I was originally using Privacy Guides to learn about privacy related items, but they’re pretty psychotic over there, especially about device/OS choice. I’m fine with using Brave/Mullvad, Brave Search, etc., but there are certain thing that I need to have on my phone, whether it’s for my family, for my company, etc. I’d like to improve the privacy settings on devices like my Samsung phone, iPhone, Windows PC, and Mac. Privacy Guides doesn’t really even allow for discourse on that, going so far as telling me to sell my company because it primarily revolves around producing software that doesn’t run on Linux devices.
Not everyone can use Linux for everything, and I have had terrible experiences with Pixels, both running Pixels’ operating system and others. But they refuse to acknowledge that anything else exists, and obliterate people on their forums for asking about privacy settings for other devices. So I was hoping to find other communities in addition to this one on Reddit and Techlore that aren’t just completely nuts. Any suggestions?
Thing is, privacy isn’t binary; it isn’t even a spectrum. It’s an amorphous 3-dimensional cloud.
Total privacy means that nobody else knows you even exist. Nobody wants total privacy, even if they think they do.
What most people want is for governments and corporations to not be able to track their day to day activity, malicious actors to not have access to their identity and financial data, and individuals to only have the information about them needed to connect and relate in society.
The first thing anyone needs to do is create their own privacy and threat models. Identify your personal risks within those models and adapt as needed.
For instance, using a cellphone of any type means you’re using a location tracker. Same goes for any vehicle with a built in cellular device. That information is available to specific corporations as well as government agencies and sometimes third parties with money.
Is it worth giving up that level of privacy to be connected to other people in most places you’d be likely to go? That’s up to the individual.
Same goes for libre software and hardware.
Whilst you’re right about privacy not being binary and the need to create your own threat model, the problem is that all the different parties that collect your data trade it, so if you leave one avenue open, the others that you tried to block are likely to get your data anyway. Whether this fits your personal threat model is probably an individual decision.