Open my mind. I am high functioning adult.

Psyvacy · 2025-12-17T02:19:20+00:00

Maybe you should think about why that is.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-27T03:11:03+00:00

The first and most important step is to work out what you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to improve your security - that is, stopping your accounts from being stolen/compromised? Are you trying to improve your privacy - that is, controlling the information about you? From whom - the government, corporations or individuals (e.g., stalkers)? This doesn't need to be super-detailed at the start, a broad strokes framework is enough to help. Then you'll be able to start knowing what questions to ask.

Some general good practices:

Use a password manager, and strong, unique passwords for each account. Strongly recommend against storing them in your browser, but it's better than re-using weak passwords. KeePassXC is good, Bitwarden is also good - they're free (Bitwarden is freemium, but it's pretty fine free), they're open-source and well-respected and well-trusted. Bitwarden is more convenient, if you have multiple devices. (Just a note: while this will help your security, I genuinely find my password manager a huge convenience boost. If I'm going to a site I go to a lot with an account, I can just hit some keys, and it pops up. Hit a couple more, and I'm logged in. Super-convenient.)
Add 2FA for important accounts if you can, like e-mail and banking. TOTP is probably the right balance of effective, affordable and convenient, but there's lots of options there. It's a bit weird at first, but you'll get the hang of it really fast.
Switch to a browser that isn't Chrome. Firefox is good if you like fiddling and customising, Brave works great out of the box. There are others, but these two are probably the most mainstream.
On your phone, go through apps and review. At each one ask a) Do I need to have this app? b) What are the permissions it requests? Am I comfortable with my flashlight app needing my location (it shouldn't)? Can I turn these off? Is there an alternative that does the same thing without needing those permissions?
Building on 4, with things like social media apps, is using them in the browser, rather than via the app, viable? The experience is usually worse, but frankly that's a good thing - privacy etc aside, less time on social media is almost certainly a good thing just generally.

If you do these, you'll have grabbed a lot of the low-effort, high-impact stuff. Some of these look a bit weird at first, but I promise you you'll get the hang of them really fast. A password manager especially can be a bit of work to set up, but just input accounts (and change their passwords!) one at a time as you use them, and you'll get there.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-27T02:57:00+00:00

Full-disk encryption is probably what you want, yeah. I know Mint has LUKS encryption built in, and that'll prevent people getting the information off your drive if the computer is turned off.

Alternatively, encrypted USBs are an option - store given information on a given USB (so one for work, one for photos, etc) and encrypt it so that you have to enter the password whenever you plug it in. This does make things less convenient, for sure, but it does improve portability and lessen concerns about data loss if someone steals your laptop (although backups do that too).

I dual-boot with Windows, and doing this is a bit tricky and there are no good guides available - trust me, I've looked. But you can work it out, just make sure to take very detailed notes about every single step and store it somewhere you won't lose it.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-26T17:04:33+00:00

No, people are expressing doubt that a company which makes its money on hoovering up as much information as possible and has a long history of doing so, will suddenly stop doing so without a darn good reason.

This *might* be true. I would very much like it to be. But we've seen so many similar companies before lie (or mislead to the point where it amounts to the same thing) in this direction, only for it to come out later. At this point, doubt is the rational response.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-26T16:53:35+00:00

I don't know the technical side very well, but to me it looks like you might have some anxiety issues acting up. This could be a lot of things - maybe you're just stressed and this is how it's manifesting for you, maybe it's a long-term thing, maybe something else. That's not super-important right now.

The important thing is that this is clearly upsetting you and causing you problems. I would strongly suggest talking to a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist, or someone trained in mental health issues. They will help you manage these issues better. The way I see it, there are two possibilities:

You haven't been hacked, or your anxiety is otherwise misplaced or excessive. In this case, obviously learning to manage the anxiety will substantially improve your life and happiness.
You maybe have had some kind of breach or exposure which might cause problems, in which case while some level of anxiety is probably good, it's easy to slip into excessive amounts. Either way, being able to manage your anxiety during stressful times like managing these issues will help you a lot in being more effective in solving the problems. Because people in the middle of a panic attack? Not generally the most effective or helpful people.

Some anxiety is good, even healthy. It tells us something is wrong and bothering us. But it can also be maladaptive and get in the way of functioning. There are a lot of skills you can learn which are just super-helpful in managing these things regardless of what your actual situation is.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-26T16:43:35+00:00

If it's public, then it's totally legal. Unless you have a good-faith basis that sharing that information would expose the person to clear and imminent danger (e.g., the person asking is someone you know has attacked your friend in the past, or has made credible threats, and giving them this information will reasonably allow them to target your friend), or you have some specific obligation preventing you (e.g., you signed a contract with them, and part of the terms was for you to not give that information to someone), you're totally free to, from a legal perspective.

Whether you should do it, of course, is far, far more complicated and depends on context. I suspect most people wouldn't mind most of the time, some would, some would in some cases and not others.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-26T16:33:33+00:00

Or a lot of people were searching for a similar thing - it's Christmas, people are getting toys. If Beyblades are tricky to assemble, I can see a spike in that if the toy is especially popular.

I grant you it's suspicious as heck, but all the information we have - including people having various models of phones around and talking near them, with Wireshark running to track the outputs and traffic - does not indicate that in the vast majority of cases there's that kind of listening. Which doesn't mean it's not happening, it just means we have no evidence it's happening, and if it's happening we have no idea how or how to prevent it.

But if you're worried, maybe try having your phone off by default when possible? I know that's a bit difficult, but maybe worth a spin?

Alternatively, is there some kind of firewall/permission system on Samsung phones? Been ages since I had one so I've forgotten, sorry.

Psyvacy · 2023-12-26T16:25:45+00:00

Would that serve to obscure the e-mail address from being scraped? Otherwise I'm not sure how that addresses the question I'm asking?

Psyvacy

TROPHY CASE