privacy

• AtlasOS: https://atlasos.net/
• Amelabs Privacy+: https://docs.amelabs.net/privacy/_plus.html

I use a Windows VM for apps not available on Linux and just want to cut out all the telemetry possible.

AtlasOS is installed as a Ameliorated Playbook and makes a ton of opinionated changes that aren’t privacy or necessarily performance related. Disabling the Windows 11 right click menus in favor of the legacy one, disabling window shadows, changing the wallpaper, etc. Privacy+ looks appealing, I wanna know if anyone has tried both and can tell me differences, like if one or the other improves privacy more.

I'm tired of collecting phones, and frankly I'm a little money strapped and kind of want to coast by on older phones for a while. But I'm wanting to de-google as much as possible.

Of the last few phones I've had, all are working well. Most have been able to be kept relatively up to date with LineageOS, and a couple have /e/os/ versions available for them (one official, one community)

• Essential Phone (Community Build e/os/...not sure if still being updated or not though.)

• Moto One Hyper (No e/os/ build. Sadly not a popular enough phone)

• Moto One 5G Ace (Has an e/os/ build. Currently being used as a DIY game emulator on LineageOS)

• Motorola Edge 2023 (Current Phone. No e/os/ build. It's essentially a canadian variant of the Motorola Edge 40 Neo...which are the only two newest phones to use the Dimensity 7030 chip, making it incompatible with the regular Edge 40 or 40 Pro e/os/ builds.

I'm using /e/os/ on my Essential phone (though not daily driver) to get a feel for the software and the Murena app/account. I'm willing to give up my game emulator to put it on the newer phone if I like it (though it would suck to lose my FFVII and Chrono Trigger playthroughs)

Ideally my Edge 2023 would have a build. But I'm not going to expect a chipset used by only two phones total to garner that much development focus (and rightly so)

Anyone have more long term experience with /e/os/ and Graphene and tell me what Graphene has stronger?

Thanks

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37009566

European SMEs have united to direct a strong open letter to urge ministers of EU member states to oppose Chat Control and to defend privacy and a strong European tech industry.

Is it possible to collect data from a large group of people but protect each individual's privacy? In this entry of my series on privacy-enhancing technologies, we'll discuss differential privacy and how it can do just that.

Please rank these methods from best to least

• Invidious
• NewPipe
• YoutubeRevanced
• ytlocal
• Downloading with yt-dlp
• Using user script to play in local player
• Playing in local player (eg mpv )
• Watching in TOR

Feel free to add other methods to the list or group some

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/232256

Macrodroid has been a favourite of mine for automating things on my phone. This is no longer the case.

It has been silently updated at some point to become a data mining and leaking nightmare. At the time of writing these lines, this app contains 30 trackers from various third party telemetry services according to the latest Exodus report. This is an extremely high number of trackers and there definitely weren’t that many a few years back. Even most junk free mobile games can’t manage to contain this many. It appears that the owner of the app has sold out and turned it into spyware to sell your data to as many companies as possible.

This is particularly worrying considering the level of access and permissions the app requires to function. If you are using the app still, I’m urging you to reconsider.

Spread the word.

Exodus report

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/45402993

The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Nepal has issued an order requiring all social media platforms to be registered in Nepal.

Based on this, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has instructed all network service providers to deactivate 26 platforms, including Signal, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and others.

To lift the ban and operate legally in Nepal, each platform must:

1. Register with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

2. Appoint in Nepal:

   • A Point of Contact
   • A Resident Grievance Handling Officer
   • An Officer responsible for monitoring compliance with self-regulation [1]

3. Submit an application in the prescribed format along with required documents, as per the Directives on Managing the Use of Social Media Networks (2080 B.S.). [2]

Reference:

[1] Notice by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology on Managing the Social Networking Platform Usage in Nepal

[2] Directives for Managing the Use of Social Networks, 2023

cross-posted from: https://piefed.zip/post/424252

• Invidious
• Youtube

It’s Not Just Porn—LGBTQ+, Public Health, and Politics Forums All Behind Age Gates

On July 25, users in the UK were shocked and rightfully revolted to discover that their favorite Reddit communities were now locked behind age verification walls. Under the new policies, UK Redditors were asked to submit a photo of their government ID and/or a live selfie to Persona, the for-profit vendor that Reddit contracts with to provide age verification services.

