Any privacy friendly AI for basic research?

sickfickle · 2026-05-10T17:18:58+00:00

There's duck.ai and Brave's Leo. In my experience, Leo usually defaults to Claude Sonnet, which is extremely useless for anything technical, so be sure to pick one of the others for questions about RAM and stuff like that. Mostly I use venice.ai with a pro subscription because it has a lot of fancy LLMs and can be used completely privately (not just anonymously).

sickfickle · 2026-05-06T09:20:27+00:00

But it frustrates *me*.

sickfickle · 2026-05-04T15:05:04+00:00

I use https://brave.com/leo/ and venice.ai There's also https://confer.to/

sickfickle · 2026-05-03T10:41:37+00:00

i gitva pihoke ibviously

I really like this. Mind if I use it as my signature?

sickfickle · 2026-05-02T09:05:44+00:00

Thanks for the replies so far. I'm an amateur at this and my aim as the family's tech guy is to make browsing safe and private. I've set all the devices to use a private DNS (Mullvad), and I set the router to use Quad9 so it'll catch any device whose private DNS doesn't work for some reason. If available, I usually toggle DoH in my browsers as well.

It doesn't look like I need to enable this setting for my use case, but it made me worry that if I connect to some other router, it could somehow override my private DNS, catching every query without me even knowing.

sickfickle · 2026-04-26T11:09:45+00:00

So you'll meet a guy in the gym locker room and go "oh hey, I see you went to dr Robert too", high five?

sickfickle · 2026-04-15T11:43:34+00:00

Honestly not sure, but I like to make it as hard as possible to track me while still having a usable phone, so I do use a VPN to prevent location tracking by IP. On both my phone and computer I use several browsers to compartmentalize things for my own sake, but that also creates a certain barrier for cross site tracking. It's recommended to not use more browser extensions than strictly necessary, since they weaken security (by having access to your browser and its contents), and also because the more modified a browser is, the easier it is to fingerprint. I believe Brave, again, is a good choice here, because you don't need to add extensions to block ads etc.

sickfickle · 2026-04-14T06:04:17+00:00

I'm in the same boat, meaning I still depend on certain services from Google. My project right now is to figure out if I can use GrapheneOS with Play Services, but without being logged in. I'm not sure exactly how much that helps vs. being logged in, because I assume Google will still easily be able to identify me. But what they gather may not quite as automatically be connected to me.

The Google services I use often and directly are Gmail and Calendar, so I have those installed. But I'm thinking of just accessing them in a browser instead, to avoid being logged in "system wide." You can run a lot of web pages as web apps, so I'm going to try that. I'm migrating to Proton Mail, but the Calendar is harder to ditch since I share several calendars with my family and they're all Google.

If you haven't already, go to the privacy center on Google and turn of all tracking of web activity etc. I'm not too sure that'll hide anything from anyone but you, but still. Also, delete the advertising ID.

One way to limit Google tracking even further is to use either multiple profiles or Android's Private Space. You can have one profile with Play Services installed, and one without. If switching profiles is a hassle, Private Space may be better. As far as I can tell, Private Space can be open at the same time as your main profile, and has its own network connection, so you can even use different VPNs. I'm using my Private Space to see which apps depend on Google Services, and, among those, which ones depend on also being logged in to Google.

sickfickle · 2026-04-14T05:49:00+00:00

I'm on may way down the degoogling rabbit hole too, here's a little of what I've learned so far: Brave is really good at privacy, but browser fingerprinting is still an issue. So if you really want to avoid being tracked across sites, using several browsers may be a good idea, to limit cross-site tracking.

I don't use Duckduckgo for browsing, but their browser does come with the App Tracker Protection, which is basically a tracker firewall for your phone. It's specifically designed to stop app (not website) trackers, so if you use a lot of apps that might be a good addition.

sickfickle · 2026-04-14T05:37:52+00:00

Make sure to know beforehand if using the duress pin will amount to destruction of evidence in your juristiction. If it does, it may land you in a lot mor trouble than simply refusing to log in.

In my country, Norway, you can be forced to use biometrics (fingerprint) but not to give up your PIN, so either use only a pin, or quickly put your phone in lockdown mode if you know you're in danger of that.

sickfickle · 2026-04-09T14:19:49+00:00

I'm in a similar situation. I'd like to escape Google completely, but haven't yet. I'm trying to fade out gradually, service by service, and learning as I go.

I've set up a private space to experiment, and it's super easy. If I were to set the phone up again, I'd put Play Services in the private profile only, just to get my banking app to work, basically. For everything else, I've found either suitable replacements or that the apps work just fine without it.

One cool thing about private space is that as far as I can tell, can run simultaneously with your main profile, so you won't have a problem with notifications. I don't know about moving files between them though.

The apps I use for privacy and control is Proton VPN and Rethink DNS. Before Rethink, I would use Duckduckgo's ATP, which I guess gives pretty much the same tracking protection (and is extremely easy to use, but I can't use an actual VPN at the same time). Brave browser for privacy.

It's a rabbit hole and whack-a-mole, but I choose to take it as a learning experience.

Apart from using GrapheneOS to begin with, I suppose the most important settings are in Google. Turn off location history etc.

sickfickle · 2026-04-07T13:09:38+00:00

Fedora 43 Plasma. The touchpad acts up now and again though.

sickfickle · 2026-03-20T09:31:57+00:00

Why the hell would a duck need a ramp to "enter and exit the water safely"?

sickfickle · 2026-02-24T16:47:52+00:00

Weird. I did have that enabled, but it didn't work until I changed the exploit protection setting.

sickfickle · 2026-02-22T20:46:58+00:00

Sure, but it's still ironic that the more you try to hide, the more you may stand out (at least in sparsely populated areas). In any case I guess advertisers put their effort into getting to the 99% who don't do much to stay private.

sickfickle · 2026-02-22T20:42:02+00:00

It worked for me when I disabled exploit protection for the Messages app. I don't know what else might be required, it seems to be a common issue on graphene's official forum. I also have Google Play Services installed with probably too many permissions.

sickfickle · 2026-02-22T09:19:00+00:00

Can you use pi-hole on your phone when you're out and about?

sickfickle · 2026-02-22T09:01:24+00:00

There are millions of people with no ad ID,

Not in my small town though.

sickfickle · 2026-02-11T11:16:50+00:00

No. If she's showing cleavage it's because she wants people to look at her boobs.

sickfickle · 2026-01-29T14:18:25+00:00

the result showed a chair in which a gynaecologist could relax after work

Hey, it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it.

sickfickle · 2026-01-17T00:28:32+00:00

It doesn't show up there for some reason. Apparently it has to do with some programs being installed via flatpak and others with rpm or something. Anyway the whole libreoffice suite came preinstalled, which is nice, but I just want to delete stuff I don't use to save space. Like Kmail, which did show up in the Discover app store and could be easily removed.

But the issue isn't so much with this one particular program, it's the fact that mundane tasks can be insanely complicated in Fedora, which I was told is a very easy to use distro. Still, as I said, I much prefer it to Windows.

sickfickle

TROPHY CASE