win11.shading291: > Democracy Model Emphasizes direct democracy and transparency in decision-making Clearly, this is literally Fascism!!1!1! win11.shading291: > > Halt further immigration > Return immigrants who are "not integrated" > Target those who "have committed crimes or refuse to assimilate" > Frame it as necessary for "social cohesion, public safety, and reducing welfare costs" > > win11.shading291: > > Halt further immigration > Return immigrants who are "not integrated" > Target those who "have committed crimes or refuse to assimilate" > Frame it as necessary for "social cohesion, public safety, and reducing welfare costs" > > Very reasonable policy. You can disagree with it, but this does not make it racism. A racist would not demand assimilation, because racists do not believe in assimilation.

I’m a beginner-tech-knowledge person in the US with many privacy concerns. Until now, I’ve been still using a landline for two factor authentication with banks by receiving an automated call for telephone banking (no aps). Within two months, they are shutting down the landline and I need to transition all banking 2FA to a cell phone. I want to use a cell phone only for 2FA that doesn’t track me and isn’t connected to everything else I do. I also don’t want the cell number to be associated with me publicly available on the internet if I can help it. I’d like to keep it as private as possible and only use for banking. I do already have an anonymous active cell phone line used for emergencies that I could give them for 2FA, but I’m wondering if I give anonymous cell number to banks, are there any issues which may come up? such as needing to ID verify myself (if sim swapped or something), which likely wouldn’t be possible with the anonymous cell phone and then would I be locked out of my banks? Or is there a way to get a new cell line, but try to keep it out of the internet data sites that would associate the number with me. (also want to be as SIM swap proof as possible, so want to factor in that security issue too) I know this isn’t written well, but I have to act fast as they are closing the landline very soon.

MyIdentityIsntImportant: > “Hey Siri.” > > “Okay Google.” No always on speaking assistants are there as far as I know MyIdentityIsntImportant: > Don’t forget the phones. Or those “smart” TVs. Are they all listening all the time? Maybe. Maybe not. There is a smart TV, but not sure if it’s listening MyIdentityIsntImportant: > But do you personally want to take that risk? But what is the alternatives, send them messages while I am in the same roam with them or write it done on paper? Most people will view this as very weird

A lot of the hatred towards Brave makes me hesitant to use it because I know I’ll become a target if I do.

Do I need to switch password managers now?

Mailbox .org also offers mail with calendar and contacts, office, drive, notes, chat (xmpp), video conference (was jitsi, now they are developing they own opentalk), polls and as their user, I would say it’s hard to recommend it as a small(er) business privacy-oriented alternative to Google or Microsoft.

However, this one is real: > The iPhone has a back door that allows Apple to remotely delete apps which Apple considers “inappropriate”. Jobs said it’s OK for Apple to have this power because of course we can trust Apple. External Image The Telegraph ### Apple's Jobs confirms iPhone 'kill switch'

Rambutan: > Can you point to any prove for this or is this just smearing around? Read the thread. Here’s my post on the matter: Mullvad response to donation controversy - #89 by win11.shading291

Ok. This one, at least, is completely untrue: > Mac OS X had an intentional local back door for 4 years, which could be exploited by attackers to gain root privileges. The source doesn’t say anything about being intentional at all. > The intention was probably to serve the “System Preferences” app and systemsetup (command-line tool), but any user process can use the same functionality. Seems unintentional to me.

The third and final one explains how to setup the VLAN with the latest version, and still generally helpful at explaining said concepts.

