I usually use Age, I'd like to hear your opinions.

Hi, I'm building a personal website and I don't want it to be used to train AI. In my robots.txt file I blocked:

• ChatGPT-User
• GPTBot
• Google-Extended
• FacebookBot

What bots should I also add? Are there any other ways to block AI bots?

IMPORTANT: I don't want to block search engine crawlers, only bots that are used to train AI.

So I have 2 Instagram apps on my phone. Instander is my personal account and instathunder is my "lewd" account (mostly cosplay girls and such). They're on separate apps and use separate emails, however, my main accounts search page is like 90% cosplay/goth/alt girls. I have never looked that up on my personal account but its all that's being recommended.

Are they reading information from each other? How can I stop this? Also, how do I get my personal accounts feed to be normal again?

Hi, I'm thinking of building a personal website about tech, privacy, open source, etc. Any recommendations about where can I buy domain? .com is taken, but everything else is not. Shuld I take .tech (few dolars more expensive) or something more basic?

cross-posted from: https://monero.town/post/934733

SimpleX Chat

Private and Secure messaging platform without user IDs

Will this new messenger replace Signal?

Watch on Youtube

by Evgeny Poberezkin

I use Pi-Hole and works great. I've heard about AdGuard and seems the same thing as PiHole, but you have to install an app/extension. Everyone in this community recommend NextDNS. Whats the difference between them?

So I got Fairphone 4, with /e/ os, a couple of days ago. When I connected it to my NextDNS I saw that it was trying to connect to some weird addresses, like every 5-10 minutes. I searched Internet a bit and found out that it was something with snapdragon cpu and location services. I travel a lot and use Organic Maps for navigation, so location was enabled almost all day on the phone. I turned off location services and connections stopped, and everything was fine for a couple of days.

Today I came home, checked logs in NextDNS and saw that phone started doing the same connections almost constantly even with location turned off.

Can I do something about this, other than allowing these connections? These connections are probably so numerous because they are getting blocked. If I allowed them, phone would maybe call home once in a couple of hours. I would rather not allow them, but I don't want 20% of battery to be eaten by this.

So recently bought the Pixel 8 with my previous carrier being Verizon and was going to put Grapheneos on it but I had no idea that Verizon locks the boot loaders of their devices even though google does not. What are some things I can do to de google the device or make it more private like Grapheneos would. Or am I out of luck. Thanks

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-uks-controversial-online-safety-act-is-now-law

Mostly interested in non-standard ones, e.g. https://github.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt. Not necessarily just about ad-blocking but a clean online experience like SponsorBlock. Interested in non-standard uBO lists as well.

I will try to compile a list of what was said here:

• Automatic Captcha Solving: Buster. Great mention, use it myself!
• Consent-O-Matic. Didn't know about this one, will give it a look!
• Additional Annoyances list for uBO
• DNS blocking/ Pi hole
• ...

Yeah 12ft doenst seem to work on any sites anymore. Does anyone have any alternatives that work? I'm already familiar with the airplane mode trick but that's not always fit for purpose.

The EU Commission has been pushing client-side scanning for well over a year. This new intrusion into private communications has been pitched as perhaps the only way to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used a system called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) to help the agency scrutinize social media posts, determine if they are “derogatory” to the U.S., and then use that information as part of immigration enforcement, according to a new cache of documents reviewed by 404 Media.

The documents peel back the curtain on a powerful system, both in a technological and a policy sense—how information is processed and used to decide who is allowed to remain in the country and who is not.

Hello all,

Currently I am debating whether or not to switch to a (preferably private/secure) custom rom on my device, however said device had been in use for a while now.

My question is the following: For those who have been in this situation, how have you dealt with the existing data on the device in terms of migration? After all, switching ROM usually involves a factory reset. Creating backups of everything is a bit tedious and timeconsuming and there is always the possibility of forgetting something.

Hi there! I like to listen to the "Slightly something else" podcast. Although it is gaming-related, they have these ad-segments that have some kind of targetting, as it is always in the language from where I've downloaded the episone.

Yesterday I was really surprised that the ad seemed very well targeted, because it has been referencing a very specific topic concerning my flatmates and me that doesn't have anything to do with gaming.

My first theory was that my IP was correlated with search terms my partner googled in my home IP (I search with searxng). But then I realized that I've subscribed to another podcast related to the advertised topic. (also: the episode with the advertisements was downloaded via mobile network)

So... Apparently, spotify (where slightly something else is hosted via anchor.fm) analyzes the podcasts I subscribe to via rss feed. Is there any way how I can avoid being profiled? Is this the reason why I'd start using a commercial VPN?

