Some choices to help would be to avoid using precise location for weather apps. Course is usually very good unless you’re a weather tracking hobbyist. If you’re not using ad blocking it’s never a bad time to start.
Ad blocking in browser is good but combined with a DNS service that offers block lists like Hagezi’s options it’s great. These lists can block a lot of tracking and telemetry data and not just the ads themselves. ControlD and NextDNS are two solid options. NextDNS doesn’t offer Hagezi Threat Intelligence Feeds specifically but have their own proprietary version. The company claims it covers much of Hagezi’s lists but I haven’t compared.
ControlD has a 30 day free trial period with two plans either $20 or $40 per year. The $40 per year option has a future called Redirect. Their description “Spoof various web services, apps and platforms to geo-distributed proxy locations and appear to be in a different country”.
NextDNS has a free plan that can be used on multiple devices. Paid is $20 per year for unlimited. The catch to the free plan is it’s good for 300,000 queries per month. If you get close they email a warning and if you go over the service will still work as a DNS but without the blocking. It will automatically start again the next cycle.
Here’s the Hagezi GitHub but other lists are good too like OISD and AdGuard lists.
https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists
I use Ultimate but that may be too restricted for some. It will break websites and apps like FaceBook, WhatsApp, Instagram. If you use those a slightly less strict list a better choice. You’ll still get protection but there’s a balance to everyone’s needs so do read up on each list and what makes sense for you.
All that wrapped in a trusted VPN and you’re doing pretty well. Nothing is perfect and if a government power wants to know where you are this isn’t going to stop them. For me that’s not what this is for. I use this stuff against the ads and tracking crap everywhere. I’m not trying to hide and can’t really offer much regarding that.
I’m maybe a bit over the top compared to some. If this all sounds crazy a simple ad blocker (AdGuard, uBlock Origin) in browser and course location for weather and anything else location based that makes sense is a solid start. You can always whitelist websites you wish to support via ad revenue if that’s an interest.
Can I upload these lists to my PiHole?
Yes they can be used with a PiHole. I don’t use one so I can’t offer much for set up. On the GitHub page each list version has various links depending on the format needed for where it will be used. For example, PiHole is under the Adblock format which works with (Pi-hole, AdGuard, AdGuard Home, eBlocker, uBlock Origin, Brave (only in aggressive mode), AdNauseam, Little Snitch Mini).
In my research about this stuff I saw many people talking about these lists for their own home DNS set up. Good luck!
Awesome. Thanks. PiHole lists are pretty simple. They’re just plaintext.
They already have it
Good luck buying your spyware with a frozen budget
Their budget, like the military, won’t get frozen IIRC. Something about being in the Defense Authorization Act I think.
It’s already paid up. They’ve basically got a piggy bank with 10 bil in it.
Hmm can’t seem to load the archive site so haven’t read the whole thing. Anyone know details of how this works? Are we all fucked if we have a phone or is staying off social media and hardening security with something like Graphene OS enough to keep you out of their system?
GrapheneOS already runs google play services in a sandbox that doesn’t have core access to the device’s functionality (you can lie about giving apps storage access or location data, for example), and because you already have alternatives to ad-based services (CoMaps, Thunderbird, etc…) you should be safe from telemetry often hidden inside of popular apps like Google Maps.
Nothing’s bulletproof, of course, but the difference with GrapheneOS is that you can see what’s going on, grant permissions selectively to certain apps, or opt out entirely by only installing F-droid apps or using Graphene’s FOSS suite. You don’t have pre-baked telemetry at all, so nothing for them to harvest.
Thanks for including the mirror, OP.
Companies that obtain mobile phone location data generally do it in two different ways. The first is through software development kits (SDKs) embedded in ordinary smartphone apps, like games or weather forecasters. These SDKs continuously gather a user’s granular location, transfer that to the data broker, and then sell that data onward or repackage it and sell access to government agencies.
The second is through real-time bidding (RTB). When an advert is about to be served to a mobile phone user, there is a near instantaneous, and invisible, bidding process in which different companies vie to have their advert placed in front of certain demographics. A side-effect is that this demographic data, including mobile phones’ location, can be harvested by surveillance firms. Sometimes spy companies buy ad tech companies out right to insert themselves into this data supply chain. We previously found at least thousands of apps were hijacked to provide location data in this way.
