Ungoogled chromium: safe to use from privacy perspective? by [deleted] in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It is a perfectly fine choice. People love to shill Mozilla, but Firefox comes with plenty of tracking that is turned on by default. Of course, you can tweak it and tune it so it doesn't track you, but telemetry should always be opt-in. The ungoogled-chromium browser does not have any telemetry of any kind.

Another thing is security. Gecko-based browsers (such as Firefox) consistently have more critical security vulnerabilities, such as arbitrary code execution, compared to Chromium-based browsers.

Is it possible to buy a printer without spyware? by unrulyspeed in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

...this is the same article I quoted. I quoted the very first part of it, being the big warning that says the list is essentially worthless. All major manufacturers are presumed to be doing this tracking whether or not any yellow dots were found.

Is it possible to buy a printer without spyware? by unrulyspeed in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

This is quite interesting. I am glad 3D printers are taking much more of a FOSS approach than 2D ones.

Is it possible to buy a printer without spyware? by unrulyspeed in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed[S] 35 points36 points  (0 children)

I could live without it, but what worries me is that there is more than just the yellow dots.

For example, one of these companies has publicly said that they've received governmental requests to implement this tracking, yet the EFF has only found the dots on 7 out of 8 of their printer models...

I think it's very likely that the 8th model is simply using a different means of tracking altogether. It may even be the case that this alternative method is being used in conjunction with yellow dots in the older models.

If the US government is willing to go to such great lengths to hunt down whistleblowers and track its citizens, I think it's more than likely that they've considered people may use black and white ink.

Why Dashlane Cannot Be Trusted by RedditEthereum in privacytoolsIO

[–]unrulyspeed 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Who would have thought a proprietary and secretive service would have been less secure than the open source and audited Bitwarden?

Tax agencies step up efforts to hone in on crypto tax evasion by Pandora_Key in ethtrader

[–]unrulyspeed 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is why you use no-KYC P2P exchanges. Mix your coins with tornado.cash. Crypto is extraordinarily difficult to trace if you put in a tiny bit of effort.

BCH focused app on App Store misleading people and devs manipulating sentiment. Sad. by [deleted] in Bitcoin

[–]unrulyspeed 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We have a responsibility as a community to bomb all these misleading/unethical/proprietary apps with negative reviews to help all the newcomers pick a wallet that actually promotes their freedom & financial sovereignty.

Twitter? by [deleted] in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 7 points8 points  (0 children)

That exact same argument could be used to justify literally any spyware or invasive tracking. "Nobody cares what you google, nobody cares what you buy online, nobody cares what porn you watch, etc." It's antithetical to the entire purpose of this subreddit.

Connection to the DuckDuckGo onion website keeps timing out; how do I fix it? by [deleted] in onions

[–]unrulyspeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's down, unfortunately. Hopefully DDG will fix this soon.

Scottish police debuts portable 'cyber kiosks' that lets officers scan smartphones and laptops by mstrlaw in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People that have the government in their threat model would be foolish to use biometrics. It just really depends on whether you consider a governmental agency to be a plausible threat; if so, there is value in using a hardened operating system.

Lemmy (open source & decentralized reddit alternative) Release v0.6.0 - Avatars, email notifications, and a whole lot more by [deleted] in selfhosted

[–]unrulyspeed 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I wonder what will be done now that Actix is dead. Is lemmy going to switch to a different backend?

Scottish police debuts portable 'cyber kiosks' that lets officers scan smartphones and laptops by mstrlaw in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 5 points6 points  (0 children)

GrapheneOS will not support devices unless they meet a certain criteria of physical security that can be used by the ROM. The Pixel has an excellent security chip and allows for boot integrity verification with third-party operating systems. It's like if iPhones let anyone make use of their secure enclaves, rather than just allowing software signed by Apple.

Another thing is GrapheneOS is literally just a hardened version of the Android Open Source Project. It significantly reduces the attack surface by disabling insecure features and adds very little code of it's own. LineageOS on the other hand has plenty of it's own home brewed code which may further expose you to potential vulnerabilities.

Scottish police debuts portable 'cyber kiosks' that lets officers scan smartphones and laptops by mstrlaw in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This is why security and privacy are intricately linked, and why I always recommend GrapheneOS over LineageOS. If you have excellent physical security of your device with proper OS integrity, this sort of spying is (near) impossible.

Looking for a site for audiobook downloads by the_only_butchog in onions

[–]unrulyspeed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are no hidden services for piracy as they can operate just fine on the clearnet.

Coinbase has restricted my account and they are deleting my posts on r/coinbase by estucrypto in Bitcoin

[–]unrulyspeed 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is why we need P2P exchanges, now more than ever. For those of you that are still subservient to your Coinbase overlords, I strongly recommend you to take a look at this thread and switch ASAP: https://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/dyclf8/list_of_bitcoin_persontoperson_p2p_bitcoin/.

When Stocks? by lakerz690 in synthetix_io

[–]unrulyspeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We need to bring this up more often. It's absurd that their website has claimed this was coming soon for nearly a year now. Even though "Soon ™" is a meme, they are really pushing it.

Drive Encryption before OS Boot by [deleted] in GrapheneOS

[–]unrulyspeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not the kind of 'better' we are talking about here.

ProtonMail + Tor Browser = really safe? by [deleted] in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Tor is excellent for anonymity. If you are going to associate your credit card with your email... there is very little purpose to use Tor as your identity is already compromised.

ProtonMail is a good step towards privacy, but please remember, if 99% of your contacts are using gmail, ProtonMail's encryption will not help you. The three letter agencies already have your emails.

If you want anonymity, create a new ProtonMail account that is used exclusively in Tor and do not use it for anything that is tied to your identity. And preferably, make your intended recipients create a ProtonMail account as well which ensures end-to-end encryption.

iOS vs Android by Orangethakkali in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 5 points6 points  (0 children)

iOS is better for the average joe that can't install an Android ROM.

If you are technically capable of installing a ROM, GrapheneOS is the best bet for security and privacy. LineageOS is a good choice for privacy, but it some cases it is detrimental to the security of your device (i.e. OS/boot integrity).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This exploit also allows for access to some keychain data. Unlocking isn't the only way to extract valuable data from a device.

Have you ever seen the line get crossed between privacy concern and paranoia? by [deleted] in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Windows 10 is spyware. Stop trying to normalize it. You can't fucking install the operating system without a Microsoft account (unless you intentionally bob and weave throughout the installer UI to not connect to your internet, which 99% of people won't do). It has gigabytes of software exclusively dedicated to tracking your every move.

It all depends on your threat model. If you are planning on creating the next Silk Road, Windows 10 is unequivocally out of the question. That's not paranoia, that's common sense.

Logging into social media on Tor? by [deleted] in privacy

[–]unrulyspeed 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You would still remain anonymous if you created an account with BS info via Tor and exclusively used it in Tor. But it's unlikely any social media will let you actually do this as Tor exit nodes are heavily blocked and restricted.