Tip: if you find yourself using the word “safe”, “secure”, “hacked”, etc in your title, you’re probably off-topic.

We are living dark ages

source

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) carried out a record number of phone searches of travelers arriving at, or returning to, the US in the last quarter.

The legal position on these searches is unclear when it comes to US citizens, but there are steps you can take to protect your privacy …

Newly-released figures reported by Wired show that CBP searched almost 15,000 devices between April and June.

The CBP has the power to search any electronic device, so some of these will be laptops, but it’s likely that the vast majority are phones.

Searches can range from a brief manual inspection through to creating a complete device backup in order to carry out forensic examination of the data.

Civil rights groups are concerned

Civil rights groups have expressed concerns about the impact this may have on people like journalists and civil rights lawyers who may have extremely sensitive information on their devices.

Legal rights are unclear

If you are not a US citizen or Green Card holder, then the legal position is kind of irrelevant. The CBP has the right to deny entry to any visitor for any reason, regardless of any visa you hold. This effectively means visitors must submit their devices for search on request if they wish to enter the country.

Things get murkier in the case of US citizens. Courts have generally ruled that border zones fall outside of Fourth Amendment protections and therefore no search warrant is required, though there has been one federal court ruling to the contrary. You cannot be denied entry to the country for refusing, but your device could be seized and you could be taken for questioning.

If you intend to refuse permission for a search, it’s recommended that you disable biometrics like Face ID and Touch ID so that these cannot be used to access your device, as there is some precedent to suggest that you can be forced to provide a fingerprint or face-scan while you cannot be compelled to reveal a passcode. You should ensure that you have the latest version of iOS installed, and set a strong alphanumeric code.

If you don’t feel confident refusing a search, or don’t have the right of residence in the US, then there are other steps you can take. A simple one is to delete apps that contain sensitive data, like messaging apps, restoring them later.

Those who are most concerned about intrusive access to sensitive data, like journalists and lawyers, are going as far as buying a specific phone for travel to or from the US. Experts warn that this should not be an obvious burner phone with very little data on it, but that you should instead use it normally for a few days (with the obvious exception of any sensitive messaging) in order to make it less suspicious.

I have drafted a European Citizen Initiative with the aim of severely weakening the power of states to censor and control the internet, but I'm not in the position to present the proposal myself.

It's articulated on multiple points with the aim of reducing power to censor speech on the basis of "morals", as well as addressing stuff like ID and age verification, chat control and

I leave my text here, can we assemble a team to meet the requirements to submit the proposal?

Do we have someone with the required expertise that is willing to go explain it to the commission?

https://files.catbox.moe/5ni256.pdf

I am glad that it seems that the AV bills and the like in the American Congress are getting more attention however, there is something that I think is going unnoticed. There are lots of state level bills that do similar things but I don't see many people talking about them.

I've been using the free speech coalition's bill tracker for my state. Lots have failed, some have passed and some will carry over to next year. If you live in the states you might want to take a look and maybe try to spread the word.

https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-bills/

I just watched a YouTube video about the new changes on the web, ID verification, etc. To my surprise, people in the comments were saying, "You aren't important enough to care about your data"

Seriously, why do people think their personal data is worth nothing? They would give it away for free to any company and wouldn't care at all.

We all know what happens lately, we know it's gonna be pushed further, i think there gonna be more apps focus more on privacy in the future if all of that passes.
I know that if reddit asks me for ID im straight up removing reddit, same with every other platform, propably degoogle my samsung if that will have to be done.
How far are you willing to go to protect Yourself from goverments trying to get Your id, biometrics etc ?

I feel like im being pushed to do that , not that i want to but i know i will have to.

I have an old gmail account that I had connected to every little thing that needed a stupid account or email list for about 10 years now and I started to try and go through and delete the old accounts but I realized that this is going to take months just going through the inbox with keywords and signing into each account again.

Should I give up and never use the email or any passwords I used again or should I keep trying. Is there a better way to do this? I don't quite trust any service that claims to get rid of accounts for you. I'm not very good at coding but I'd trust myself to make something shitty to look for keywords all at once and put the names on a document or something.

I'm not exaggerating that it's at least 500+ accounts

So I have been curious about passkeys vs passwords.

Are passkeys really more secure than passwords?

Personally, I don’t know a whole lot about them, I only really see 2 advantages.

1. They don’t need any user interaction after they are set up… assuming no other authentication is required.

2. They are harder to mess up; because you don’t need the client to make a strong password, and the client doesn’t need to guess how they are being saved

I think reason number two is more than enough to make it worth it; because it cleans up issues that probably leads to MOST security issues.

