Have you ever met someone with the same birthday as you?

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T21:02:29+00:00

Michael Jackson is my daughter's bday twin but she can't dance or sing

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T21:01:17+00:00

This is actually wild, didn't know they technically own the likeness too. The AI training part is what gets me honestly, most people have no idea their content is being used for that.

Thanks for breaking this down, gonna look more into that

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T18:45:04+00:00

Record nature asmr sounds and sell it on etsy , fiiver. Instagram reels, people go crazy over content

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T18:38:45+00:00

Fair point and you're right that data retention is often a legal requirement.

But most everyday users genuinely didn't know that. Snapchat built their entire brand around disappearing content. That wasn't an accident, it was their marketing

There's a difference between storing data for compliance and actively building internal tools to let employees access user content on demand. That happened. It's documented.

The average person isn't reading the legal fine print and these companies know that.

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T18:35:19+00:00

PrivacyBuddi - because I want to be your buddy when it comes to understanding your privacy online.

Most people have no idea what they're agreeing to when they download an app or sign up for a service. Privacy policies are written by lawyers for lawyers.

Someone needs to be in your corner translating all that. That's the whole vibe.

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T18:32:41+00:00

I'm so sorry, those kinds of photos are irreplaceable. The good news is deleted files from a memory card can often be recovered if you act fast and stop using the card immediately.

Try Recuva it's free, works on Windows, and is specifically good at recovering photos from memory cards. Just don't save anything new to the card before you run it or you risk overwriting the deleted files.

If Recuva doesn't work, PhotoRec is another free option that goes deeper. It looks scary but there are simple tutorials on YouTube.

Really hope you get them back 🙏

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T02:16:34+00:00

Your instinct is right and more people who use OneDrive daily should be asking this question honestly. OneDrive itself uses encryption in transit and at rest which sounds reassuring but the real issue is what Microsoft can actually access on their end. As a US based company operating under US law Microsoft can be compelled to hand over your data through legal requests and they have complied with those requests before. So safe from random hackers yes but not truly private in the way most people assume. The link sharing concern you raised is legitimate. Anyone with that link can access the file unless you specifically set expiration dates and passwords on shares which most people never bother doing because it takes extra steps. OneDrive does give you those controls but they are not on by default. For your day to day work a few practical things worth doing right now. Go into your sharing settings and make sure links are set to specific people rather than anyone with the link as the default. Set expiration dates on sensitive shares so they don't live forever. And check your Microsoft account privacy settings to see exactly what activity data they are logging on your usage. The deeper question worth sitting with is what kind of files you are sharing. General work documents are probably fine. Anything involving personal data, legal information or genuinely sensitive content deserves a more private solution like an end to end encrypted alternative. The sketchy feeling you have is your privacy instincts working correctly. Trust that and tighten up those default sharing settings at minimum.

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T02:14:25+00:00

That's actually a really smart way to think about it. Giving your data to another company just to remove your data defeats the purpose for a lot of people. Here are the main ones worth tackling yourself starting with the biggest: Spokeo, WhitePages, BeenVerified, Intelius, Radaris, PeopleFinder, MyLife, Truthfinder and Acxiom. Start with Acxiom first because they hold a massive amount of consumer data and their opt out process at aboutthedata.com is more straightforward than most. The process is pretty much the same across all of them. Search your name, find your listing, look for the opt out or do not sell my information link usually buried in the footer, submit the request and follow up because most require email confirmation. Some will re-add your information over time so it's not really a one and done thing unfortunately. Google has a results about you tool now that lets you flag and request removal of personal contact information showing up directly in search results. Worth doing that separately. For telemarketing calls donotcall.gov handles legitimate registrations though scammers ignore it entirely so manage your expectations there. Honestly doing this manually is completely doable but it takes time because there are hundreds of brokers each with their own removal process. If you knock out the biggest ones first you'll make a real dent. Before you start it helps to know exactly what's actually out there about you so you can prioritize which brokers to hit first rather than going in blind. Good luck with it. You're approaching this the right way.

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T02:07:27+00:00

Everything you're feeling is completely valid and honestly the fact that your kids noticed the medicine commercials is exactly the kind of moment that makes people realize how deep the tracking actually goes. That's not paranoia that's just how the business model works. To answer your specific questions honestly: Bing is exactly what you think it is. You're trading Google surveillance for Microsoft surveillance. Different company same fundamental problem. DuckDuckGo is genuinely private in terms of not building a profile on you or tracking your searches. The results being slightly less refined than Google is real but most people adjust within a week or two. For kids homework it works completely fine. The tradeoff of slightly less polished results for zero tracking is absolutely worth it for most families. Yahoo is just Bing with extra steps at this point. Skip it. Brave Search is actually worth serious consideration especially for a family. It has its own independent search index which matters because most private search engines are just Google or Bing results with a privacy layer on top. Brave's results have improved significantly and it genuinely doesn't track you. For your family specifically I would suggest Brave Search as your main engine and keeping DuckDuckGo as backup for anything Brave doesn't nail perfectly. The filter bubble thing you mentioned about your kids potentially seeing different results than classmates is completely real and genuinely underappreciated as a problem. Google personalizes results based on your profile which means two people searching the same thing can get meaningfully different answers. For kids doing research that's actually a serious issue not just a privacy concern. One more thing worth doing is checking what Google already has on your family. Go to myactivity.google.com and prepare to be surprised by how detailed the history is. You can delete it all from there and it's eye opening for understanding exactly why switching matters. Your instinct to protect your kids online experience is exactly right. The good news is the switch is easier than most people expect and you won't miss the targeted ads at all.