MerryOsprey98: > NYM is interesting but it’s a mixnet, not a VPN There’s two modes. The dVPN mode is fast enough ime. Nym and NymVPN - Next-gen privacy with mixnet and VPN service Project Showcase > No apologies needed. The Android app is decent. Both Mac and Android apps work but aren’t as good as Mullvad’s. There are bugs I’ve noticed mainly in connecting. Once you’re on a good server it just works and on safest selection it seems to always work. For when you don’t want to pick a server there’s “safest” and “random”. It would be nice if “safest” mode is explained in the app. And otherwise you can select countries, states, and specific servers. The Mac app is significantly less good th…

late to this thread but might still be useful,spotted free residential proxy drops on Bitcointalk yesterday ( [FREE] Proxy Drops — Leftovers from our testing | DC / Residential / Rotating ). Haven’t tested them personally so no idea if they’re still fresh, but worth checking.

honestly the technical setup is fine but it won’t save you. I’ve been fighting Reddit’s algo for two years,multiple accounts, VPS, different browsers, residential IPs, everything. Shadowban comes sooner or later regardless. The algo is tuned specifically for this pattern and in 2026 building more than one healthy account is nearly impossible. If anyone has actual insight or a approach that worked (for Reddit), I’d genuinely appreciate it. Thanks

Respectfully, I think you need to reread my last line: > That’s not to say it NEVER happens, but more often than not… Specifically I’m referring to people who put out a video about privacy that doesn’t do as well as their other videos and then go “Google must be censoring me because privacy goes against their business interests.” While I see the logic there, 9/10 times (again - _not saying it never happens_) the simple explanation is they just made a dud video. It happens to everyone. It happens to me at The New Oil, it happens here on Privacy Guides. I’m sure Techlore, Naomi Brockwell, and others would all say it happens to them, too. Sometimes you misjudge public interest in a thing. Or - more likely - the video itself was somehow flawed - wrong choice of title, wrong choice of thumbnail, etc. Being a content creator is like, 50% formula and 50% experimentation and getting lucky. There is a formula, but sometimes you guess it wrong. You’d be surprised how often we A/B test a title or thumbnail and go “wow, really? _That’s_ the one that did well? Not the other one?” This is especially pronounced with smaller creators where they may not have the structure of their videos down yet (looking back on it I have no idea how my earlier videos did well at all, they’re a mess), or they may have poor audio/video quality, or they’re still finding their voice. (Or some smaller creators still don’t have a brand identity and they just upload everything like they’re Louis Rossmann but they don’t have the audience to get away with that yet.) Again to be crystal clear: I never said it doesn’t happen. I know it does. There’s plenty of studies and anecdotal evidence proving that it is a thing. But I’m talking about in the privacy space specifically, when people put out one or two dud videos and then go “oh YouTube must be censoring me,” in my experience more often than not, it’s more likely that they just need to examine the video closer and investigate “why didn’t this one do as well? Was it a bad topic? Bad presentation? Do I need to get the point sooner? Do I need to tease engagement more often? etc.” We do this with every single PG video - both good and bad - and try to identify where people stop watching, why, what keywords brought people to our video, etc so we know what to avoid next time and what to repeat that worked.

Not really, they operate the same way as trocador, pulling from external swap APIs with third-party liquidity. Different interface, different partner list, independent project.

Of those four, Mullvad is the gold standard — cash/Monero payment, no account email , no logs, audited :)). IVPN is a close second with the same philosophy.NYM is interesting but it’s a mixnet, not a VPN — much slower, different use case.Windscribe is solid and the multi-device flexibility is genuinely useful, but it’s a step below Mullvad on the anonymity front — account-based, so there’s more linkability if you’re not paying anonymously.

Isn’t kycrip just a trocador affiliate

anon55142611: > ## Creation of User Account and usage > > * By Default Windows gives `administrator` access to the user account. Create another `standard` user account to reduce the attack surface enormously as most vulnerabilities today come from the fact that the user is always in `administrator` mode. In addition, you shouldn’t use the same password for standard and administrator account. > A better alternative to this would probably be to enable Administrator Protection. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-control/administrator-protection/ You can do this using group policy by going to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options. 1. Locate the policy for “User Account Control: Configure type of Admin Approval Mode” and change the setting to “Admin Approval Mode with Administrator protection”. 2. Configure prompt behavior by selecting the desired behavior in the “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators running with Administrator protection” policy. anon55142611: > * Enable Microsoft Defender Application Guard. After installing by going to “Turn Windows Features on or off” you can enable it. This runs Microsoft Edge in an Isolated Hyper-V container preventing unknown Malware from damaging the system. > Unfortunately this feature was deprecated in Windows 11 24h2. It is no longer available.

not precisely. ring size is fixed at 16 but the real anonymity set is larger because decoys compound across transactions,an observer can’t tell which ring members were already spent elsewhere. No tool gives you a clean number, network volume is the best proxy. FCMP+ will replace rings with a global set anyway, so the question becomes moot when it ships..

