Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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If it ask for your phone number its not private. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by lunatique@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Nowadays, a majority of apps require you to sign up with your email or even worse your phone number. If you have a phone number attached to your name, meaning you went to a cell service/phone provider, and you gave them your ID, then no matter what app you use, no matter how private it says it is, it is not private. There is NO exception to this. Your identity is instantly tied to that account.

Signal is not private. I recommend Simplex or another peer to peer onion messaging app. They don't require email or phone number. So as long as you protect your IP you are anonymous

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[–] Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Protonmail is highly accepted

Sure, requires 3rd party email or cell phone to work though.

tutamail didn’t ask for my number or another email

The last one, run by little over a dozen people as FOSS, and easily quashed by the long arm of the law or a pricey lawsuit. What happens then?

I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It’s called standards

You still need an email that is completely associated to you for official things like medical interactions, government interactions, and stuff like sports tickets if you care about going to a sports game in a town like Boston. Hell, when you send resumes I assume you have a professional inbox for that too.

So how do you do it? Do you live in two worlds with a burner phone / never checking your 'private' stuff outside of some kind of proxy/vpn scenario where you remote into whatever box is handling your actual private online presence?

[–] lunatique@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Geez. You just don't get it. You don't need your identity tied to your email. Proton mail didn't ask me for a phone or email. But I've had it for years so maybe that changed. But you conceal your personal info when you sign up. Tutamail is used by many people. And you can email any other email provider with it

[–] Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Proton mail didn’t ask me for a phone or email. But I’ve had it for years so maybe that changed.

It changed. I made one in the past week. You can create an account, you cannot get any account verification emails from ANY other provider, they block them and then restrict your account until you verify with someone else.

I don't know why you think I don't get it though. The amount of metadata accessible when visiting a website is crazy nowadays. They can track things people never even imagined, like the arc of how your hand moves across the screen with a mouse, the cadence of how you type, and then tie those to profiles with any other details they have managed to scrape. Combine that with hours of activity, browser versioning addons etc, resolution and any number of other bits of metadata and suddenly someone has a shadow profile linking you to your proxy IPs or whatever else.

Sure, i'm more paranoid but I don't believe anyone with a head on their shoulders would say privacy on the internet has ever gotten better.

[–] freedickpics@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago

Sure, i’m more paranoid but I don’t believe anyone with a head on their shoulders would say privacy on the internet has ever gotten better.

I mean things are dire but it's not as if nothing has improved. Even just 10-15 years ago most websites weren't using any encryption (or if they did it was only for login pages). Anything you read or sent could be seen by your ISP or someone snooping on the network. Encrypted messaging basically didn't exist or was very niche. VPNs weren't nearly as widespread either. Go back another decade and Tor Browser didn't yet exist (publicly) so there was no easy way to hide your location or stay anonymous online. Governments and companies have clamped down, yes, but our arsenal of privacy tools has never been bigger.

The amount of metadata accessible when visiting a website is crazy nowadays. They can track things people never even imagined, like the arc of how your hand moves across the screen with a mouse, the cadence of how you type, and then tie those to profiles with any other details they have managed to scrape

You can block a lot of this dynamic tracking with NoScript. This will break some websites but it's worth the inconvenience of a messed up page or needing to find an alternate site