I really despise these practices. I don’t know how people can build these tools with a clear conscience.
Jesus fucking Christ. Time to delete the two games I’ve ever downloaded. Dunno if that even helps at this point.
It’s not specific to games, it’s all apps that have ads
I should have just went back to the flip phone like ten years ago.
You can instead use apps which block trackers. I can recommend 3.
Netguard with tracker filters enabled, PersonalDNS filter – a fire and forget DNS filter app, or Adguard android app from Adguard website.
The 1st one needs payment to access some pro features but can also block internet connection to all your apps.
The 2nd one is a simple DNS blocker which can have millions of rules and won’t choke under the load.
The last one is not Foss or available on fdroid like the 1st two are, but is much more powerful than the 1st two combined.
Pick your tools and limit information now.
I switched to /e/ a while ago, they have a feature called advanced privacy. commercial Lemmy clients like Connect and Raccoon have trackers embedded and are blocked automagically. ^I use Jerboa btw^
That’s easy. You just ignore your conscience because money speaks louder to these people.
Or you use confirmation bias to tell yourself it’s an innocuous use case that won’t hurt anyone.
Or you use a bandwagon argument like “everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we” or “everybody else is doing it so it doesn’t make much difference if we do too”
Or even worse, “if we don’t it, someone else will anyway”
build these tools with a clear conscience.
Because if they don’t their masters they will become destitute and starve while homeless
And all social interaction happen at veiled gunpoint
Under these conditions it is no surprise at all that conscience plays no role whatsoever, it is just a savage free-for-all for survival happening under our cursed star, an insane 10 billion years long churning of thinking meat, consciousness behind birthed into the wreckage, screaming uncomprehendingly at what is happened until it soon it is just as easily, mercifully and meaninglessly snuffed out again.
Fortunately we have a shot at scorching the surface of this planet thanks to global warming and really the question is, can we make it happen before we genocide ourselves, leaving this planet’s biosphere still capable of sustaining the horrors of life ?
You should really talk to some real in-the-flesh people.
I met some real people this week, they were watching advertising.
They thought the government cared about them.
One wanted to upgrade their car to add another 100 horsepower they cannot use anywhere.
Another told me, he does not like raising cows but he had to get more cows to make it more economical to raise cows.
They were all bummed out that the end of the end of the week was upon us, and soon they would have to work 40 hours in the next 5 days, doing things they stopped liking doing a long time again, if they ever did at all.
I don’t know how people can build these tools with a clear conscience.
Have you seen the job market for programmers lately? It feels like it’s almost all for AI slop, abusive rentier middleman business models that add no real value,
defensewar contractors, or all of the above at once.That’s not to say that it’s acceptable for people to work those jobs with a clear conscience; it’s to say that for a bunch of people the only ethical options would be to remain unemployed or leave the industry.
I’ve been seeing exactly that. Reading through these job descriptions is a bit depressing. I can’t virtue signal my lack of morality and unthinking subservience to my potential employer hard enough to make cutoff to become “Director of AI Shilling” or a “Dark Pattern Consent Violation Engineer”.
I know the kind of environments that won’t work for me. This will always limit the jobs I can and can’t work and I’m generally okay with that. I would love some of that bountiful defence contractor money, but I can’t ethically justify doing work that harms others or limits their freedom. Advertising tech would have been a good fit for me… if I had no sense of ethics.
It’s a tough realization that my gaming consoles, GPS Smart Watch, and fancy modern over-engineered car only became possible because tons of money was poured into building out related tech for defence and surveillance.
I imagine the cognitive dissonance must be really strong in someone working for some of these companies that have monetized governmentally sanctioned or corporately opportunistic civil rights abuses. Then again, we’re often kept apart, working in our own little areas where we’re safe from having to see the whole horrifying machine.
It’s the same for anyone who works for Meta or MS or Google or Anduril or whatever these days: you look at your comp package that’s worth roughly half a million annually, and you say
They have been paying people to not have morals for quite a while now.
Of course the US Government is using Israeli Spyware to track American citizens.
Uh huh. And it will work as well as tariffs.
Wym? Stingray devices work and they’re being actively utilized against the public.
This will not help sale of smartphones.