I think for me, and probably for many other people too, some of the anger comes from the gap between expectations and reality. We understand the potential of these bigger companies with more resources (Proton, Brave, etc.) to do something truly radical and release incredible products that truly center privacy rights and the privacy community. Lots of smaller, less funded groups can release incredible products that have privacy (and security) at the core of their work, why can’t the group’s with more resources do it? We see companies like Brave and Proton often making decisions to appeal to the masses & that water down privacy in order to make a buck. It irks me too, but the actual issue isn’t these companies themselves, it’s the global system of capitalism we exist under where businesses either grow or die, and _most_ people are not willing or able to work for free. I try to remain grateful for the incredible projects that don’t chase money at all costs. The people who work in those projects are truly a blessing. I also remember that companies like Brave and Proton are big _exactly_ because they chase money. They didn’t get rich by being 100% genuine and honest all the time and only focusing their efforts on people who use Linux and GOS. They would go bankrupt doing that. Am I still disappointed we don’t have a Proton calendar that works offline or a drive client for Linux? You bet I am. Proton has the resources to do those things if they wanted to slow down their growth. At the end of the day the debate is between broader reach, or deeper quality and functionality. Within capitalism it’s difficult to do both at the same time. Proton is doing the work of getting more people off Google and Microsoft. They happen to have a top two product in mail & password manager, but that is just by luck that others haven’t caught them in those areas. They are not trying to be the _best_ , they are trying to be the easiest for the average person to use.

> I certainly agree, though it seems to me that the danger lies in an irresponsible employee or company like OpenAI running hundreds or thousands of LLM agents in a loop, completely unsupervised and incompetently sandboxed. They have only the power we give to them. Herein lies the danger. Just wait until they learn social engineering. They will be as good as your run of the mill scammer, who operates by exploiting marks that compromise a minority of the population, in not too long. Getting a subset to install an AI agent swarm and then give it net and financial access won’t be too hard.

These are really old videos. The setup and UI have changed dramatically since these were made. It would be much better to ask for help on the OpenWrt forum / check out their official wiki.

I found the following tutorials invaluable for setting up essential firewall and VLAN configuration for am OpenWRT network. Wanted to share them here. Firewall Setup External Image YouTube ### How to configure OpenWrt as Firewall for your home network and Guest Wifi and... MANY THANKS TO ALL MY PATRONS on https://www.patreon.com/onemarcfifty !!!Guest Wifi in your home network can easily be done with OpenWrt. How to configure Op... Guest WiFi Setup External Image YouTube ### extend a guest wifi on second access point with OpenWrt using VLANs MANY THANKS TO ALL MY PATRONS on https://www.patreon.com/onemarcfifty !!!In this episode we will extend a guest wifi in our home network as well as the IOT S... VLANs in OpenWRT 21 External Image YouTube ### VLANs in OpenWrt 21 MANY THANKS TO ALL MY PATRONS on https://www.patreon.com/onemarcfifty !!!The VLAN Konfiguration has changed in OpenWrt 21.02 - Bridge VLAN Filtering and Dist...

Tor over VPN only makes sense if you genuinely don’t trust your ISP more than your VPN, and you’ve verified the VPN has no logs. Otherwise bridges are simpler and don’t add a potential weak link.

I disagree. Proton is a good service, but they occasionally make the wrong decisions, sometimes more often than they should. Anyway, have you ever seen a perfect company? Everything has its ups and downs. I just hope Proton’s next decisions are better, but they should definitely listen more to their community.

