.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox
Obviously it’s early days so we’ll have to see if this is a sustainable alternative.
I think it would be fine if it were opt-in, but then you wouldn’t get enough data to get accurate traffic estimates