I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a 'user agreement,' or remove them from your library if/when they like.

I noticed some dumb change in how Dictionary definitions are shown in the Spotlight (ie, overall search my computer function) in MacOS this week. I've turned off all auto-updates, and I didn't make that change or consent to it. But despite paying the full price all by myself for this machine, I clearly don't have 100% control over it. It seems very clearly to me that consumers having control and privacy over their Internet-connected devices is a bygone era.

After Blizzard, the video game company, replaced copies of Warcraft 3 that I and others had paid for in full and installed on our computers that we could play without connecting to the Internet with a lower-quality copy that prohibited offline play - I swore I'd never pay for a video game again*, and 3 years later I haven't backslid on that. I felt so angry, cheated, and robbed by that. (*Edit: my criticism and frustration is really more with larger developers/companies/creators - I appreciate and am happy to support smaller, more independent and libre ones.)

Many people probably won't be bothered by these things, but I am. I don't want to pay full price for something that I don't truly own. I miss the familiarity. I miss the reliability. I miss feeling like it's mine. Dependable. Trustworthy.

Picking my old guitar up again has never looked so appealing. I think I want to go back to investing more time, money, and energy into things that aren't connected to the internet

I have my personal blog, made with Hugo and hosted on GitHub pages. Initially I did not turn on any kind of web tracking / web analytics, because I do not like tracking at all. But I want to make my blog better and to achieve it, I need a feedback loop about traffic. For example, what are the most popular publications, or how many people view my blog from mobile devices, etc.

So, my question is, what is the most appropriate (ot the less evil) way to track a web traffic?

An answer "there is no good way to do it without breaking user's privacy" is acceptable too, I did not decide yet turning on the analytics. Instead I'm interested in an opinion of the community.

Thanks in advance!

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/25062075

With the latest version of Firefox for U.S. desktop users, we’re introducing a new way to measure search activity broken down into high level categories. This measure is not linked with specific individuals and is further anonymized using a technology called OHTTP to ensure it can’t be connected with user IP addresses.

Let’s say you’re using Firefox to plan a trip to Spain and search for “Barcelona hotels.” Firefox infers that the search results fall under the category of “travel,” and it increments a counter to calculate the total number of searches happening at the country level.

Here’s the current list of categories we’re using: animals, arts, autos, business, career, education, fashion, finance, food, government, health, hobbies, home, inconclusive, news, real estate, society, sports, tech and travel.

Having an understanding of what types of searches happen most frequently will give us a better understanding of what’s important to our users, without giving us additional insight into individual browsing preferences. This helps us take a step forward in providing a browsing experience that is more tailored to your needs, without us stepping away from the principles that make us who we are.

We understand that any new data collection might spark some questions. Simply put, this new method only categorizes the websites that show up in your searches — not the specifics of what you’re personally looking up.

Sensitive topics, like searching for particular health care services, are categorized only under broad terms like health or society. Your search activities are handled with the same level of confidentiality as all other data regardless of any local laws surrounding certain health services.

Remember, you can always opt out of sending any technical or usage data to Firefox. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to adjust your settings. We also don’t collect category data when you use Private Browsing mode on Firefox.

The Copy Without Site Tracking option can now remove parameters from nested URLs. It also includes expanded support for blocking over 300 tracking parameters from copied links, including those from major shopping websites. Keep those trackers away when sharing links!

I discovered this recently, I think it's a fork of Lineage? Some stuff they list is already part of Lineage but some seems extra

• Desktop Mode (is this in Lineage?)
• Implements Work profiles natively without Shelter
• Gesture Typing
• UI for Game Mode API
• Per App Volume
• Equalizer
• Auto Reboot
• Global VPN (use vpn for both personal and work profiles)
• Panic Button
• Native App Lock for any device

Overall this looks really amazing for anyone wanting more security and customization features than Lineage offers.

I'm thinking of switching to it. Can anyone give their experiences with it? Sadly they dont seem to have an in-depth document detailing the differences with Lineage or details of the features that are specific to them

I'd especially enjoy knowing how privacy preserving they are compared to Lineage, connections to google and all that. or if anyone can show me an in-depth review of LMO Droid.

The Federal Trade Commission's Office of Technology has issued a warning to automakers that sell connected cars. Companies that offer such products "do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service," it wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not "outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards," the FTC wrote.

In 2023, the Mozilla Foundation published an extensive report examining the various automakers' policies regarding the use of data from connected cars; the report concluded that "cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."

The FTC is not taking specific action against any automaker at this point. Instead, the blog post is meant to be a warning to the industry. It says that "connected cars have been on the FTC's radar for years," although the agency appears to have done very little other than hold workshops in 2013 and 2018, as well as publishing guidance for consumers reminding them to wipe the data from their cars before selling them.