I find the bot theory to be more likely than this. Which I do think he was clearly being hyperbolic to make a greater point, but, come on, man. Proton isn’t the final boss of open source software. I think we can criticize Proton without giving them a comic book villain origin story. I just think there’s a difference between questioning a company’s direction and assigning malicious intent to everything it does. I don’t want toxic positivity in my discussions, but I don’t need doom scrolling either. We should be able to have those conversations without treating the most cynical interpretation as the most likely outcome.

Thank you for the suggestion

Basically, I’ve hyperbolized the required checks, but for example, to get a VoIP service, I need to provide the address of my main residence. It’s basically saying, if we can’t track you via cell towers, then give your location to us.

Okay so thank you both @SwampTrainer @Sorge I think that my setup mentioned in the commentar earlier from me is pretty good based on your feedback: predict9320: > If so my plan would look like this: > > 1. Like ur `admin@customdomain.xzy `I would use this for my Proton, Passwort manager and 2FA-login. The most important things and I would never disclose this adress. > 2. And `name@customdomain.xyz` for personal contacts or applications (like appartements and jobs). > 3. Still I would `realname@proton.me` for banking and government stuff because they dont need to know my custom domain. But I could still use the custom domain for that. > 4. Then I would have `nonpersonal@customdomain.xzy` or `nonpersonal@proton.me` for maybe medical appointments or restaurants where I need to disclose an email verbally. > 5. And for the last part I have the Hide-my-email-aliases from Proton Pass for other accounts which are not important. > > > In this case I have an closed admin adress (1), an personal adress (2) a banking/government address (3) and an adress for other semi-important things (4) - all with my custom domain. So if I want to leave Proton I would not have the problems @Sorge meant, right? And I can easily switch away from Proton if needed. > And the random account Proton adresses (5) they aren’t that important anyways. Sorge: > With your own domain they can attack either the connected email provider or your domain registrar. By controlling your registrar account, they can intercept all your email before it reaches your provider. So you have to protect that account the same way as your private email. For the bigger attack surface: I am gonna plan on securing this account in the way I secure my Proton-, Bitwarden- and Ente Auth-account. SwampTrainer: > However, the problem with using your single custom domain to generate aliases, is eventually everything on yoururl.xyz can get traced back to you as the only real human using the domain for email. I plan on use the Proton hme-aliases from Proton Pass for random accounts and secure the complete login details in Bitwarden. I don’t plan on using aliases with a custom domain. Sorge: > Right, for addresses on your domain. Addresses @proton.me will still be tied to the subscription. This is different from SL aliases, as they keep working even after you cancel subscription. Not sure why not to use them for banks and similar services where you rarely need to reply and just receive notifications. The last sentence is a good point. I keep that in mind. And if I switch away from Proton - maybe in some years - I will change the alias adresses before ending my subscription. Sorge: > I’d only repeat what’s in the linked thread: when Proton tells you that you can’t have more email addresses on your domain without paying more, don’t listen to Proton. On your own domain you can have as many addresses and subdomains as you want. Somehow I don’t really understand. How can Proton demand more money because of my custom domain? @SwampTrainer @Sorge Would in this setup be some privacy and security notes I have to keep in mind which were not said in this thread or can I go all in with this setup and have a very good one? Sorry for the detailed questions of mine but I am kinda new to this topic and I want to make all things correctly. But this one questions remains, maybe you can help me with that: predict9320: > 2. What should the custom domain be? Probably not something which can correlate to my identity? Or doesn’t it matter in that case? > more or less like `@realname.xzy` or `username@xyz` or `@randomwordandnumbers.xyz`?

So the Proton fundraiser which gave money to for example Ladybird or GrapheneOS was also part of that plan? I don’t know how it makes sense to give a rather large amount of money to a project that you want to get rid off.

In that case, shouldn’t the open-source and free software have died out ages ago?