It will not hinder it either. People will give up many things before their smartphones.
I wish I could but feels like every job requires me to have some sort of app
Are they paying for your phone? Are they giving a stipend for your service? Then tell them to fuck off and give you a yubikey.
I work in telecom, so no win there unless my family is ready to be homeless.
This will not affect sale of smartphones.
FTFY
Exactly. 99.9999% of consumers don’t give a fuck as long as they can still access Facebook and TikTok.
This reminds me of something… What was it… Hmm…
And that was before the NSA leaks.
And in case it wasn’t already clear enough how absurd this all is, the creeps at Palantir are now actually so brazen as to officially call one of their mass surveillance systems “Project Gotham”…brave new world.
They’re openly mocking us being dumbfounded and complacent.
I guess calling it “Project Barad Dur” was a bit too on the nose after they named themselves Palantir.
Yes, maybe a bit much, but it would have been very fitting, since the marketing is obviously aimed specifically at the villains of the world—perhaps for the next project.
It’s quite telling of the times we live in that you can make it so obvious these days. You’d think that at least some concealment of the intentions behind these mass surveillance products would be appropriate, but I guess with people like Trump in the White House, Putin in the Kremlin, Netanyahu in Israel, and many others of that caliber, it’s no longer necessary.
Please support 404media of you can. They have a free plan which helps or donate. As ypu can see, they do god’s work since he’s to lazy to do it.
Looking forward to joining you guys in the upcoming rebellion.
But I am le tired
Ok take a nap…
But then fire ze missiles!
Sure sounds like a certain companies HQ needs to be burned down. So they get the point about spying on Americans.
But spying on former chancellor angela merkel is not? https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-spy-agency-tapped-german-chancellery-for-decades-wikileaks-idUSKCN0PI2AD/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806
Or maybe it’s all bad.
Most Americans I know were upset with both.
Has anyone set one of these up? A friend of mine just found one in a box during their move, and asked if this project was still active.
Install the android developer tools, or whatever it is that includes the adb utility. Download the software from the EFF & run the install script while your device is plugged in via usb.
Time for meshtasctic? Or nothing. How about never using our phones again?
Meshtastic might not be the best tool for this. Reticulum is more versatile.
You don’t want anything that pings a cellphone tower.
Definitely considering looking into portable Faraday cages…
Guess it doesn’t really matter when the license plate on my car is tracked everywhere I go and all the big businesses use face identification the moment you walk into their stores, probably all run by the same vendor and packaged and sold to the highest bidder.
I hate this dystopia.
Take your phone, turn it off then leave it in a bus while its on. Find the bus later.
you’re more likely to get it back if you leave it at the airport.
A proper Linux phone cannot come soon enough
As much as I would love to have a Linux phone, it will not fully help with privacy. The devices are logged into a cell tower and have a unique ID. This alone makes them trackable.
A removable physical or electronic SIM on a system that has full control of inbound or outbound traffic (linux phone) would still be a whole lot better than nothing. Imagine having a switch to reliably sever any heartbeat signals between the tower and the device at any time.
This would be a flight mode switch that reliably works. But it also means you are offline, which is no solution to the average “daily” problem of being tracked.
A Linux phone could theoretically use other networks. You could pipe traffic through I2P or bounce it around multiple network types with reticulum. It’s actually theoretically possible to make a community mesh that doesn’t need cellular at all. I don’t NEED to carry the entire internet with me everywhere. I can carry a device with a cache of stuff I need but for everything else I can just connect to some sort of network to fetch it when I actually need it on demand.
A Linux phone would let you do that. You can explore that possibility. Android and IPhone will never allow that because latency is shot on the alternative networks and they aren’t expensive enough to make a profit off of.
If the spyware/tracking started and ended at the cell tower it would be a good start. I’m not sure the sensor data would be sent to the tower either. It would just be a general area.
I wish smartphones only tracked and sent data about your location. They gather every personal information you could and could not imagine about you. They analyze what you click like on socia media and all your circle of friends.
Yup, the baseband modem does what it’s firmware tells it to, and that’s entirely independent from the phone’s software. And open baseband modems to my knowledge don’t exist.
The pinephone released years ago. Flip phones with removable batteries have existed for decades. At this point its on you.
