I think we all draw a line between privacy and convenience and I think I found mine and settled into a comfort zone of sorts. I use Fedora 38. My browser is Mozilla Firefox with it’s “strict” setting. uBlock origin and uMatrix. When I need/want to use a site that doesn’t work due to blocked connections I relax the restrictions in uMatrix or temporarily disable it entirely if I get frustrated or I’m in a hurry. I watch videos on YouTube. Don’t use social media, but I do use Facebook messenger (although I prefer to use Signal with the handful of people I can). I use a Xiaomi phone with custom ad blocking DNS (I’d like to get a Pixel with GrapheneOS someday). I look for an app on F-Droid first, but install it through Google Play if I can’t find what I need there. I use Qwant and DuckDuckGo. I use ReVanced. I do not use a VPN. I think that’s all the relevant information. My question is: how easy do you think it still is for big tech to track me? Are there any suggestions you would have for a person like me that wouldn’t sacrifice too much convenience?
Don’t use social media
If you wrote this post, you do use social media.
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They used social media to destroy social media
I think that’s a good setup. If you must have Facebook Messenger, my advice would be to maybe use a work profile for apps that track you. Compartmentalization is the key word here. Apps like Shelter make it really easy. I have to use WhatsApp and that is an app that is in the “unsafe” profile, aka work profile.
I have a question about the work profile: would it make sense to isolate the PlayStore too, as it‘s google? Because this is the main painpoint for me, as I cannot move to a custom rom with my phone currently
If you dont root that will Not be possible. Playstore is a key Feature of most Android Roms that ship with the phones. I run grapheneos. There i have Google Services disabled im my core Profile and have a separate Profile with Gplay. I know, that due to imei and other factors Google could easily track me possible but that’s Not my worry
Firefoxes strict settings are okay but not perfect, have a look at librewolf for an easy solution, or my Arkenfox softening tool to modify arkenfox to be easy to use.
Did you debloat your xiaomi phone already? May help with some things, but of course not much, but
- do you have google play services enabled?
- what keyboard do you use
- what mobile browser
Facebook messenger is cancer as its unencrypted afaik, so they read everything. Poor you.
An adblocking dns is good, do you have android tracking blocklists, to make xiaomi phones usable? But to be fair, samsung is way worse
Try shelter and isolate all these bad apps and disable them when not needed
Easy, but I wouldnt suggest you make things too inconvenient (I personally am fine with unbreaking things).
Some thoughts/suggestions:
- uMatrix is dead fyi.
- Librewolf is arkenfox but with less fiddling if you want to give it a try.
- Set your browser to us a DNS over HTTPS (like mullvad).
- You can use NewPipe as a youtube app alternative, FreeTube on desktop, and Invidious or Piped in browser.
- ProtonVPN is free and trusted.
ProtonVPN is full of lies and will get you no where. You can’t just pay to make yourself invisible
Willing to expand on that? They are well audited, and changing your ip helps to disassociate from your approx location (also allows for multiple browsers to come from a common ip).
Also of course a vpn isnt going to make you invisible. Fingerprinting can allow you to uniquely identify browsers through using a handful of metrics.
VPNs were never intended to make you anonymous, if you expected a VPN to make you anonymous you were very mistaken
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Thank you! uMatrix is a browser extension that makes it very easy to block any third party requests a website makes by category. For example, if example.com loads fonts from Google that is considered a third party request. Or if it tries to set a Facebook cookie. uMatrix shows a table (or a matrix) of all the request addresses and categories and you can click on them to block/allow them.
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http://digdeeper.club/articles/addons.xhtml#umatrix Read the update from January 2022
This is a very simple question to answer:
- https://www.amiunique.org/fingerprint
- https://fingerprint.com/demo/ - visit this one in a regular tab, private tab, container tab, etc to see if the fingerprint persists.
Hey, i used a fresh version of Tor, Mullvad and on moblie the browser Vanadium. Every time it says I am unique. How do you become “not unique”?
As far as I understand, if you wanted to not be unique you would have to not use any special privacy tools. Use default Chrome installation and Windows 10/11. There will be millions of people using the exact same setup as you.
Ok so that will defeat my goal of Not getting ads.
Yes, it would.
@Aspaldiko@feddit.de This is what I would’ve said. Hiding in plain sight is the solution. It gets tricky when you want to send a message and not leave a trail at all, but in essence - privacy != anonymity.
prefer Signal
Signal will force you into using an Android or iOS mobile device—no alternatives—and you couldn’t have 2 Android devices (like a tablet, e-reader). You are forced to have a SIM card which gives away part of your identity. Servers are centralized & closed-source (closed for 2 years, rewritten history)—so did the NSA force in a backdoor? …We may never know. On Android, by default notifications are sent thru Google Service’s Firebase (fork Molly supports UnifiedPush now tho). The ToS is questionable with “don’t break the law” language.
Your ideal chat would be free software, P2P or federated+self-hostable servers, E2EE, & the only required personal info you share is your account ID (no phone or email).
You’d think Matrix fits the bill, but its high system requirements (especially storage) & majority Matrix.org mean defacto centralization around an org that controls the spec, the largest server, reference server, & most popular client.
What you are looking for is good ol’ XMPP with OMEMO or PGP set to required in all clients. Its server options run on a toaster, has years of smart engineering & open governance guiding the project, & being extensible by nature, means it’s not purely limited to chat/conferencing. XMPP appears to be the common chat option on the dark web for a reason. You can use gateways to puppet accounts on these untrustworthy networks too (such as messlidger to puppet Facebook Messenger is needed, but also Signal, Telegram, etc.).
Alternatively, Briar & its ilk are gotos, but P2P has some downsides (brains your battery hard on Android).