Lukas: > It’s literally becoming unbearable. It makes me wonder if this has something to do with how popular this forum has become. Ironically, if you read Yen’s interview, he says that’s exactly the reaction he expects from the community, so it’s not just this forum. I think 2 things lead to this: — People switch from free non-private services to private, often paid ones. For a while they enjoy feeling good about the decision, but that feeling fades and nothing new comes along, so disappointment sets in. They start switching between similar apps and shitposting about competitors. — Privacy-focused companies are themselves responsible for how their communities talk. When you teach people to discuss software in emotional and ideological terms (“big tech steals your data”, etc), you feed the hysteria. One day those same people start shitposting about you.

This one one of the reason why the first few pists and comments of new accounts get approved by us first. You wouldn’t know how many spam gets stopped just with this barrier.

A person I know told me that creating bot accounts for Discourse forums is crazy easy. Creating Reddit accounts for bots is super hard in comparison. But I think the narcissism of small differences might be the bigger factor (hopefully). In general I also got the feeling that a few years ago the average person on here was more knowledgeable. Nowadays a lot of people ~~use AI~~ _"translation tools_ " to write their whole posts.

This is nothing new; you can search for these names and you’ll find people complaining about them way back as well. The difference, however, why you find them so incessant now is because back then there were voices on the other side of the spectrum as well, a balancing act if you will. The fact is, most people who gave a shit to give nuanced enough takes on this forum left a while back, and moderation here just don’t care; a reason why they left in the first place. Look at old threads, all deleted or inactive accounts. Why would you volunteer your time to debate when you’re treated like a second class citizen? Reddit thread (on the proton sub) of the same topic you linked had somewhat better discussion; so these days with with sophisticated bots taking over and you not knowing if the person you’re debating is even real, your best bet is to choose your battles and let go. Of course, one needs to keep their cognitive balance intact as not to become subject of, for the lack of better term, propaganda of a specific product, but it’s easier said than done. Old discussion threads are still relevant, so stick to those, and reddit still sometimes have nuanced discussion if you stay away from r/privacy and sift through garbage on product specific subs. You can find genuine gems once in a while. Grapheneos forum I find is a bit better as well, but of course mostly what people talk about is the OS, so not really the same, but better than nothing. There are people like @/any1 here who I’ve find very very insightful, so it’s not all grim, but I don’t have much expectations that things are gonna get better here.

Oh I forgot to say, I use Feeder on Android.

I see that’s the equivalent of addy’s custom option and, although I don’t really use that option I can see it’s pretty cool to be presented with a preview of alternative aliases. My favourite way of making a new alias is using the addy tool which can be added to the settings panel. Click on it and a new aliases is created and copied to the clipboard. It’s great not having to leave the app you are registering with to get the new alias.

The mood of the internet in general unfortunately. It’s kind of always been a place of constant hostility for as long as I can remember - I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to find places where people are actually pleasant to each other! Maybe it will have been an exception when it was a less known forum and more just a group of friends Usually politics is the most hostile subject (I remember in the early days of the internet it was kind of taboo and against “netiquette” to bring it up at all as we just wanted it to be about unity and cooperation) and at least some of those projects are involved in political controversy. There is a tendency for people to dig for ideological impurity and use it to define an entity’s entire existence and then all the tech blogs spring to life turning it into a deal 10x bigger than it was (Proton) but some of them don’t help themselves with how open and unapologetic they are when involved with something massively controversial (Mullvad). So those get people inevitably shitting on them for a start But trolls and flamebait are a thing too - the internet as a whole seems to have forgotten this despite how there are literally massive troll farms out there in certain places in the world that want to cause division and instability, where it’s people’s full time job to find all the serious discussion forums, politically active subreddits etc and incite as much division as they can. That probably plays a part if this forum has caught their attention. Whether it’s those paid trolls or just good old fashioned dickheads, you always get those people whose whole reason for posting is to stir the pot and then sit back and watch the fireworks. Sometimes they’re prominent users who’ve been around for years and not kicked out. Back in the day we just called them trolls, quite openly. It used to be that people especially moderators were constantly spotting them to the point of being a bit trigger happy with “false positives” sometimes and then at some point in the last decade or so everyone just started taking every comment at absolute sincere and unquestioning face value. You get massive Reddit threads with thousands of replies where if anyone had checked the OP they’d have found the account was registered a month ago and has been stirring the same pot everywhere (or more likely since the recent-ish change, have a hidden post history) and could draw their own conclusions - but they don’t.

