Title.

I mean - storing your photoes and stuff on a free cloud is crazy, BUT - what if they were in an encrypted archive?

I know you can brute-force it if the psssword is bad, but who's gonna do that on a random stranger's cloud file?

Asking because I want to store my photo-archive online despite having 2 backup external drives with them. That way if there's say - a fire in my apartment flat, I won't lose them.

But there's no way in hell I'm paying 10€+ monthly for a secure cloud storage like Proton. Nor a one-time payment of 200€. I make barely 700 a month - not everyone is born in Germany or USA and not everyone is employed in IT.

Compànies claim they deleted IDs/selfies after verification, but regulators and researchers say auditing this is difficult . Are there any credible ways to do this while protecting privacy?

Question 1: This sounds rhetorical, but I really would like to know. What is the point of VPN if I have to keep turning it off to access sites, like Safeway, my college, etc.?

Question 2: If I have several tabs open and then turn off my VPN to access a site on a new tab, am I right in assuming all the other sites in my open tabs now have more info on me?

Apologies for any naïveté. Just trying to keep up. Thanks.

Edit: the site was fastbackgroundcheck

Just put in my name and city, and in the description of the site it showed my current address and how long I’d been there. Normally if I see these things you at least have to go through their little loading thing to see any info, but this was just on Google, didn’t even click the link.

Is there any way I can get this removed?? Or at least steps in preventing further info from getting put on blast like this?

Normally im not big into this stuff as I know a lot of info is already in many systems even just using protected sites, but the fact that this is just my info on the first search result is actually crazy. I just wanna protect myself and my family from any ill intent. I can’t even tell you what could’ve allowed this, I’ve been on the internet for over a decade so I know younger me didn’t understand this kinda stuff. But I’m a lot safer and more aware nowadays, I just wanna keep myself safe. Appreciate any help

Signal is secure and open source, however the issue is your recipient can still back up your messages to their device and you have no way of controlling that. Telegrams secret chats are great because the recipient cannot back up your messages within the app, they can't screenshot images sent via secret chat as well, meaning the only thing they can do is take a photo of the chat with another device. Telegram also has a nice UI. If we take elements from both apps into one we would have the perfect most secure app.

So in Summary:

-The Security/Open Sourceness Of Signal

-The UI and lack of backing up ability on Telegram secret chats

I'm not from Louisiana so I wouldn't be able to get an LA wallet account anyways right? Is there any way around it

Hello r/privacy! Today someone called me (without using my name) and asked if I wanted to sell my property on [the street I live on]. They didn't have my name, but they had my street name and my phone number.

Is it legal for a company to aggregate and sell that information of mine? And second, do I need to be concerned that someone has this information of mine?

Has anyone heard of this? I was reading some newer systems can detect “unusual behavior” which I figure would involve staring directly at the camera. I am not saying it’s 100% true im just wondering if anyone has heard of this?

Hi! I'm realizing I'm in a pretty bad spot when it comes to privacy, so I was hoping to get some feedback from the fine folks here ! I thought starting with my phone would be good, since I use it more often than my computers.

I have a Samsung phone with Google apps connected to my Gmail address, which is my primary email address. I use Chrome and am logged into the profile associated with that same Gmail address. I just switched to DuckDuckGo as the browser in the url bar and even that change has been frustrating since I'm used to getting the little Google summaries - specifically for a business (with the hours, address, etc.)

I use Google Maps, the Calendar widget & Gmail app heavily.

I sync my contacts to my gmail address. (phone numbers, addresses, etc.)

My phone camera backs up to Google Photos automatically and I have over a decade of photos there.

My to-do list is a Google Sheets document saved as a shortcut on my home screen. (I often access this from my computers as well.) I moved to a spreadsheet instead of Google Keep for my to-do list because it was easy to sort/manipulate the tasks.

I have documents saved in Google Drive and notes in Google Keep.

I use the Gboard Keyboard.

I also have the chatgpt app and sign into it with a (different than mentioned above) Gmail address.

Im assuming there's not a way to have any privacy while using those apps, so I'm looking for alternatives! What do you use? I've found some good recommendations while browsing this sub, but most of them are stand-alone options. I'm wondering if there are any services that could cover multiple of my needs?

* Google calendar (I use this often and need it to be reliable)

* Google maps (I use this often and need it to be reliable. I have no sense of direction lol)

* Google photos (is there something that can erase the metadata and whatnot upon upload?)

