this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 229 points 3 days ago (8 children)

What's reddit? Is that like a new alternative to Lemmy? ;P

[–] lemmus@szmer.info 4 points 2 days ago

Reddit who?

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[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 112 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

I like how the original OP mention in passing that Reddit is bad for privacy.

Like, no shit? How can a privacy community be even remotedly healthy in such an environment?

It's like having a club for how to avoid the police within a prison, regulated by the guards.

[–] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 44 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Browsing reddit while using a VPN is verboten.

Good grief I despise that smug, winking snoo with a effing fedora that goes along with the error page.

[–] cyberwolfie@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 days ago

woah there pardner!

[–] ohellidk@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

yeah, seems like they really don't want site visits or something! oh well, its cooler here.

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[–] notprogrammer@programming.dev 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

If you only talk about privacy on already private platforms, it will become a circlejerk in no time. You need to tell people who have no interest/experience in online privacy about it so you can further the cause. This is similar to why the FSF is on Twitter/X.

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[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 28 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Reddit was open source until 2017, and one of the founders was Aaron Schwartz. So it didn't look like that for a long time.

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[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago

OP is the original OP. Probably. Reddit poster's name is the same as the Lemmy poster's name.

[–] steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

While I hate Reddit isn’t the fediverse basically horrible for privacy? It’s super easy to see everyone’s posts and IP addresses no? I thought anyone could basically download everything with very little effort and do whatever they want with it.

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[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 65 points 3 days ago

My guess is, the people who care didn’t stick around. As s result, quality went down.

[–] OlPatchy2Eyes@slrpnk.net 9 points 2 days ago

Unsurprising behavior from a community where the coolest person is the one who can put on the biggest tin foil hat. I appreciate the privacy community here but I think the concept itself leads to users decrying anything as insecure just because it makes them feel more knowledgeable.

[–] DaseinPickle@leminal.space 61 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Nerdy communities always seem to attract some very opinionated people, which is a turn off for people just trying to do better.

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 110 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 28 points 3 days ago (2 children)

As an older hobbyist, exactly.

I'm as guilty as anyone, but I promise I'm trying to be better.

[–] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 30 points 3 days ago

I'm trying to be better.

Unlike those dang noobs

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

"Welcome to Reddit! A community where you can determine what the mood and biases of the mod(s) are so you can safely post without getting banned or comments deleted."

[–] Matshiro@szmer.info 47 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Tbh I am done with reddit as a whole, back then a lot of mods were power tripping, but now most of them are. You can't say anything, do anything, it would be better for them if no one would even visit their communities.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 57 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

This is completely unsurprising tbh. A lot of the old mods were enthusiasts who grew a community from scratch due to their love for the subject. In the reddit API shutdown, a lot of those mods left in disgust, or were replaced by the reddit admins, or were driven off by the leftover toxic userbase calling them "entitled jannies" or whatever. A lot of the mods who took over their place were just power-hungry users who were chomping at the bit to get the chance to run a big community as their personal fiefdom because they were too toxic to grow one themselves.

This is the inevitable culmination of these events.

Anyway, welcome to lemmy. We become more powerful from every user who writes off reddit forever.

PS: if you see power-trippin' behaviour around these parts, you can always post about it in !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Only reason I'd recommend signal to anyone is that its one of the few encrypted apps that doesnt have awful onboarding. A boomer can figure it out.

[–] xtrapoletariat@beehaw.org 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What do you recommend?

If Signal was not simple, my family and friends would likely use Telegram or WhatsApp. Even switching to Signal required a number of (general) newspaper articles criticising the status quo. It's likely not optimal, but okayish and sharing opinions and holiday impressions feels a bit better.

Switching a service is a slow, difficult process and many contacts will not follow, given they would abandon other contacts among friends, family, parents at school, sports teams, ... (now, I'm here, using 4+ solutions).

If training or even curiosity for the technical process is required, very few people will follow. If it takes me (with strong IT background) more than 30 minutes to understand/implement, I may have a decent private solution, but I will feel quite lonely soon.

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

the other decent options are matrix and simplex chat, and mayyyybe session. matrix seems to have the most users and kick to it right now. out of those options. but yeah youre not gonna get the average tech illiterate person to get on a more complicated alternative to discord, essentially

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 23 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Wait, what's wrong with Proton Mail?

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 3 days ago (8 children)

They gave meta information like IP to the government in Switzerland, where they are based, after the government forced them to with a court order. Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that, just the additional information they have on a user like email and IP.

Because of that, a lot of redditers on r/privacy think they spy on their users for the US government. It’s a stretch, yes, but you have to remember they take turns using the one brain they collectively have.

[–] AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Not the encrypted mail, mind you, because they can’t do that

Just want to point out for anyone new that ProtonMail does not use E2EE for email headers. That means they CAN access your subject lines, to/from fields, and other email headers. That means they CAN be forced to hand it over to the government.

