I used to use Atom as my primary code editor, and it was really easy to disable telemetry in it (just two clicks). Now that Atom is no longer supported, I decided on using VSCode or VSCodium. However, I don't really know which one to choose.

• How much privacy am I losing? I also use Pycharm for Python most of the time, so I am wondering which would be the less privacy invasive one.
• I also heard that VSCode still sends telemetry, is that true (in the sense that it is sending more than a "no telemetry" flag)?
• Also, is it possible to make vscode.dev run without telemetry?
• Will VSCodium support C++ and CMake with compilation, or will I need to use VSCode for that?

(I know there is a "Code - OSS", but I just need to know about VSCode and VSCodium)

Hello everyone,

I have discovered SimpleX Chat (nothing to do with XChat or HexChat, or the favorite letter of some dumb billionaire), and it appears being a legit good effort at providing good privacy while retaining "mainstream" usability.

And it has been audited (by one company so far, it seems).

The only concern I have is with regards to battery life (given that it has to maintain roughly as many open connections as you have contacts, AFAICT).

Has anyone here used it? Any opinion?

We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.

And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already 'good little pets' of these giants.

Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don't have individual opinions.

Although the fight still continues, It's time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It's time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it's almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.

PC

For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Mobile

For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.

Yattee has recently dropped support for iOS 14, and was already extremely buggy to begin with. I currently use the uYou tweak on YouTube, but it isn't as private. Are there any native alternatives that don't involve a PWA?

Although i am quite a lurker in Lemmy, i don't have the time to be an active contributor, nor i wish to give away too much personal information nor i want to add an unnecessary addiction into my life, which is why i don't maintain a permanent account. However i do periodically have questions that I feel like only communities from Lemmy would be able to answer to my satisfaction, which is why i create burner accounts in my private window which i close after i am done with it.

But after creating many such accounts for this purpose, i feel like i am not doing it properly. I feel guilty abandoning accounts that take up space in servers of instances which are constantly fighting against spam and DDOS attacks; it feels like i am participating in the attack too. However i believe i should not delete the posts, for it may come useful for me in the future and for other people browsing the communities.

What methods should i adopt to further make my use of burner accounts in Lemmy more beneficial to me (in terms of anonymity and future account creations) as well as others (instances in terms of spam and members in terms of posts/comments)? Should I maintain a single account or permanently delete these accounts once i'm done with them?

For context, I use a VPN and Tor Browser and a disposable email for instances requiring email for account creation.

I've been using Adobe Acrobat (cracked) for around 2 years, and i have recently started switching all of my proprietary apps with privacy respecting and/or FOSS apps, however i could not find a PDF viewer/editor desktop app that could scan and create documents from my printer/scanner, which i use quite often, thus i came here looking for a recommendation.

Apart from scanning, i don't have much uses with a PDF editor. I haven't had to sign documents, share or work with it along someone, add watermarks or add read-only modes, though i wouldn't say i need them, for i may some time in the future.

I just need a PDF viewer/editor which i can rely on. It should at least be able to scan documents as well as edit those scanned pages (cropping, color shading, rescanning etc.) and have a nice UI overall as i am not a power user who works with compact view modes or terminals.

Thanks for the suggestions in advance.

Note: This post now archived and as such no longer works

I've been using SwiftKey for over a decade now, and I didn't really realize how potentially horrible it is for privacy. What are some good alternatives you guys can suggest, ideally open source?

My ideal keyboard includes swipe to type and a notepad (to paste certain emoticons like shrug emoji and such).

Thank you!

Edit, for any future lemmings/internet people who want the definitive answer (so far, as of October '23), OpenBoard works great.

Download the latest release apk from here

And if you want swipe typing as well,

Download the "libjni_latinimegoogle.so" file onto your phone from here

Then when you open OpenBoard, go to Advanced and select "Load gesture typing library". When it asks you to select a file, select the "libjni" file and swiping should work just fine.

I literally haven't seen anyone even mention it anywhere on the internet as if it never existed, when it comes to Ad blockers I always see uBO recommended with absolutely no mention whatsoever of ABP why? What makes it better than ABP? What happened to it? or maybe I'm wrong and ABP is not as well known as I think it is.