For many, this was the first time they realized what the OSA would actually mean in practice—and the outrage was immediate. As soon as the policy took effect, reports emerged from users that subreddits dedicated to LGBTQ+ identity and support, global journalism and conflict reporting, and even public health-related forums like r/periods, r/stopsmoking, and r/sexualassault were walled off to unverified users. A few more absurd examples of the communities that were blocked off, according to users, include: r/poker, r/vexillology (the study of flags), r/worldwar2, r/earwax, r/popping (the home of grossly satisfying pimple-popping content), and r/rickroll (yup). This is, again, exactly what digital rights advocates warned about.

The OSA defines "harmful" in multiple ways that go far beyond pornography, so the obstacles the UK users are experiencing are exactly what the law intended. Like other online age restrictions, the OSA obstructs way more than kids’ access to clearly adult sites. When fines are at stake, platforms will always default to overcensoring. So every user in the country is now faced with a choice: submit their most sensitive data for privacy-invasive analysis, or stay off of Reddit entirely. Which would you choose?

Cross posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36206911

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/27167107

The Artificial Intelligence Unit will be made up of police officers and agents from other security forces. Its tasks will include “patrolling open social platforms, applications and websites,” where it will seek to “detect potential threats, identify movements of criminal groups or anticipate disturbances.” It will also be dedicated to “analyzing images from security cameras in real time in order to detect suspicious activities or identify wanted persons using facial recognition.” The resolution also awards it powers worthy of science fiction: “Using machine learning algorithms to analyze historical crime data and thus predict future crimes.” Another purpose will be to discover “suspicious financial transactions or anomalous behavior that could indicate illegal activities.”

The new unit will not only deal with virtual spaces. It will be able to “patrol large areas using drones, provide aerial surveillance and respond to emergencies,” as well as perform “dangerous tasks, such as defusing explosives, using robots.”

A digital policy specialist says, the initiative essentially means “illegal intelligence disguised as the use of ‘modern’ technologies.” Among the implicit risks, that there will be little control and many different security forces with access to the information that’s collected.

cross-posted from: https://lemmybefree.net/post/1243814

Hi! I'm looking for a privacy respecting Android tablet.

I ruled out the google tablet due to it being too expensive with an LCD screen

I would prefer a nice OLED screen if possible (or similar), and preferably cheap. Must be able to stream HEVC encoded videos (not 10 years old hardware), and preferably more (VP9, AV1, for future proofing)

The main use will be to watch content (movies, series, videos) from YouTube and Jellyfin, and sometimes some other apps if they're not enforcing the Play Integrity API

So far I've searched some OS and I'm considering LineageOS or /e/OS, with /e/OS looking better in terms of privacy. Don't want google to track everywhere I go and everything I do.

Any recommendations for good cheap hardware with bootloader unlocking, and recommendations for a good Android ROM?

I’ve already got a ton of ‘em but I’m always on the lookout for more. What are your favorite lesser-known DNS blocklists?

So we know the UK, France, Sweden and Australia all have “pondered out loud” about getting platforms like Signal to allow backdoors into encrypted calls and messages.

This creates a sense of safety about these platforms being secure, because governments want to come after them.

Here’s a tinfoil hat take: Five Eyes is significantly reducing inter cooperation. The non-fascist parts of the alliance don’t want to share with the obvious authoritarian, but the authoritarian one used to share the fruits of their established backdoors with them, and now they don’t.