The FTC says the easiest way to comply is to not collect the data in the first place.

Title says it all--a fellow bricoleur just turned me on to the No Trace Project and I'm curious to know if anyone else here has looked into it and the quality of the information therein. Thanks in advance!

This is probably not the right community but I haven't found a better one.

So I watched a video from Seytonic where he mentiond that some malware creates a windows link with the name of the usb on a usb. So I checked my usb because I remembered that I had to click 2 times on my usb to opened it. I found a link that contained cmd.exe and a name of a file next to it. Upload to the virustotal showed Raspberry Roblin worm.

I use Linux but my familly uses windows so I will have to go through all familly computers and remove the worm. Where can I find info how to remove this specific worm - Raspberry Roblin? On google I found a description about how the worm works but not specific files it creates and how to remove it.

The first page that shows up is microsoft.com and it says that windows defender detects the worm, but clearly it doesnt.

Edit: The worm was on one computer and it did not have windows defender installed. Seems like malware removed it and also disabled automatic updates. I installed MalwareBytes and sucessfully removed the worm :)

I have been pro privacy and anti data harvesting for many years now, however it is becoming increasingly more difficult staying off some platforms. Mostly Meta.

Over the years I have convinced most of my friends and family to use Signal instead of WhatsApp. However, there are still chat groups that I am missing from, and trying to keep up to date with local events seems next to impossible without Facebook or Instagram.

Additionally, I am finding it more and more tiring to have the awkward "No I don't have WhatsApp. No I don't have Facebook either. Or Instagram, sorry. Do you want to try an app that you've never heard of to stay in contact with me?" every time I meet someone new.

I saddens me that it feels like the multi-billion dollar data harvesting companies are winning, but I no longer know if this is a hill that I'm willing to die on.

What are your thoughts on what we have to give up in our lives just to stay in control of our personal information?

Requirements:

• free
• will not delete my account due to inactivity
• privacy focused (doesn't have to be crazy private, just decent)
• doesn't require my phone number
• doesn't require an invitation (like riseup mail)

Additionally it would be cool if it allowed me to have few email addresses in 1 account (skiff lets you have 4 addresses you can send emails from, but they are shutting down their service).

I'm using multiple browsers, so for each browser I use different VPN connection, but mullvad doesn't let me.

Is it just me or do Instagram videos loaded via Pixwox always buffer for you too?

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13793778

Fake WhatsApp and Instagram apps that can steal personal data

Please write the 3 phone brands (in order please) which you think they bring the least number of third-party apps.

Notes:

• 1- PrivacyGuides recommends Google Pixel. But it is not selling on my country. I can not bring it from other countries because it will not have warrant.

• 2- We also don't have fair-phone and nothing-phone (i can not bring it from another country).

• 3- we only have: general-mobile, huawei, samsung, asus, tcl, htc, xiaomi, vivo, infinix, oneplus.

• 4- please dont recomend custom ROM. Its technically difficult for me. Also I will recommend the device to my friend (they don't have even an idead what is custom-rom)

I've been feeling uneasy about the privacy implications of using Lemmy and similar platforms. The ability for anyone to view your entire posting history feels to me like publicly sharing my browser history. In contrast, most other social media platforms allow you to limit your feed visibility to just friends or followers.

I'm curious to hear from the community - what are the most private social media platforms you've come across? I vaguely remember stumbling upon one that automatically removed content after six months and had some other interesting privacy features. Can anyone refresh my memory or recommend some other private alternatives?

Hi, I was planning to encrypt my files with GPG for safety before uploading them to the cloud. However, from what I understand GPG doesn't pad files/do much to prevent file fingerprinting. I was looking around for a way to reliably pad files and encrypt metadata for them but couldn't find anything. Haven't found any recommendations on the privacyguides website either. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks

Happy Net Box is an experimental internet social experience based on the arcane and near-forgotten retro internet protocol known as FINGER.

Finger is a command line tool that comes pre-installed on Macs and Windows and most Unix systems. It allows you to retrieve information about a "user" on "the internet" -- but it doesn't use the web!

Does 4chan respects user privacy? How much data are they collecting? Are they selling/sharing it with 3rd parties? I'm asking because it's not possible to post anonymously (each individual post being anonymous without your username visible) on lemmy, and users here told me I could check out 4chan for this feature.

I would like to post freely about my hobbies and such without worrying about AI fingerprinting me from all my posts, and we know in the future AI will be very good at this.

Welp I guess this is the perfect example of companies not deleting your credentials and account info when asking for it... I deleted my Notion account several years ago. And completely randomly today got an email from them about data retention, assuming this is one of those "important" emails they have to send out. Sadly, years ago I wasnt using email-aliases like I am today, so still stuck with them having my email. Fuck I hate this so much. Thought I'd just share this lesson, use alises my friends!