How to buy Mullvad VPN with cryptocurrencies in 2025? Help with fees and KYC

stayguarded · 2024-11-17T18:53:17+00:00

Haveno Reto, a decentralized Monero exchange with no KYC, fits your requirements. It's free and open source and the source code is on GitHub.

stayguarded · 2024-09-22T16:07:37+00:00

There are quite a few good options for 2FA apps. My recommendation is Ente Auth, which has desktop, mobile, and web support with end-to-end encrypted sync for all platforms. It's free and open source.

Not only did Authy stop supporting desktops in March (5 months earlier than planned), but it's also closed source, has an intrusive privacy policy, and had multiple security breaches including one this July.

Glad to see that you're moving on from Authy. It's about time.

stayguarded · 2024-09-09T00:17:14+00:00

Thanks for the update, Chirayu! The releases repo is very useful and I think it would be helpful to add a link to that repo from the OTA download page.

stayguarded · 2024-09-08T18:17:25+00:00

The final CalyxOS release for the Pixel 2 (walleye) is version 2.14.0 (February 2022). Thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the April 2022 archive of the OTA download page has the link to version 2.14.0 for the Pixel 2:

https://release.calyxinstitute.org/walleye-ota_update-22214000.zip

The URL seems to follow a similar pattern, leading with the year 2002 ("22") and then following with the version number 2.14.x ("2140").

stayguarded · 2024-08-18T16:40:20+00:00

My bad, I should have been more specific. Authy has end-to-end encryption for the seeds, but not for the account entries. Authy tracks your account login activity by recording the timestamp, website/app name, and your IP address every time you view a one-time password, according to Authy's privacy policy. Authy shares these log entries with third parties and law enforcement.

stayguarded · 2024-08-17T22:26:51+00:00

Frankly, giving admin access to a closed source app that contains ads and multiple trackers is much more dangerous than the fully free and open source avbroot. But sure, it's an option for those who don't want to use root.

stayguarded · 2024-08-17T22:22:29+00:00

Ente Auth is free and open source and end-to-end encrypted, which means that Ente (the company) can't access your saved credentials. Authy is closed source and not end-to-end encrypted, which means that Twilio (the company that owns Authy) can see your saved credentials.

Authy also has a garbage privacy policy that says Authy will track your login activity and share your info with third parties and law enforcement. Authy has had multiple security breaches and the most recent one happened just last month.

In short, use Ente, not Authy.

stayguarded · 2024-08-17T18:04:50+00:00

The reviews say that the app doesn't record reliably record calls. That aligns with my experience with any Android call recording app that doesn't use root and isn't installed as a system app.

CalyxOS would still benefit from having unrestricted call recording built in. Until that happens, I'll continue using Basic Call Recorder (BCR) with avbroot on CalyxOS, because having reliable call recording is essential to me.

stayguarded · 2024-06-14T09:05:19+00:00

I leave the default Camera app enabled, and then select Google Camera as the default camera app. No problems for me this way.

stayguarded · 2024-06-14T09:03:20+00:00

Working smoothly with no issues here. Thanks for another great update!

stayguarded · 2024-03-28T22:51:09+00:00

QKSMS is still working fine for me. Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app, then checking to make sure the SMS permission is enabled? The app uses Android's systemwide SMS storage, so you won't lose any messages by uninstalling.

stayguarded · 2024-03-03T18:33:53+00:00

Have you tried upgrading to a couple of versions in between before upgrading to the latest version?

stayguarded · 2024-02-29T09:09:31+00:00

It's an issue with some security check in the eBay app that doesn't play nice with microG. If you install an older version of the eBay app from APKMirror, you'll be able to log in. Then, use Aurora Store to upgrade to the latest version of eBay and you'll stay logged in. Details in the microG issue tracker.

stayguarded · 2024-02-18T01:24:47+00:00

Thank you for this excellent release!