There are no bots; we look at things in the long term, not the short term. In the long term, it’s easy to predict that Proton’s goal is to kill off the competition from open-source and free software.

Always appreciate a good devil’s advocate that accompanies criticism with recommendations (which not all do).

That does explain a lot.

en.wikipedia.org ### Narcissism of small differences In psychoanalysis, the narcissism of small differences (German: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the idea that when people in a relationship or community have a lot in common, they can actually be more likely to fight with each other and mock each other, because they become overly sensitive to small differences they notice in one another and treat those differences as bigger than they are. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of English anthropolog Th...

Continuing the discussion from Web browser, an alternative to Signal, Proton Phone: “It’s all inevitable” – Interview with Andy Yen What the hell is going on with all the hate towards companies and organizations that are literally doing the most and making the biggest impact when it comes to privacy and security? Proton, Brave, Mullvad, GrapheneOS, Signal. Everywhere you look on here, it’s hard not to find a comment shitting on or discrediting them. It’s literally becoming unbearable. It makes me wonder if this has something to do with how popular this forum has become. Because a few years ago, it wasn’t like this, and the quality of the posts and discussions was much higher.

After reading all of the posts here, it almost looks like a competitor sent a bot farm to hate on Proton. Like what the hell is going on?

Gabriela: > I understand their strategy, but can’t they see that for years they’ve been offering products that should come with a “beta” label and that they’re selling them as if they were finished? I have been using their products for quite some time and they work better than other private and secure alternatives. So can’t really relate.

This is all about trade-offs, ultimately. In exchange for things like ease of getting set up, drive/docs/email hosting, sure, you’re not going to be able to have the same control over having 100 addresses for your domain. If OP needs that, then it helps them make the decision. Personally, I have 10 addresses per user or something like that, and I don’t even use all of them because there’s also alias options. However, the problem with using your single custom domain to generate aliases, is eventually everything on yoururl.xyz can get traced back to you as the only real human using the domain for email. Change your clothes, wear a mask, but if you wear the same bright red shoes to every party, people might figure it out. Still, the more important takeaway here is that no matter what email option OP goes for, a custom domain needs to be step 1.

I don’t think Proton being a larger ecosystem would drive other FOSS products out of business. First, they might target a different userbase (les techie people, and more B2B). Second, Proton getting more users would also probably benefit the other FOSS projects, by increseasing the attention to privacy, and by giving them people disappointed by the Proton ecosystem, or that want to go “even further”.

> Brave Origin (originbrowser.com) is $0 on Linux; working on same deal for Graphene, F-Droid, and similar. Pay if you want to. x.com #### BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) on X @BrendanEich We get by on search API + ads, browser ads, premium products, crypto deals. Support us: https://t.co/0XGvudbb9H. Brave Origin (https://t.co/qUnDIrlDEx) is $0 on Linux; working on same deal for Graphene, F-Droid, and similar. Pay if you want to. Many thanks to our users! 4/4

What’s used and respected is SimpleX. Use it with Orbot, you’re solid.

Pedja: > Being accepted somewhere doesn’t mean people are actually using it. NanoGPT actually publishes payment stats, and Zcash accounted for just 0.49% of payment volume in September, vs. 44% for Monero. This. Every product or service that accepts both Zcash and Monero and publishes it’s data consistently shows that XMR blows ZEC out of the water in terms of usage, every time. It’s not even close. Monero’s privacy is so good it’s delisted from most exchanges. Zcash? No worries. Zcash to Monero is like WhatsApp to Signal. Sure, WhatsApp theoretically has implemented good measures but in practice they are hugely flawed and anyone who seriously needs good privacy technology isn’t going to use it.