Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
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Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
I'm not sure about mobile stuff, but Windows is very invasive. I remember people talking about how bad Windows 10 was, and it's just gotten worse.
Some companies sell computers with Linux already on them, so if someone isn't comfortable with changing their OS, they could try one of them (I think Lenovo does it, but they use Ubuntu so it's not the best for privacy).
Also worth mentioning that dual booting with windows is easy and will give you some time to transition. Get yourself used to Linux while still having a "fallback" if things get too hairy
That's what I did. Windows helped me in some situations. Now its just unused wasted space I am planning on reclaiming.
I took the same plunge this week. I partitioned 125 GB to Windows and the remaining 350GB to Debian 12. I was making do w/ a 240 GB SSD previously so it's overkill, but I like the idea of disincentivizing my W11 usage by limiting the space available.
For me, there's still some workflows that need to be optimized in Debian, but overall I'm slowly transitioning towards it as my main driver.
Not the best for privacy is still tons and tons better than winblows could ever be.
Basically the question comes down to: who do you trust and why?
If you didn’t code it yourself or validate every line of code, you’re trusting someone with your privacy. Most of us have no interest in and no capability to code our own operating systems, so at some point you must trust someone else. (And even if you code your own OS, do you manufacture your own hardware?)
Linux obviously is open-source so you can verify code yourself. But there are closed-source packages and even being open-source is no guarantee people will make good privacy decisions. Still, pretty good compared to alternatives.
Google is an ad company who wants your personal information to sell you stuff. I personally don’t trust that with my privacy.
Apple is … okay. They take privacy extremely seriously and have no interest in profiting from your personal data. But they are closed source so you are trusting their implementation.
Microsoft generally sucks and I think personally they would do practically anything for a buck. So, no trust from me.
I consequently run Linux and iOS. But you have to weigh the pros and cons yourself.
As Apple has moved from focusing on hardware to services, including ads, they do have an interest on using your data.
There was even a scandal where with the App Tracking permissions added, which reduced third party data collection, but their 1st party apps like Stocks, doesn’t respect it, continuing to collect data even when the user has denied tracking globally.
They don't record your every keystroke and such (that we know of), but they do log what app/program you open and when, how long you keep it open, if you're using your keyboard or mouse, if you're receiving notifications and from what applications.
On the phone, they know if you're moving and where you are, can determine who are you with and such.
They are also trying to get you to use their web browsers, chat services, email, online documents... Why do you think they're doing that?
Watching you wank isn't super effective when it comes to targeting non-nsfw ads at you. They prefer to collect metadata (who, what, when, where) which is trivial, easier to collect en masse and analyse.
If it's possible - you can limit the amount of data to some degree, but not entirely. Not just the OS is the problem, other people are. If some idiot uploads their entire phone book to every fucking service, you can't help your phone number being among them and crosschecked to see who you know.
I certainly think so.
Even Windows or Chrome OS, provides quite a bit of "control" it's just that a lot of it is "opt out". Google does, for example record what YouTube videos you look at against a logged in account by default. Windows does have targeted advertising enabled by default.
I think privacy is really more about what you do on such platforms. If you use products (sites) that clearly have bad policies in regard to privacy then no OS is going to provide really all that much improvement.
This is no longer as hard as it has been in the digital-deep past. You need to learn now. The time has past for taking control being an early adopters thing. Linux is orders of magnitude larger than Windows in terms of both hardware compatibility and software. All of the issues that still exist are due to shitty companies that are trying to exploit you with proprietary theft of ownership. You should self educate and know about these anyways. They are the foundations of the dystopian technogarchy. Almost anything a generation or two old is going to work fine with Linux and little research needed. You can buy stuff from specialists like System76, Star Labs, and Tuxedo. You can even buy several options with Linux preinstalled from Lenovo and stuff like the HP Dev One.
You can buy routers with OpenWRT preinstalled or even versions with simplified front ends like pcWRT and others.
Installing Graphene on a Pixel is not hard. This is nothing like the old days of custom ROMs on phones. Graphene will introduce you to a Matrix chat embedded in their webpage just in case you have any issues or do not understand something after reading the documentation. There is an enormous supportive community for Graphene on their Matrix channel and someone will help you in a live chat. The entire build process is almost entirely automated. All you do is open a chrome browser and plug in USB following the instructions once. All the updates are automatically installed over the network after that. The bootloader is locked, root is locked, it is just like a typical OEM experience except there is no stalkerware with things like google recording everything from your microphone 24/7, tracking your location, and everyone/everything you interact with.
Is graphene only for Pixels?
Yes
Yes.
You have threat model to answer this question as privacy means different things to people and there are different privacy levels to every threat model. But to answer your question in a concise manner, any closed source operating system developed by commercial vendors is more likely to ship with/ introduce telemetry, user tracking and other kinds of spyware than an open one.
