Man Lemmy is so much better than Reddit.

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Cake day: Jun 01, 2023

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Tuta is where I’m at for now. They have stricter privacy than proton and are much more active in their app development. They have an Fdroid release for android and a desktop app for Linux which make life pretty nice.

I have had some connectivity issues with their servers lately though, especially on desktop. I don’t know if it’s my DNS setup or if it is unreliability on the server end. In any case it hasnt been too bad.


They seem like a great company, If I ever did move to a paid service I would probably go Mullvad or IVPN, but I just can’t bring myself to sign up for the $5 monthly with how infrequently I need it.


I hear you there. I’m still using their email somewhat, but am transitioning away from it. I do lean on protonvpn as well, haven’t found another trustworthy free service that I can use for those few times a month I need to be on some public WiFi.


Yeah 🥲. I used proton calendar for some time but ended up going in on WebDAV nextcloud centric calendaring. It’s been more complicated, but at least it is very open (while still being private enough for me)


Sounds like you’re ready for a different email service 😉


That’s a no on Proton calendar working with third party clients. The encryption makes secure syncing difficult, either decrypt it before transit and have it be insecurely sent, or share the decryption key with the third party app so that it can decrypt the data once it is received, which has its own concerns.


I appreciate this comment. I agree with both sides of the argument to an extent, but feel that there is some unbalanced thinking with this rejection of Fdroid that’s been happening. Its a hugely important service.


The general public’s apathy towards privacy is quite frustrating. I think there are laws that are pretty much what you outline here to one degree or another in various countries. Whether people respect them or whether the government respects them is a totally different thing though.



Getting a functional nextcloud server. I self-hosted mine, but there’s lots of VPS options that are pretty easy to set up.

It’s basically a drop in replacement for the majority of proprietary productivity suites (i.e. Google drive, onedrive and icloud). One service covers a lot of bases.


Not necessarily bad, the lower the number the harder it is to fingerprint you. In other words, your browser stands out much less and is less noticeable from the masses than the OPs browser.

Generally the more security/privacy tweaks and add-ons you apply to your browser the more secure it gets, but you tend to stand out from the masses more because of the changes, resulting in the 1 in 4,000 type stat. It becomes easier to differentiate your traffic from others.

Whether anonymity or security is more desirable depends on your threat model.

Edit: “Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 186,867 tested in the past 45 days.” Evidently I stand out quite a bit 😂


Glad it helps! Yeah DNS level adblocking is hugely helpful both in terms of privacy and security.


I hear you man. That exact thing happened to me back with the Pixel 2.

You know, I’ve heard of people having success getting the carriers to remove the lock on the bootloader sometimes. It may be worth calling Verizon’s support line and asking them to do it.

Here is a good debloater that should allow you to remove some of the cruft from Google. It utilizes Shizuku which is a fantastic tool for accomplishing stuff without rooting your phone. I know I’ve seen debloating guides on YouTube that walk you through the stuff you can get rid of.

Something else that could really help is using a DNS blocking service to filter out requests to ad/tracking domains. I use NextDNS right now because it has some pretty comprehensive filters that are very easy to setup. Here’s a video that goes over setting it up. Pi-Hole or Adguard are self-hosted options, I used Pi-Hole for awhile and liked it, but switched in order to simplify my digital life a bit.

Edit: also, here is a guide from a reputable privacy site that covers a more technical approach to degoogling stock android. You can do a lot more than you might think.


Absolutely, there are some really good ways to mitigate the data flow even if you can’t stop it entirely. The OS is a big deal, but I think the most fundamental change to make is the apps and services you use.

You’ve probably already done that to a degree, but see if there are more changes you can make.

Alternativeto is an excellent way to explore your options, but also the techlore and the new oil youtube channels are fantastic resources for limiting privacy leaks.

I’ll post a few debloater apps that I’ve run across when I get home too, I haven’t used them but I know there are options for removing some of the tracking elements of stock android.


That’s good to see a comment with a link, that’s what helps people make informed decisions, not simple statements of opinion.


Thats true, but introducing ads or crypto is not morally evil or a reason to not use a browser for most. It is the data collection that can accompany the ads or crypto transactions that’s the problem for most of us. What are the details on how the ads or crypto currency is currently handled in Brave? That might be a good reason not to use it.

It does have advantages over hardened Firefox, as chrome has better security features than Firefox (as the grapheneOS devs love to remind people). I don’t like it, but it’s true. Someone who’s threat model prioritizes security over privacy is going to want a chrome based browser.

I’ll add a reason against using it that I feel strongly about, it furthers the chromium webview monopoly that nearly every modern browser is a part of. I’ll stick with Firefox for that reason alone personally.


This is not a helpful comment 😄 give some reasons, don’t expect people to simply listen to a statement of opinion.


I know the name but haven’t seen the show, I’ll have to check it out. Its funny, years ago I watched the movie Antitrust but it all went over my head. Recently I watched it again and nerded out to the linux/Foss ideaology in it.


There were some small things that I can’t remember very well (like looking in to lineageOS), but I think the first wake up call to how deep I was in to the google ecosystem was when I stopped my youtube premium account and started looking for alternatives. I found newpipe and got hooked on privacy respecting software like it was a drug. Techlore was a big part from that point on. I watched through go incognito one video at a time while I was at my night job.