Edit: I'd like to reply to your comments, but my lemmy instance won't display them correctly. So I'll try to answer here: I'm already using Antennapod with rss feeds for download. That's why I was so suprised and pissed that the ad was so obviously targeted.

I installed the mull browser revently. People who are familiar with this will know that it's a fork of firefox android. It's hardened but I haven't noticed much difference b/w the two. Mull has a few visible tweaks like Https mode by default, strict protection etc. but I haven't come across other backend/not so visible changes. How is it different from firefox android?

And if so, why exactly? It says it's end-to-end encrypted. The metadata isn't. But what is metadata and is it bad that it's not? Are there any other problematic things?

I think I have a few answers for these questions, but I was wondering if anyone else has good answers/explanations/links to share where I can inform myself more.

A few days ago I sent a GDPR request to some company to delete my personal data. They said to install their app and send a ticket from the app. The email was sent from the email address to which the account is registered. Is this even legal?

Basically what the title says - Can my ISP see the exit node of my VPN ? I hope not, because that would be weird, and would defeat the whole purpose of a VPN.

A bit of backstory about why I had this question ( it is slightly long, so is totally okay for the reader to skip this part )

My partner subscribed to a McAfee security suite, that we share (because they had some promotions available or something for multiple devices). It's not the worst thing around - the antivirus part, but it also came with their "McAfee Safe Connect VPN" service, which is infamous for having a super-invasive data logging policy. So I said fuck'em and set out for a better option.

I am more or less tech-literate, but I researched somewhat deeply‌ this time, basically to choose between "Privacy" (like Bruce Wayne - everybody knows who he is and lives in the Wayne Manor, but nobody knows what he does there, or that he has a BatCave underground), and "Anonymity" (Like Batman - everybody knows what he does - kicks ass of bad guys - but nobody really knows who he is, ok except for may be a couple of people) - basically trying to figure out if I needed a VPN at all or not.

I already have DNS-over-HTTPS enabled in all my devices - so that kinda took care of my "privacy" concerns (i.e. a nosy ISP) - although I believe my ISP can see which IP/Domain I am finally connecting to, which kinda sucks.

Apart from my ISP, the other concern was Public Wi-fi. I do work with my device(s) on-the-go a lot, which is why I have reason to ensure safety while connected to Public Wi-fi at Cafes/Restaurants/Airports. The fact that Internet is not just HTTPS - there's telnet/FTP/SMTP/IMAP/POP3/Gopher and other protocols which have their own encryption methods (or not) also led me to the realization that DOH is not a total replacement for VPN. And the ISP can know my destination Domain even if DOH stops them from sniffing or blocking the DNS lookup itself.

In the end, I decided to go with VPN. Not any free ones (because as we all know they suck), and neither any over-promoted ones as well, like Nord or IPVanish (because they suck as well, in a different way). I chose Mullvad, but white labeled as Mozilla VPN. This is because I do use email-forwarding services to a large extent, and Mozilla is providing this combined deal of their email masking service Firefox Relay along with phone masking and VPN for 5 devices, all for a reasonable subscription (I won't say how much because this post is not a promotion for them) - and being a long-time Firefox user (and also being anti-Google for a while), I decided to go with that (and so far all I heard about Mullvad are good things).

So far I am alright with it. Let's see how it goes.

And that concludes my VPN journey story. While I was researching about how much my ISP can see when I connect to a VPN - I found that they can see encrypted traffic to and from my real IP, and that I connected to a "VPN server", and nothing else.

I assume this "VPN Server" that they can see is the "entry node", and not the "exit node" (i.e. my IP as seen by the world) - but never got a clear answer to that - which led me to my original question above.

And thanks for reading this far ! Feel free to share insights.

The term "Dying" reflects to getting tortured to death.

I’m concidering to install shizuku with app ops (same dev) to be able to remove system app permissions without rooting. Is this app safe to use or should i search for other options?

I came across privacy.com, a service that generates virtual credit cards, like aliases for your real credit card that can be paused or discarded at any moment.

My own credit card company has this feature. But it requires a browser plugin that so obviously is there to track my spending habits, so I've not wanted to consider it. Privacy.com looks like a great alternative.

But is it even worth it? It may be a hastle, but I can also cancel my actual credit card at any moment and they will send me a new number immediately and a card a few days later. From a privacy prospective, how much can a company use my credit card credentials to track me? Maybe a third-party virtual card provider even masks my own purchases so not even my credit card company knows? Not sure about that one.

Please share if you use one, who its with, and if its worth it.