The amount of privacy you retain is directly proportional to the level of effort you expend.
I'm a big fan of Shutup10 (https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10). It's an app you can download and run that greatly simplifies the privacy options available in Windows.
You can already do a lot!. Switch of all the invasive features from google. (Remove advertising ID, switch of any web and app history etc.) Install F-Droid and only use the "good" apps. Put the evil apps in a separate work profile (Shelter app). Look at the configurations of the apps and opt-out of tracking.
Configure your webbrowser to delete cookie and co. ....
Windows is such a complete pain in the ass to use anymore I'm not sure Linux is really all that more difficult.
I know people have really been slow-boiled on the windows side the past 15 years or so, and the frustrations you could encounter are unique to each platform, but I really do think we're at a point that if you can competently admin your own windows system, you can admin a linux system.
And if you can't be assed to admin either, then you have a few options:
- Hire a nerd to admin your computer
- Only use a work computer (and non-personal stuff)
- resign to using an iPad where Apple is your admin. 😂
Unfortunately, no, you don't. However, you can buy computers with Linux preinstalled. I haven't looked in a long time, but they were only marginally more expensive when I looked last.
Also, installing Linux isn't difficult at all, provided that your motherboard isnt weird about booting it (really just luck of the draw, but usually not a problem), and that you're willing to nuke all your files. Dual boot installations are where things get precarious.
Depends where you buy your hardware...
I bought a laptop I could spec the way I want it, which included a choice of OS. I could choose for 32GB of ram and Windows 11 or 64 GB of ram and Ubuntu for the same prize. Ubunto has no clue how to fill all that memory. (I have, kvm is my friend)
To be honest, it's totally worth it to spend time in messing about with custom OS on a device you can spare. Linux runs nicely on '12 hardware when you have enough memory. Even the '11 Samsung Tab S2 gets Android 13 via Lineage. Those are nice projects to start with, pick an old device and mess about. Worst that can happen is thag you have to throw it away, which you have to do anyway with the original software.
As somebody else already posted, when you don't control your OS, somebody else will.
I decided to trust apple’s privacy campaign, happily locked into the ecosystem.
There are mitigations you can do, but its easier to resolve root causes by not touching risky software in the first place. I recommend people start with the easy stuff first. Messaging systems is probably the lowest hanging fruit. Mobile operating systems is a bit more messy, depending on your hardware. But installing Linux is easier than you think. Zorin is great if you're super used to windows and don't want to learn new paradigms at all. MX Linux has slightly more learning curve than other beginner friendly choices, but its still doable. It will also help you revive old hardware and avoid adding ewaste to the oceans. Debian is a bit more jumping into the deep end, but it still does a reasonable job of holding your hand as you get started. It will also give you a ton of flexibility to just install default programs and use those programs documentation to resolve issues rather than trying to figure out what strange customizations your chosen distro applied.
Windows 10 & 11 indeed do log your keystrokes, browsing history, etc. by default, according to the T&C - also the Microsoft swiftkey keyboard for Android does as well. Here is a good guide for making Windows a little more private, although there really is no escaping at least basic telemetry, which is still way too revealing in my opinion:
https://vpnoverview.com/privacy/devices/privacy-settings-windows-10/
You can even buy them preinstalled. I generally buy my laptops preinstalled but build my workstation myself. You do not need to be technical either as long as you have and idea of how you will work through future issues. No different than Windows in that way.
It's not full privacy or no privacy at all! Everyone has a different threat model which utilizes different practises. Yes, windows is no good for privacy, but limiting what windows can collect, and not using 3rd party software that collects even more info can be a pretty good start for most people. Also not advertising personal information on social media (or using privacy invasive social media at all)!
With just these you'll have much better privacy than anyone around you and a pretty good level of privacy in general! You can do so much for privacy but you'll have to face the comprimises the more private you go.
The think is do you need to go that deep for privacy or is something less private a better solution for you?
You can track telemetry, and then block those domains.
If you dont control your OS, then someone else does...
We know they will take everything they can and we really [dont] know that well what they do with it.
I switched from windows 11 after catching them resetting my privacy settings and installing tiktpk and Facebook icons with updates.
Wtf sort of software is that lol
Paid a bunch of money for hardware then I get treated like some sort of child by my OS?
No thank satya microshit... Eat a bag of dicks.
Got to vote with your feet and wallet, that's only thing you can do under the current regime.
In both(maybe you cannot do in android without root) you can block trackers with third party programs. Things like https://safing.io/ seems to work well, yet you will still have to make some efforts, is the same as the famous saying, "if you don't control your thoughts someone will"
You may end up just sharing information broadly unless you use something like grapheneos or a Linux computer. Even with those OS choices the applications may also send data to different services or may share a lot on the web browsers. You may just want to try a few different systems to find out where your comfortable you are cutting yourself off from the services.