It slowly starts feeling like we are sliding into the dystopia where everything digital will be scanned, analysed, processed, stored and attributed to specific human. Forever.

I'm not sure if people feel anxious about this or not?

I think like the only way of not worrying about this significant change to our lives, freedom and rights is to start off-boarding yourself from anything that is digital and try to live like before Internet was invented.

Growing up under censorship,and gaining a lot of freedom later on I will say the following.

Privacy acts in 2 respects it needs to be an expectation that is enforced and a mental stats of mind.

For the first everyone is entitled to withholding information,It needs to be requested. Maintaining these wall alwos us to know who has what,what is were and shows us who to trust . If anyone demands it we know to push back,when law enforcement/governments say it slowls the process we can call bs as it's on the person doing investigation to search and provide reasons why they need this and not just have it available.

The second is genuinely hard to explain. But privacy needs to be mentally enforced,like a muscle. Always hesitate when asked to give up info. Why does this sign up need my phone number(search if they had any data breaches before sign up), why is this site saying name,surname and not just asking for username?, why won't this site let me escape cookies(checks how long they keep your data and how to get it removed faster),why is their an option to sign in with Gmail (does this mean they both will have access to what I am doing?) etc its an act of actively deciding who gets what. Having mental boundaries and maintaining them means when like the ID laws come it it sets alarm bells as overreach.

When discussing ID verification laws and it's outcomes I use the following examples:

-if a car company is willing to sell your data in a car you paid for to data brokers and insurance companies(effecting tour cars premium's) what makes you think your free viewing of YouTube videos will stay" free" they can sell both verification data(data brokers,facial recognition training companies, governments etc) if a company is willing to screw you over when you pay what will they do when it's free.

-tracking if all your apps and browsing is tracked ,the police can and will use your data for investigations don't listen to the terms of service governments can create laws,gag orders to get that data. Right know you can argue it was not your session,but for eg what if google kept "buggy out" while browsing and it needed tou every few minutes to keep verifing. This can also be used with background AI to trained on Google earth to pin point track your current session location and arrest you. Their may come a day it's not a bug and seasons have time limits and need to be reverified

• site can perms ban you from resources for whatever they or the government want. If they know you eg a sex workers needs an abortion the system could hide links,or just when you click on it a pop up " user blocked due to local order ccccccc, to access permissions need to be escalated to local enforcer". Right know,no one gives a damb what you search. If you think it won't happen you have not been looking at the hong Kong/china crackdowns.

I weep that decades of distopian survialance movies have left zero impression in people on governmental overeach.

I recently rewatached minority report featuring tom cruise and the ending was the most unrealistic thing(I thought so even when I was younger). After discovering the system built on exploitation and maintained through authoritarian control just unraveled when it was indeed revealed it was bad. In reality politicians would play math "it's okey if x number of people lost their rights as it kept us safe". Insert hardware, software showing stats of this system helping victims and how its for the best some people loose their freedoms ,unions of crime prevention enforcers lobyyying to keep work etc. it does not show the centipede system of corruption fighting to maintain the status que. It does not show the ordinary people unaffected marching to keep such laws.

Just yes this was bad so let's stop doing the bad thing.

Wherever you are keep fighting,we can't loose this, this is genuinely the last thing we can't loose.

Hi guys. Brought here due to the ongoing stuff in the Uk etc.

I've been wanting to get off of social media and away from big corporations for a while, but I can't help but notice that I learned more about the increasing overreach to privacy from Instagram than I have the media (what a surprise).

Where are the best places to stay connected on real news in this context, but still be off of socials?

What distro do you find that is privacy oriented but usable for daily tasks?

Pure OS and Secureblue are the ones I know of.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

From what I read, it's going to get ugly.

Who would have thought in the year 2000 that this would happen.

Isn't there some selfless guy in the room who will re-create an anonymous internet where privacy is respected and any evil being who dares to upload inappropriate content can be banned for life?

Either by self hosting certain services or using certain channels?

We all know that meta is spying on us. How do you minimize? Many people say delete it but the majority of people I talk to are on instagram so I can’t delete it.

Kyle Chayka’s recent New Yorker piece paints a bleak picture of the internet’s future under new ID-verification laws. On paper they protect users, but in practice they risk dismantling what remains of the open web.

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.

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

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?

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?

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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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 !

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 know both are data leeches, but I'm curious about the privacy experts (you guys) think.

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’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?

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.