New Mobile Billboard in London Today

The Guardian view on Julian Assange: Do Not extradite him: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/18/the-guardian-view-on-julian-assange-do-not-extradite-him

Original twitter thread for those interested here: https://twitter.com/Daviey/status/1378645798439768064

https://blog.pcloud.com/invasive-apps/

Seriously any centralised social network hosted in the USA, Russia, China, Australia (to name but a few) is fully traceable, can easily be censored, and can be held legally accountable.

No so easy with peer-to-peer networks or decentralised networks hosted across numerous countries. It's not impossible, but seriously centralised network = no privacy.

See https://mashable.com/article/parler-first-amendment-fbi-users-outraged

#technology #privacy #parler #freespeech

Read this article if you still didn't get the time to analyze the privacy policy of WhatsApp.

Once again daddy Google being an absolute asshole against projects that can damage their tracking practices.

Meanwhile you can download the extension from their GitHub or use Tracking Token Stripper if you need to use Chromium-based browsers, or. you know... just use Firefox.

I recently started self-hosting an XMPP server for my friends and family, but when looking for privacy specific guides I can't really find any. It seems like self-hosting is the baseline way to gain privacy, and with things like Docker and Yunohost it feels within reach for average users to learn enough to do it.

I loved the phone guide that was published here and was able to follow the steps and learn more about phone privacy. So are there any good guides like that but for servers?

I know security is different from privacy, hence why I'm asking specifically for privacy-oriented guides. Thanks in advance, lemmy has always been a fantastic community for helping out newbies!

Edit: More specific questions; is there a way for me to make my host IP address not readily available (I'm hosting in my house, not a VPS), is there a better option for security than using Cloudflare (this one I'm having a hard time with mostly because I still don't quite understand what Cloudflare does?), I know some other servers say they delete messages from the server and identifying data...how? (I have metronome as the server for XMPP, using Yunohost)

Cloudflare DNS has DoH, but it's Cloudflare so... ew. Is there one that is more privacy respecting and also has DNS over HTTPS?

I'm on Firefox with the built-in tracker blocker set to "strict", and I have uBlock and uMatrix installed. I also have Privacy Possum but I don't know if it's providing any extra protection. Should I keep it or should I uninstall it?

Looking for solutions to delete/opt out as much as i can from GAFAMs and other chinese closed-sources stuff ... im a noob and i feel lost right now ... would this be a good idea? https://gitlab.com/W1nst0n/universal-android-debloater/

Or should i think about Lineage OS or similar ?

Ignore the fact that it's coming from Breitbart. This is really freaky in more than one way.

FTA:

Against stiff competition, the alliance of tech and media giants has devised a plan that may constitute Big Tech’s most brazen power-grab yet.

According to Microsoft’s press release, it has partnered with several other organizations to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

Put simply, the purpose of this organization is to devise a system whereby all content on the internet can be traced back to its author.

The press release states that it will develop these specifications for “common asset types and formats,” meaning videos, documents, audio, and images.

Whether it’s a meme, an audio remix, or a written article, the goal is to ensure that when content reaches the internet, it will come attached with a set of signals allowing its provenance — meaning authorship — can be detected.

thread on /r/privacy

The Signal Server repository hasn't been updated since April 2020. There are a bunch of links about this here but I found this thread the most interesting.

To me, this is unforgivable behaviour. Signal always positioned themselves as "open source", and the Server itself is under the best license for server software (AGPLv3 -- which raises questions about the legality of this situation).

Signal's whole approach to open source has constantly been underwhelming to say the least. Their budget-Apple attitude (secrecy, i.e. "we can never engage the community directly", "we will never merge/accept PRs", etc) has lead to its logical conclusion here, I guess. I have been somewhat of a "Signal apologist" thus far (I almost always defend them & I think a lot of criticism they get it very unfair) but yeah I'm over Signal now.

Mojeek is a privacy-friendly English search engine. Unlike DuckDuckGo, Mojeek has its own index.

I came across a few comments and topics here telling people who strongly advocate for privacy to be more "moderate", and to "sound less crazy". People who say that should be ignored and even banned if they persist. Time and time again privacy advocates and skeptics of the "if you don't have anything to hide you shouldn't worry" have been proven right, while the other side has been proven wrong. Remember when James Clapper lied in front of congress? I do. Remember when Snowden used to be glorified as long as it served the purpose of the media and some politicians? I do. How do people think of Snowden now? As a traitor, a rat, someone who should be executed.

Privacy is a universal human right, we all deserve to have some. Yet, being welcoming and open to people who are here to set obstacles for us at every step is not only counterproductive but foolish. They clearly don't care about privacy, and they certainly don't care if others lose it, so why should we welcome them here and embrace their drivel and gibberish with open arms? They are a detriment to our cause.

My two cents.

☝👆

Do you think a hardware cutoff switch for the camera, like the Librem 5 and PinePhone, is enough to ensure privacy, or would you really want an actual built-in camera cover like is on some laptops (that presumably also kills the power since the system knows whether the camera is covered). The caveat for only having a switch being that you can't very easily audit the circuitry to check if it's actually turning off the camera, but the benefit being that it's easier to implement, has fewer points of failure, and will leave more room for a bigger camera.

Also, would you want separate switches for front and rear facing cameras or are you okay with turning both of them on and off with one switch?

I like invidious.snopyta.org because its parent website seems to be a privacy focused organization, but is it actually good for privacy, and are there any other Invidious instances with good privacy track records?

I'd love to keep using this while I still use a browser other than Qutebrowser, but has the development moved somewhere or is the project just dead?