Note that the US isn’t asking signal for a backdoor. Why? Back in 2015-2016 (last years of Obama), Apple had a loud and visible feud with the FBI. Since the authoritarian came to power, this all disappeared from the media. Interestingly, 10 years have gone by since that moment, every single aspect of our lives has become more surveilled, and somehow the US govt has stopped trying to get into phones? *While the CEO is making hand deliveries of 24 karat gold bars to the Oval Office?

TLDR; I think a safe assumption that they are in our devices by now. Fundamentally people misunderstand encryption. Encryption is only as strong as the weakest link. If your signal chats are unencrypted for consumption on your device, then that’s when the unencrypted content can be captured.

For the longest time, Apple stored your iCloud backups encrypted. Looked good in marketing materials, until they casually admitted the decryption key is stored in the same cloud.

Combine this with ICE capturing citizens without due process. If you have a vanilla smart device, you’re doing the surveillance for them. /tinfoilhat

Online ~~age~~ identity verification is rolling out in the UK. Pundits expect an enthusiastic rollout of similar laws in the US this fall. I'm in Canada, per the OP instance.

I don't have a computer scientist background. I don't understand this stuff. I find the most credible-sounding person I can and basically trust them on whether or not this stuff can realistically be implemented in a privacy-respecting fashion. I don't think it can be.

I know how I'll probably handle online identity verification laws when then land on my shores. I'll refuse to participate in any new age of online identity verfication insofar as I can:

• I might not be able to access content via anonymous frontends of YT, twitter, and reddit that I occasionally use
• Probably can't access porn or buy anything sex-related online
• Might be limited in accessing other content of personal interest (e.g., LGBTQ+ sites, non-mainstream news)
• Probably have to go in-person for government or commercial services more often
• Most of all I think I'd miss the Fediverse

In putting these thoughts to figurative paper, I think I realize my best strategy. It's to be prepared to shift to other online platforms. Because freethinking people will shift if they have to. I don't want to get left behind. Any advice on how to prepare or what to look into (as a layperson)?

Will Lemmy and other Fediverse sites be able to remain operational without enacting identity verification if they ensure there's no restricted material on their websites? And say let's for example that this just means porn (and not LGBTQ+, anti-fascism, anti-zionism etc; ie, chilled free speech around very broadly relevant content), is that possible as is without paid admin/mods?

-Dumb and worried

I don't suppose there's a solution to it. I use https://search.trom.tf/ which cycles through a list of SearXNG instances, but some of them retrieve results that literally look like they belong to another query. Has anyone else experienced this?

The UK's Online Safety Act doesn't just age-gate porn; it blocks material deemed "harmful" to minors. Days after the law went into effect, reports of non-explicit content on social media getting blocked in the region started to crop up. Subreddits from r/IsraelCrimes to r/stopsmoking are now walled in the UK. Video games, Spotify, and dating apps have instituted or will institute age checks.

Given the SCOTUS age verification decision [June '25], Stabile fears that people [in the US] will go "mask off" in the fall and spring, when state legislatures start getting back together. "People are going to attempt to restrict the internet even more aggressively," Stabile said. "I think people are going to work to restrict all sorts of content, particularly LGBTQ content, but also content that is broadly defined as any sort of threat or propaganda to minors." Other experts Mashable spoke to agree with him.

"I'm going to jump to the end step," [Eric Goldman, law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law] said. "The end step is that most online users are going to be required to age authenticate most of the time they visit websites. That's going to become the norm." In a paper he wrote, Goldman called these statutes "segregate-and-suppress" laws.

The stated reason behind these laws is to "protect children." But as journalist Taylor Lorenz pointed out, in the UK, age verification is already preventing children from accessing vital information, such as about menstruation and sexual assault.

"When we see crackdowns on spaces on the internet, we're essentially stripping away that potential for self-actualization," Goldman said. We've reached the dystopian stage of the internet, he added.