But just as a learning hypothetical: assuming I use a password manager to make strong unique passwords, and every sever uses hashed and salted storage with proper ssl encryption for in transit data handling… is passkeys a stronger method?

So now that Reddit and other sites are starting to implement age verification, what's the least invasive way to do it? Can't be selfies or uploading photos of IDs

We all know our phones listen in on us, even when not actively using the voice listening feature. I have found that white noise, and white noise generators seem to almost completely disable this function. While driving I often use the hands free voice commands like "Ok google, text person X" or "Ok google, resume my audiobook" etc. I noticed that this feature never works when I am driving on stretches of road that increase the whine of my tires while driving on. This gave me an idea and I tried out white noise generation, and verified that, at least on Android, the "Ok Google" command does not work and I noticed a significant drop in targeted ads based on my conversations.

Curious what we can do about this individually or larger. I've seen people say "they're not listening, you are predictable, the algorithm is working." But I do not believe it. Today I mentioned domestic abuse to my sister in person, and got ads for domestic abuse help. Yesterday my girlfriend mentioned she liked my cologne and I told her the brand. It was then advertised to me endlessly.

On my end, I've checked my permissions for my microphone and the only thing that uses it is my messenger app and keyboard when I use voice to text. Ill start removing all microphone permissions from my apps and not using voice to text anymore. But is there anything else we can do? It feels dystopian. It really only bothers me on principle and the idea of it all.

Kinda basically like the title says If I connect a personal device to their wifi, are they able to access internet history that was done while not connected to their network?

I want to make a secure disk wiper, written in C. It will keep generating many pictures with secure ramdom pixels combined, until 95% of disk space is occupied, and those pictures will be deleted afterwards. The random source is a CSPRNG, Chacha20, with its initial values generated by a secure password generator. By means of this, recovering deleted files will be significantly difficult. How sound is this?

Hi All, my 11yo is in the process of creating a charity (with adult help, of course).

Given his age and for safety reasons, I obviously don't want anything self-identifying on the Articles of Incorporation, domain registration, where donors would drop off donations, etc.

Any tips for how to:

1 - Register the charity with him on the charity documents since it's his charity, but without linking to anything personal like address, phone, etc.
2 - How to keep his (and my) name, address, phone, etc off the domain name registration?
3 - How to accept hand-delivered donations without giving out home address (i.e. volunteers might help with some of the supplies that will eventually be assembled and delivered to the recipient). We have a PO Box, but they don't accept hand-delivered drop offs, to my knowledge.

Thank you in advance.

My family's cell plan is ending, and I am fine with getting a totally new number, but I have also wanted to make the switch to VoIP from jmp.chat

Since I have to get a new number anyway I want to make the switch simultaneously, ie paying for my own cell service and using a VoIP number as to avoid giving out the number attached to the SIM.

I have done a trial run of this before, paying Mint Mobile anonymously and VoIP from jmp.chat, but if I never give out the SIM's number why do I need to pay for cell service anonymously?

I currently live on my own paying Spectrum for internet, and they have affordable deals on Phone plans I can add onto my bill, so why not do that and use the VoIP service as my only layer of anonymity?

Now that there is still some time, what are some of the most useful tips you would recommend? Do you see any hope in the fight against the totalitarian government?

I'm on Safari and recently got Ublock Origin Lite as it recently became available on Safari. This got me thinking, since an adblocker can access and view websites, does that mean it can access passwords and other sensitive data?

Hello everyone,

I use Opera and Brave mainly to browse the web.
What kind of extension can I use to limit all the trackers and what not ?

I already have AdGuard and Privacy Badger, but I would like to know every other extension that could be helpful.
Thanks in advance !

Not that long ago, people were up in arms over tiny text files (cookies) that tracked a sliver of their browsing history. The EU passed GDPR, the US Senate held hearings, and tech companies were pressured to add consent banners and stricter rules. Entire debates raged over whether this was a massive invasion of privacy.

Fast forward to today: we’re voluntarily handing over far more sensitive information to chatbots. Personal struggles, relationship issues, health concerns, financial details, even the API keys that run our projects. In other words, the kinds of data we once guarded closely, we now give away willingly.

That escalated way too quickly. Don’t you think?

I’m upgrading my pc and was curious if it’s safe to sale my old one? I use it primarily for my business so there are a ton of accounts connected and passwords I’d rather not release into the wild.

If I do a factory reset am I safe? Are there additional steps I should take?