For those of you using Proton services to protect your privacy, a new feature is being rolled out which is a self-custody Bitcoin wallet. If you have a proton e-mail address, you can now send and receive Bitcoin automatically. This is in tradition with their long-standing policy of accepting Bitcoin payments for their services.

A few key points to know:

• You and only you have access to the Bitcoin, it is a self-custody wallet. You are not dependent on proton's cooperation to access your funds and they do not hold onto the funds for you.
• Proton automatically translates e-mail addresses to Bitcoin addresses. This means you can send/receive BTC to/from any Proton user by just knowing their e-mail address
• Proton does not support Bitcoin lightning. This means transactions will take an average of 10 minutes for an average fee of 75c. Hopefully they will add lightning in the future so that can drop to under a second for pennies in fees. Lightning would also enhance privacy
• Note that using Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Using it privately and anonymously requires some effort.
• Proton has also put together a good primer on Bitcoin here.

from their blog post:

Early in our journey, we experienced first-hand what it’s like being cut off from the financial system and at the mercy of large banks and institutions — an ordeal that affects millions of people across the globe. In the summer of 2014, as the original Proton Mail crowdfunding campaign was in progress, Proton had a near-death experience when PayPal froze our funds, questioned whether encryption was legal, and whether Proton had government approval to encrypt emails.

Fortunately, in that instance PayPal returned the blocked funds, and Proton was able to start the journey that we’ve been on for the past decade. However, that dangerous moment has always stayed in our minds, and we still keep a proportion of Proton’s financial reserves in Bitcoin.

Having experienced firsthand the unreliability of the traditional financial sector, building Proton Wallet is an important strategic move to make Proton more resilient and independent in the future. By enabling us and the entire Proton community to more easily adopt means of payment that deliver on the promise of financial freedom for all, we better insulate Proton from the risks posed by traditional finance.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683880

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683421

The EU has quietly imposed cash limits EU-wide:

• €3k limit on anonymous payments
• €10k limit regardless (link which also lists state-by-state limits).

From the jailed¹ article:

An EU-wide maximum limit of €10 000 is set for cash payments, which will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money.

It will also strip dignity and autonomy from non-criminal adults, you nannying assholes!

In addition, according to the provisional agreement, obliged entities will need to identify and verify the identity of a person who carries out an occasional transaction in cash between €3 000 and €10 000.

The hunt for “money launderers” and “terrorists” is not likely meaningfully facilitated by depriving the privacy of people involved in small €3k transactions. It’s a bogus excuse for empowering a police surveillance state. It’s a shame how quietly this apparently happened. No news or chatter about it.

¹ the EU’s own website is an exclusive privacy-abusing Cloudflare site inaccessible several demographics of people. Sad that we need to rely on the website of a US library to get equitable access to official EU communication.

update

The Pirate party’s reaction is spot on. They also point out that cryptocurrency is affected. Which in the end amounts to forced banking.

#warOnCash

Interesting history and analysis of SMTP's history. How can we prevent fedi and other open protocols from suffering the same fates?

Using anonymous global or regional data esims not only improves your privacy, but gives you better service. Because you are usually in roaming, if the coverage of one operator is not good, or they have an outage, you can usually use a different one, which is not possible if you're "at home".

Also you can have one as a backup. Mobimatter has so far the best prices and 1 year validity of data. Keepgo has also good programs. Bitrefill has shorter term, but can be cheaper per gb. All three support crypto payments for additional privacy.

Came across this tip on nostr

On P2P payments from their FAQ: "While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete."

How about, no? How about me paying €50 to my friend for fixing my bike doesn’t need to be intermediated, KYCed, and blocked if they don't approve of it or know who the recipient is? How about it’s none of the government’s business how I split the bill at dinner with friends? This level of surveillance is madness, especially coming from an app that touts "privacy" as a feature.

GNU Taler is a trojan horse to enable CBDC adoption. They are the friendly face to an absolutely terrifying level of government control in our lives funded by the same government that tries every year to implement chat control. Imagine your least favourite political party gaining power. Now imagine they can see and control every transaction you make. No thanks.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/317047

in February 2024, the EU Parliament adopted the eIDAS regulation, creating the framework for a "European Digital Identity Wallet". This digital Wallet will enable citizens to identify themselves in a legally binding manner, both online and offline, sign documents, login into websites and share personal data about them with others. Recently, the European Commission published the Architectural Reference Framework (ARF) 1.4 for the technical implementation of the Wallet.

The success of the EU Digital Identity Wallet depends on its ability to gain citizens' trust and establish a resilient infrastructure in our current data-driven economy.

"However, after our analysis, we believe that this goal has been missed," says the digital rights group Epicenter Works.

"We see severe shortcomings in the ARF that either contradict the regulation or ignore important elements of it. These issues, if left unaddressed, could significantly undermine user rights and privacy."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/18833721

I hate that groups like the ACLU have to defend nazi scum to protect my liberties. Better that the government not violate our rights in the first place, but in lieu of that, even nazi scum is subject to the same rights and due process as any other citizen. However, I wouldn’t mind if they got pantsed a couple of times by their lawyers.

What you can do: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/#WhatYouCanDo

Contact your MEP: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/home

Edit: Article linked is from 2002 (overview of why this legislation is bad), but it is coming up for a vote on the 19th see https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/council-to-greenlight-chat-control-take-action-now/

• Note: "relay" is the nostr term while "instance" is the AP/Mastodon/Lemmy term. They are functionally very similar and offer the same abilities to ban annoying users from "public square" type spaces. Moderation works identically.
• In AP/mastodon/lemmy you are connected to one "main instance" and then connect to other instances "through" that instance. In nostr, you are typically connected to multiple relays and access content more directly.
• Nostr is an underlying protocol like AP is for Mastodon/Lemmy. The main use of nostr currently is as a twitter/mastodon clone, but it has other interfaces as well (calendaring, video sharing, etc) that I am less familiar with.
• Both networks are decentralized in nature

AP/Mastodon/Lemmy

• Instance admins on your instance and the instance of the user you are DMing can read your DMs, block them, or modify them without your knowledge or the knowledge of the receiving user
• If your instance goes down, so does your access to the wider network. It will take your DMs with it, and your identity.

Nostr

• Relays cannot read the content of your DMs as they are encrypted. They can only see that user A is DMing user B and approximate DM size. (This upgrade reduces that visibility further)
• Relays cannot manipulate DMs as they are encrypted and will fail a signature check
• No relay can prevent you from DMing another user as your client will automatically route the DM through another relay (unless that user has blocked you, which they can do).
• You can receive DMs from anybody as long as one relay lets your DM through (and you are usually connected to several)
• Your DMs and other content is replicated across multiple relays. Downed relay? No problem. You don't lose your content or your identity as your identity is a private/public keypair not "user @ instance dot com"

Bluesky

Idk anybody care to fill this section in?

Image source: nostr post