Source: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained

Subject lines and recipient/sender email addresses are encrypted but not end-to-end encrypted.

Personally I am disappointed in a lot of Proton's wording about this. They frequently promise they can't access "your data" and "your messages" when they do, in fact, store potentially sensitive data in a format they CAN access.

[–] jherazob@beehaw.org 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's email, that's the best you can get with email, if you want to have more privacy, DON'T USE EMAIL

This is good advice, because email is very difficult to make reliably private. However, it's not the best you can get. Tutanota, for example, stores headers with E2EE, and still has a search function.

The goal should be to make it as private as it can realistically be. Ideally, any cloud service you use should only store end-to-end encrypted data.

I'm not trying to shit on Proton — it's a huge step up from the popular mainstream email services, and the inclusion of cloud storage makes it a much easier transition than going piecemeal with 2-5 different services.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A bit more context is important here. They aren’t E2EE, but they are stored encrypted. In the case of the person whose meta information was turned over, ProtonMail wasn’t forced to hand over the information right away, they were forced to collect it the next time that person accessed and used their email. That tells us that they didn’t store the information beforehand and could not access it without preparing to intercept it the next time their service was used.

Ultimately, though, if something like that’s a dealbreaker, it’s likely you’re doing something that would benefit from a more secure way of communicating than email.

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I agree, sounds a bit excessive. If that's correct, it doesn't sound like they're reading your data and at the end of the day they have to comply with things like warrants. Thanks for the clarification.

[–] underwire212@lemm.ee 12 points 3 days ago

It is all also very clearly stated in the information they must collect in order to provide their service. There should’ve been no surprises here, as you must assume that scenarios like these will happen eventually.

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[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 22 points 3 days ago

It was a terrible sub for years much before the apicalypse. It was full of apple fanboys who believed every marketing bullshit.

[–] rijom@lemmy.ml 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What’s the background here? Do they censor stuff?

[–] DollarColonial@lemmy.ml 38 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Mention VPNs are forbidden due to spam and stuff, GrapheneOS mention forbidden because of drama

2nd part, community recommend too often just extrem stuff, not seeing that someone just moved away from Google or iOS or whatever big data service

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 41 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Mention VPNs are forbidden due to spam and stuff, GrapheneOS mention forbidden because of drama

Defeats the whole purpose of the subreddit, it’s like saying you’re not allowed to talk about yellow in a community about colours…

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[–] DollarColonial@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 days ago

I also got DMs asking why it's removed or if I got banned, + someone asking and saying in topic it's the 3rd in short time.

[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 days ago

We love lemmy ❤️

[–] kekmacska@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

i can agree on a few stuff, and can't on some others. I just choose the most private options aviable that still serve the purpose i use them for. Like if you can find something on Google Play, Aurora, F-droid, obviously, it is better to download from f-droid, but if you have a bit more time, it is even better to download from source or even compile it yourself. But it always upsets me when people ask for privacy tips when using ios or windows, like are you joking or what? ditch those lol. And obviously, as a gamer, i wouldn't use purist linux oses, like PureOS, because it can have serious issues with games. But i won't buy nvidia if i want to game on linux, when i can get amd with open-source drivers on distros like Garuda. So i think a reasonable privacy can't hurt anyone, but moving on just the next little step or going into the extremes are both not good ideas

[–] DollarColonial@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I can't recommend downloading from sources to normal people, and the problem is no, one step after step is better, as you can't have a perfect solution for privacy btw, but moving from one service to one service lets say in one day, week or maybe even month is not realistic. Its like recommending a password manager, great, but then saying theres immediat need to change all password... Like, technically true, but realisticly, bank and mail firsts, then step by step some passwords, without forgeting new accounts should have now strong passwords.

As I said, ie my girlfriend knowing Im interested into privacy tell me that she just installed and created a protonmail account and she used Drive a bit, if I just say thats useless because there need compartimentalization and Proton gave IP to police, thats fckd up

The most private, the most secure option isn't for everyone, first to threat model, second to personnal daily life

A person interested can still have Gafam apps, for some needs, required, but can limit the settings.

If you are a gamer, you mostly still need Windows computer (Linux got better and better, depends on games tho), then you can choose to say fck, or you can use it with limiting the stuff you can (turning off maximum settings you can, OsU10, etc.). Thats the same with iOS.. Most people wont buy right now a new phone because of privacy, but maybe the next in few months or in 2 years ; doesnt mean during this period you can't choose apps to use, turning off iOS features, etc..

For some projects I needed TikTok, I wrote myself a guide, to use it as anonymous as possible, to TikTok and to people, instead of using it raw, defaults

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[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oh I remember r/privacy, this comment is spot on. You expect something like the Linux communities where it is okay what ever you prefer. But privacy-nerds sometimes goes the spying government/tech-firms rabbit-hole to deep.

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