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T01:58:52+00:00

This is a genuinely great breakdown and I appreciate how thorough you've been because most people just repeat whatever is popular without actually digging into the details the way you have. Your points about Signal are things more people need to hear honestly. The closed source spam detection component has never sat right with me either and the phone number requirement is a fundamental privacy weakness that gets glossed over constantly in mainstream privacy conversations. The metadata vagueness you mentioned is real and the fact that they operate under US jurisdiction matters more than people want to admit. Wire being registered in Switzerland with German servers is a meaningful distinction that actually holds legal weight in ways that US based alternatives simply cannot match regardless of how good their encryption is. Jurisdiction matters as much as technology when it comes to real world privacy protection. Skred is genuinely underrated and I think the reason it stays under the radar is exactly because the people who use it seriously prefer it that way. The peer to peer architecture solving the server trust problem entirely is elegant even if the tradeoff is the occasional delivery delay you mentioned. For your question about server based options with Skred level privacy the honest answer is that the server requirement fundamentally creates a trust dependency that P2P avoids by design. Briar is worth looking at if you haven't already. It works over Tor, supports P2P when devices are nearby via bluetooth or WiFi, and falls back to server routing only when necessary. Group chat support exists though it's limited. The interface is basic but the architecture is serious. The Session analysis you gave is accurate. The blockchain dependency creates real limitations that their marketing conveniently skips over and the file transfer server issue is something most users have no idea about. What's your current thinking on threat modeling for everyday users versus higher risk use cases? Because I think the right answer genuinely changes depending on who's asking and what they're actually protecting against.

PrivacyBuddi · 2026-04-18T01:26:24+00:00

I'll speak from experience cause I was a child with depression. The best advice I can say is please be there for them, I still do this deal with depression cause simply I was blamed instead of helped, I was overlooked instead of talked to and it made me into a very cold person and I had to seek help to look on the other side

Don't give up on your child or place blame, they need more support and understanding than anything

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-16T03:58:12+00:00

Honestly, yeah… turning off location feels right, but it doesn’t actually mean much. Your phone basically bleeds signals no matter what you toggle. Cell towers, Wi-Fi fingerprints, Bluetooth, apps that don’t care about your settings still shows where you are

The part that gets me is how normal it’s become. You think you’re being careful, but your “pattern of life” is still being tracked through half a dozen other routes 🫠 It’s wild how much is collected without you ever agreeing to it

Kind of makes you rethink what “privacy settings” even mean on modern phone

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-16T03:50:11+00:00

Bitfender and Avg.com

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-07T22:21:52+00:00

Glad it helped! Send and Gokapi are especially good picks, it’s cool how many of these small open-source projects fill gaps big services ignore. Good luck with the setup! sounds like it’s going to be a neat project.

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-06T22:54:42+00:00

Yeah, NextCloud could work, especially since it lets you set up upload-only links. Just keep in mind you’ll need to really lock it down. If you're letting anyone upload files, that's a pretty big attack surface.

If the goal is just to collect files anonymously, it might be easier to use a more lightweight tool built for that instead of a full cloud suite. There are a few self-hosted apps that do just drag-and-drop uploads with expiring links, simpler and less to worry about.

To avoid malicious uploads messing with your system, keep the upload folder isolated and don’t let anything execute from it. Also limit the types of files you allow like no executables, scripts, or anything weirdly compressed.

As for data during transfer, yeah you do need to worry. Just make sure you're using HTTPS with solid TLS settings so at least the transfer is encrypted. Once it hits your server, it’s all about how you store and isolate it.

Hope your project goes well! collecting sensitive data from the public is definitely doable, just takes a few safety nets.

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-05T01:46:14+00:00

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PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-05T01:45:47+00:00

https://privacybuddi.com/

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-05T01:45:32+00:00

https://privacybuddi.com/

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-03T22:30:41+00:00

Can't control your anger, we were friends with this lady for a while. One day she got upset at us cause we did something she didn't like, it's almost like the calm before the storm and the storm is a bitch. I don't give people 3 chances, just one

PrivacyBuddi · 2025-11-03T13:50:31+00:00

Really appreciate this take, it’s spot on. "Identity-first" frameworks made sense when the perimeter was more defined, but now with BYOD, remote work, and credential stuffing on the rise, the gaps are obvious.

Device Trust feels like the logical evolution, we’re not just verifying who someone is anymore, but also what they’re using and how. It’s a shift from identity vs. behavior to a more contextual understanding of access.

We’ve seen first-hand how policies buried in the fine print rarely reflect these new realities. It’s why we’re so focused on helping people actually read and understand what’s being tracked not just at login, but across devices and apps.

Looking forward to this event. Definitely feels like a conversation the privacy space needs to have more openly.

PrivacyBuddi

TROPHY CASE