* Gmail (I have SurfShark and use the "alternative id" feature - creates an email that fwds to my main Gmail address. I use that address for things like retail orders, newsletters, etc)

* Google Drive

* Google Keep

* Google contacts

* A To Do list / task tracker

* Keyboard

It’s almost as if security and privacy experts saw this coming and nobody would listen.

Good afternoon! I am requesting the opinion of those who know more than I about search engines. Kagi specifically. Would you recommend this search engine or try for something else? Any info and advise appreciated. 👍

I fucked up so bad.

I got the infamous Green line on my phone. So I thought of going to OnePlus exclusive service centre and get it fixed.

But they give me a offer to upgrade my phone to OnePlus 12R for a small price.

So I got it done and got my new phone. But I think I fucked it up. Because I gave them my phone without factory resetting and with password.

And now the anxiety is killing me. I already discounted my gmail. But is there any chance that they will try to get my data/and sell it?

Anything i can do now to delete things from my old phone from my new phone?

Is Mullvad DNS equivalent to something like the recent "VPN with anti-tracker" of the DuckDuckGo, or something?

Recently I walk across several people using this DuckDuckgo function. I know that although it is not great, it helps a lot to avoid telemetry and tracking. But, for a VPN, and for a DNS?

I use Mulvad's DNS precisely. He is the most private I see here. Both in privacy and anti-tracking. But is this comparable with what a VPN does?

I don't know exactly how they detect these anti-trackers, or how they remove. But can a VPN have more potential than a DNS then? And specifically that of Mulvad or Proton (with this activated function), do they do it well? (Both VPN and DNS)?

What would you say about it?

As we approach day-by-day to where finding any information about a person is simpler than ever, and anything hidden is monitored by the feds, why don't we instead of trying to stop as many data leaks or the amount of information we produce try to flood whoever is checking it with too much? It would be basically like instead of trying to remove the needle from the haystack it would be constantly adding more and more hay until finding the needle isn't worthwhile in the slightest. Has anyone tried this? Has ideas of how this could be created? Is my explanation logical or not? I believe by creating false information and at the same time limiting our own we could circumvent parts of the entire internet privacy system collapsing on itself. What do you thinL

Hey, all. I'm a super noob when it comes to privacy. Call me stupid, but it didn't really cross my mind until very recently after people started raving about the world making a shift towards making access to various services more difficult without us having to first offer our personal information to some degree. So I fell into the rabbit hole last night, and, to be frank, it's a lot to parse through. At least, for me. But I have some thoughts on some of the more common pieces of advice I'd read, and, maybe these are stupid thoughts, but I'm curious:

1. Pick a more privacy-friendly OS (in other words, Linux or not Windows). In the grand scheme of things, does this really make a substantial difference? Put another way, is this really helpful / is this a bit of a red herring? From what I know, most of the harm that comes from data collection actually doesn't come from the OS you use; it comes from the services you use (e.g. Amazon, Google, Netflix, fintech apps, etc.). OS might be a part of that (like the Microsoft ecosystem - I'm talking Word, Powerpoint, Teams, etc.), but the services are really OS-agnostic, if you think about it.

2. Use a privacy-friendly browser and use extensions like uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think these are very helpful and do their jobs. But are they preventing all of the privacy issues? Or are they just covering for most of them? I'm no browser expert or anything, but it seems like browsers have some deep access to information like your location/timezone, device information, etc. Is it even possible to fully block all of these? I'm also confused about fingerprinting. Like, there are built-in options in a lot of modern browsers these days to prevent fingerprinting, but, apparently, blocking fingerprinting makes you more... fingerprintable, because it makes your data/activity stand out from the crowd? Trying to be private on the browser seems to work to a certain degree, but, after a point, you not only get diminishing returns but, ironically, it also seems to hurt your efforts to protect your privacy.

3. Use a Virtual Private Network. I think that, out of all of the advice I've seen so far, this is the most useful one: Rather than having your activity, location, etc. be exposed to X amount of parties (and, as X grows, the more difficult it becomes to manage and be aware of who and what is getting access to your info), just expose it to one (the provider, like Nord or Proton for example), making it not only easier to be aware of where your information is going but also making it relatively safer as a result. I think that, on paper and in practice, this is a great solution. But, at the end of the day, you're still sending your data to someone (in this case, Nord, Proton, etc.), and, while they can make claims that they don't share your data with anyone, how can you actually trust them? Especially the free guys out there; my mentality (and correct me if I'm wrong for thinking this way) is that, if a piece of software is free, there's a lot of sacrifice going on in the dark that you're not aware of.

