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?
GrapheneOS and Techlore both have solid communities to use to learn about privacy but, there is a ton of intermingling between them and Privacy Guides so you may not like it.
r/privacy is a bit more casual but its mods are terrible and there is a ton of disinformation to sift through.
Do you have a threat model? It’s a good layout of what you deem essential in terms of privacy and what you are willing to compromise. Better than going down the rabbit hole of privacy.
Aint nobody drawing up a diagram before they ask for privacy advice
I understand everyone needs to do what they need to do for their family. However, you need to understand that Apple is closed source and has been proven to not adhere to the privacy toggle option you might enable. You cannot trust them/their devices to respect your privacy.
It’s worse than closed source. It’s anti-libre software.
Any suggestions?
Ignore the nuts, like we all do?
The PurchaseWithPurpose community here on Lemmy and other platforms does a great job of pointing at achievable change by dissecting nine differences between available alternatives.
Privacy is a spectrum; I agree with comments here saying to look at these much more hardened principles still even if you won’t ultimately be taking them up on all their suggestions
iOS, macOS, etc fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.
Apple thinks we’ll believe anything their iOS settings tell us. You don’t need to fall for their blantant scam.
for my family, for my company
When has privacy ever been single player? What are you doing to help others eacape?
It’s a community about privacy, what did you expect?
I find it invaluable to learn the principles and then apply them to my own personal context.
And yes, sadly most “normal” things are a privacy nighmare. They could tell you to block windows telemetry but then the settings reset and you get fucked so… No they won’t.
A firewall like portmaster can do a better job tbh
I doubt this is the place. I get shredded when I talk about Apple products here. (Shredding commencing in three…two…)
That’s why I’m hoping for more communities. So far, TheNewOil is pretty good, as recommended by Moreeni above. Really good list of settings to change on Pixels and iOS, and I’ve been able to adapt a bunch of them to my Samsung phone as well. Haven’t even gotten to operating systems yet.
It sucks that we need such an extensive amount of work put in to make devices private, but oh well…
It sucks that we need such an extensive amount of work put in to make devices private
The issue is that, short of the extremes suggested in places like privacyguides, you’re not really making the device private. You could argue that you’re making it more private, but the counter-argument is that you’re still leaking so much data that you haven’t significantly improved your situation.
Doing something probably is better than doing nothing, but it’s not going to satisfy those who seek actual privacy. If you’ve got a particular leak that you’re worried about it’s definitely worth looking to address it though.
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.
Get shredded you corporate swine!
I know what did
Since when does it not? I have found Privacy Guides community the sanest in that regard so far. I suppose you ran into some people in the discussions that are not related to the PG team and misconcluded that this is the opinion that Privacy Guides endorses.
Anyway, other communities that are usually more accepting over the radical ones are The New Oil and PrivSecDev. But again, note that this topic attracts many people with tin foil hats. No matter where you go, you will stumble upon them.
Are those Lemmy communities? I’m having trouble finding them through my Lemmy client.
I provided links to their websites in the original comment.
The hats keep us safe from space laser targeting; how dare you question them!
I don’t know that it was privacy guides staff, but the 10 most regular commenters, which tend to blast out all other useful discourse. Jonah seems fairly stable, though I do think there was one staff member that seemed pretty unstable when discussing these items.
Might be of interest: https://www.privacytools.io/guides/jonah-aragon-privacyguides-failed-attempt-to-takeover
Privacytools.io actively promotes VPN services that advertise heavilly on YouTube, and have no good track record, like NordVPN (which is at the top of their list of VPNs), which leads me to believe that they are paid by NordVPN to promote their service.
Mullvad (the most trustworthy VPN IMO in terms of track record) is at the bottom of their list.
At the top of their main website, they also have Incogni as a recommendation with what looks to be a referral link. They also have a referral link for Startmail, Internxt (whatever that is), and probably others as well.
On their front page: “Sponsors can be exempted from the criteria.”
Anyone trying to recommend privacy services who also accept sponsorships are not trustworthy.
Also, on their crypto page, they recommend both AgoraDesk and LocalMonero, both of which shut down last year, which leads me to believe that some of their information is also out of date.
When I look at PrivacyGuides, I see none of these issues, so I recommend PrivacyGuides over ptio. In fact, on their VPN page, not only do they recommend relatively trustworthy VPNs, but they also have a big red warning about VPN usage and what to expect in terms of privacy that ptio does not have.
Wasn’t privacytools the original, before they were bought out and the original people moved to privacy guides?