I have been using ABP for many years until someday don't remember when I switched to uBO because I read that it is "the best ad blocker".

I maybe need a history lesson as everything on the matter seems so vague to me and the whole situation is super weird

Data | Philosophy Tube

I found this vid from a few years back on Philosophy Tube's Channel. Every argument about Data Privacy I've ever heard or had is here. Kind of a depressing ending though.

I'm going insane. I cannot for the life of me find a suitable way to listen to music privately. I'm on iOS, and I don't know whether to just stick to Apple Music or give up on music in general (I tried, TRIED to go local, but all the apps are shitty). Any way to listen to music and not have your data compromised? Should I just stick to Apple Music and hope that laws change (maybe something like EU's DMA?)

Edit: Hey all! First of all, thank you so much for all the recommendations! I've discovered so many great apps and tools I didn't even know existed (and it has also brought my hopes up for privacy in general). Even though it's still not perfect, I've been using foobar2000 on iOS, downloading music I find (I'm still using Apple Music for discovery, but will probably stop when my subscription ends this month). For desktop I'm using HyperPipe, which although a little buggy at times is so awesome! One thing I do miss about this system is the lack of lyrics. Apple Music has such a beautiful UI when it comes with lyrics, but you can't have it all when it comes to privacy it seems. Thanks for the amazing discussion! I'm so far loving Lemmy ;)

Today I realized that is possible login on twitter with a temp mail through VPN in a complete anonymous way. I think it's a very good thing. I don't understand why here a lot of people criticize Elon Musk. I think that now it's a platform more open to debates, it's almost free speech. No other popular big tech platform allow anonymous login.

Hello fellow c/privacy members.

I'm not new to privacy related things but I had a hard time persuading my family members and friends to switch to Matrix/Element. It is a reponse to UK's Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act that may soon in effect.

While it is just a preperation and planning in case those actually became law, I already face resistance from them. When I ask them would they switch, their first reaction is "Why one more app?" then follows with "That's cumbersome." or "I don't want to learn a new app." and suggest something more popular like Line, Telegram or Discord. Sometimes they would "Install WhatsApp because X is on there and he/she won't install one more app just for you."

What can I do to persuade them to use a new platform? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I think I should elebroate more of what Online Security Bill and Investigative Powers Act does[1]. As far as I understand, OSB will break E2EE by require scanning data on client device, like CSAM but much more generic. IPA requires companies to submit security funcition to the government for approval before releasing, and disable such feature upon request. Apple[2], Single[3] and WhatsApp made the announancment of exiting the UK market totally or partically if two were signed into law.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/thenextweb.com/news/uk-investigatory-powers-act-default-surveillance-devices-privacy
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2023/07/21/apple-threatens-to-pull-facetime-and-imessage-from-the-uk
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20230809125823/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65301510#2023-08-09T12:57:48+00:00

I'm looking for a privacy respecting service that will let me call a landline in EU. Please recommend something and thanks in advance.

Basically the title. I am trying to get away from Google so only using clients for youtube and youtube music on my phone but i haven't found any client for youtube music yet.

Source: https://front-end.social/@fox/110846484782705013

Text in the screenshot from Grammarly says:

We develop data sets to train our algorithms so that we can improve the services we provide to customers like you. We have devoted significant time and resources to developing methods to ensure that these data sets are anonymized and de-identified.

To develop these data sets, we sample snippets of text at random, disassociate them from a user's account, and then use a variety of different methods to strip the text of identifying information (such as identifiers, contact details, addresses, etc.). Only then do we use the snippets to train our algorithms-and the original text is deleted. In other words, we don't store any text in a manner that can be associated with your account or used to identify you or anyone else.

We currently offer a feature that permits customers to opt out of this use for Grammarly Business teams of 500 users or more. Please let me know if you might be interested in a license of this size, and I'II forward your request to the corresponding team.

I get 82% (27 not blocked. I use Firefox ESR with uBlock and Privacy Badger.