I guess, altogether, my concern is whether or not fighting privacy is futile to a certain degree. I know that it isn't black and white, which is why I say "to a certain degree". But I think of it like this: If you use Amazon, its data centers have access to your address, name, phone number, etc. And a lot of companies use Amazon Web Services. Who's to say that we didn't sign some esoteric part of the Terms and Conditions that allows Amazon to sell that information to its business partners? And that's just one example of a potential infinite amount of examples as to why I think that fighting against privacy is not just an uphill battle; it's a war we're destined to lose OR have already lost but aren't explicitly aware of.

Idk if this is a good or dumb idea but I thought it would make sense to download/scrape all of the stuff from a .onion domain. Then render it on an offline VM. If you click on a link you make it pass through the original VM with internet and repeat the process. Same if you fill a form. Is this feasible/useful or is my tinfoil preventing oxygen from reaching my brain?

It's intended to prevent user behavior profiling although you could stand out or piss someone, I'd like to hear your thoughts :)

It's just more secure

Very disappointing it has been so long, all the other big messaging platforms like Messenger, Whatsapp, Signal & Telegram all have it.

Lately I've been researching for encrypted cloud storage options, to store and classify large amounts of files, various data/password backups, a lot of pictures, as well as music & more.. PEERGOS came up as a valid option.

Self-hosting isn't a possibility so cloud storage it is, and I'd prefer not having to encrypt before sending to a less secure cloud platform. Did a bit of research on the subject and it seems there's not too many options, I'm currently using Proton Drive but it's not great. Lacks many features for file & photo classification/management, and I don't like being dependent on Protons ecosystem for multiple obvious reasons. So far the only ones versatile enough and secure, well built I could find were Filen and Peergos, but Filen has some privacy concerns.

Peergos has been audited multiple times, seems well built and versatile, not expensive.. overall looks like a perfect option. Problem is, it's been out there for years but almost no one seems to have reviewed it. It's listed on Privacy Guides : https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cloud/#peergos which I find weird considering the lack of reviews.

Does anyone here have experience with Peergos they would like to share ? Or other good options I may have overlooked ?

I'm talking about those services that are mandatory if you want to use certain devices, like a nintendo account, playstation ecc. Right now I have various gmail trash mails (i don't plan to remove them cause they've been created before all the mandatory phone number links, age verification ecc. And many were barely used) i also got 2 proton, and before choosing a service to pay i wanted to manage the knowledge to have full privacy overall. I thought about leaving a "fake" clear and spyable digital life( old accounts) to keep the true privacy focused alter identity even more private. What solutions would you suggest at least for short term?

l use googIe drive on my phone for:

• opening .docs with work facts/info i often forget and irreguIarIy need to check
• l am given a set budget for my different assignments, but l get to decide how to spend that budget, so l keep some spare exceI sheets to track my spending for each project (using just =sum ) bc Iater in the month l have to manuaIIy key in each receipt into my employer's microsoft exceI sheet

l like that any changes that l make are synced automaticaIIy, and that both the word and exceI fiIes are in the same directory/pIace. No asking me to Iog in, no authenticator app, no captcha, just efficiency. l can view the synced fiIes whether on my phone or Iaptop.

NeedIess to say l reaIIy want to transition out...what is everyone eIse using?

Edit: to add, l do NOT want what i write to be farmed by Al. Moving forward l want a system l can add corporate-confidentiaI info to. lt's aIso important for me that lt doesn't force 'Al summaries' or other IIm functions on me.

Apparently if you alias your email and change your password this could trigger a verification process on your account? Now when I try to login, I’m greeted by a prompt to verify my identity via Persona. I’m sorry, but fuck you LinkedIn.

I occasionally send photos of myself to my friends via Signal. I have a low threat model, but many of my friends aren't overly concerned about privacy. I got them to join Signal, but I don't know what permissions they have granted other apps on their phones.

Are there any apps that I can use to modify my picture so that it makes facial searches more difficult should the pic get leaked? Of course, I can put an emoji over my face or blur it out completely. But, I was hoping for a less noticeable alteration.