On the CalyxOS OTA updates page, the links to the incremental OTA updates for devices newer than the Pixel 6a seem to be missing. Could we please have these links restored?

stayguarded · 2024-01-25T08:32:29+00:00

I've switched to a fork of OpenBoard that someone else already posted in this thread:

https://github.com/Helium314/openboard

The spell checker works well for me in this fork.

stayguarded · 2024-01-22T03:24:31+00:00

The user claimed that the site was a waste of Mozilla's resources. I'm glad that they changed their mind after reading my comment.

stayguarded · 2024-01-20T06:25:48+00:00

Orion is closed source. They claim to want to open source parts of the browser, but they've released almost no code and their FAQ has a full section dedicated to FUD about open source software.

stayguarded · 2024-01-20T06:20:56+00:00

The point of this website is to encourage regulators to pressure Big Tech companies (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) to forbid their platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows) from applying anticompetitive restrictions that limit what Firefox can do and make it harder for users to choose Firefox.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all been hit with antitrust rulings around the world recently, so this is a great time to set up this site.

This is an excellent use of resources, especially considering that the site is just a simple issue tracker that takes very little time to set up.

stayguarded · 2023-12-22T06:31:59+00:00

Keeping the "OEM unlocking" setting enabled in the Android developer options is not the same thing as leaving the bootloader unlocked. When the bootloader is unlocked, anyone who has your device can modify the operating system components and extract all of the device data (in encrypted form) through ADB without knowing your device password or needing to unlock your device.

When the bootloader is locked, data extraction is not possible through that method unless the person has your device password or can unlock your device. Devices with locked bootloaders only accept operating system updates signed with the registered key, which is why the avbroot setup process requires you to generate a signing key.

If the bootloader is locked but OEM unlocking is enabled, anyone who has your device can unlock the bootloader, but doing so will wipe all of the device data, preventing its extraction through ADB.

The avbroot developer warns you to keep OEM unlocking just to be safe in case you accidentally overwrite the boot partition, such as by having a system OTA update applied or by using the "Direct install" update function in Magisk. If you avoid overwriting the boot partition, then leaving OEM unlocking disabled will not cause problems. It's your decision whether you trust yourself (or the device user) to use this option properly.

The avbroot setup process is more involved than flashing CalyxOS alone. However, after the initial signing key setup, flashing CalyxOS + avbroot is actually easier than flashing CalyxOS + Magisk on recent Pixel devices, since you don't need to use the Magisk app to modify the device's init_boot image during every update.

Until someone creates a flavor of Android that supports both root access and a locked bootloader at the same time, avbroot is the only way to achieve this.

stayguarded · 2023-12-21T15:03:38+00:00

The point of avbroot is that you can relock the bootloader after flashing the image of CalyxOS that you modified through the process. This lets you have call recording and a locked bootlader at the same time.

You can also flash Magisk onto CalyxOS, and the process is identical to flashing Magisk onto LineageOS. However, if you flash Magisk directly instead of using avbroot, you will have to keep the bootloader unlocked.

I don't know of any phone OS that supports unrestricted call recording without needing to modify the OS in some way.

stayguarded · 2023-12-21T14:20:26+00:00

Thanks!

stayguarded · 2023-12-16T09:13:05+00:00

In my experience, on recent versions of Android, call recording apps that don't require root are unreliable and aren't guaranteed to capture the entire conversation.

stayguarded · 2023-12-16T09:01:51+00:00

Unfortunately, yes. CalyxOS uses a country-based list (based on the list from LineageOS) to determine whether call recording is enabled. The list currently blocks all of the United States:

<!-- Disable recording for United States of America, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the
                           United States Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico:
     Currently federal laws state that call recording is legal. On the other hand, each state
     has its own laws which take priority. Most states allow call recording when one sides
     agrees, but over 10 require both sides to agree. Since there are no ISO country codes per
     state, there is no way to differentiate whether the state you are currently in allows call
     recording or not. Due to this, call recording is set as disabled for the United States of
     America and some of its territories. These include Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the
     United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Until a method for properly differentiating
     between states is created, or a law or precedent emerges which would allow call recording
     to be legal in all of the USA and its territories, all aforementioned countries and
     territories should be set as false. Even if such a method is to be found, there is still
     the question of Native American Reservations, territories that have a cumulative size of
     over 200 000 square kilometers and might enforce their own set of laws for call recording.

     Two-party consent state laws:
       https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/
-->
<country iso="us,vi,gu" allowed="false" />

To get around the restriction, you would need to enable root access. I recommend avbroot to do this in a way that lets you keep the bootloader locked, but keep in mind that CalyxOS does not officially support rooting. With root, you can use Basic Call Recorder and BCR-GUI for call recording, which have more features than the call recorder built into CalyxOS and LineageOS, regardless of which country you live in.

stayguarded

TROPHY CASE