What are some steps you've taken to improve your privacy and/or anonimity online?

dullkedo

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To hide from corporations I use Brave + uBlock + CAD for daily browsing. This does not protect me from tracking by the services that I actually use (google, twitter, etc), but it's enough. The next step would be to 7proxy myself but a) I cannot be bothered and b) it would make it impossible to use said services because it would look like my account got hacked and I would get zogbotted everytiem.

For protecting against people I use many different identities, only some of which can be traced back to my real name.

The next step would be to move to a non-pozzed phone but then I would not be able to talk with the people I love (through whatsapp), so what's the point?
 
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To hide from corporations I use Brave + uBlock + CAD for daily browsing. This does not protect me from tracking by the services that I actually use (google, twitter, etc), but it's enough. The next step would be to 7proxy myself but a) I cannot be bothered and b) it would make it impossible to use said services because it would look like my account got hacked and I would get zogbotted everytiem.

For protecting against people I use many different identities, only some of which can be traced back to my real name.

The next step would be to move to a non-pozzed phone but then I would not be able to talk with the people I love (through whatsapp), so what's the point?
you ought to switch to a pinephone if you correctly despise the modern pozz-phone world. Its a little more technical as a phone, so its not for apple users, and its also not for most android users. It is basically a linux distro retooled to work as a phone.
 
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Sable

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Delete your social media accounts. I know I'm preaching to the choir at this point but the importance cannot be overstated. Do it now. Aside from that, I would also be careful with what programs you install on your system, as many of them are confirmed spyware and can collect enormous amounts of information without you knowing. There's a site I remember reading, I forgot which, that classified apps/browsers into several tiers of severity. Even Brave, something I shilled for repeatedly in the past, isn't what its cracked up to be. I mean, the default search engine is Google ffs. If that doesn't set the alarm bells ringing I don't know what will. So yeah, Steam, iTunes, Internet Explorer, Discord... bin that shit. If anyone cares to humor me with more specifics I'd love to hear it.

On a slightly related segue, try not to upload IRL pics as much as possible. If you do, make sure to remove the metadata/EXIF embedded within. Your camerca stores a fuckton of information with every picture and can range from aperture setting, exposure time, date, to even your geographical location. Always strip them out lest you want your ass compromised. A great tool I always vouch for would be:

As for other tips, get a VPN, never use the same username/passwords twice, and use multiple email accounts if possible. Its been repeated ad nauseam already so I won't belabor the point further.

Other than that be safe. Stay noided.

I assume you're thinking of this?
 
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SELCOUTH

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I started reading on the various ways ISP's and big tech companies track and/or sell our data. I already knew it happened, but this time I got really freaked out and made myself take some mini steps, like having a secure password manager, enabling two-step authentication, etc...

Then I went full schizo and said fuck it, I'm not letting them fuck with me anymore. Changed my OS to LInux, changed my email to a more secure one, got a VPN, changed my browser to FIrefox and I hardened that shit.

Interested to hear your thoughts, whether you don't care, or whether you are more paranoid than I am.
I could care less, if we ever go full communist dictatorship they'd probably wind up rounding me up and shooting me in the head for remaining anonymous on the internet anyways. Might as well just post everything out in the open for all to see
 
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handoferis

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My solution to appear as normal as possible while also not being tracked to fuck:

- I have social media accounts, but I haven't logged into them for years. This means people don't think I'm some kind of wacko.
- I conduct internet things on various pseudonyms
- I regularly google my name and right to be forgotten everything that comes up. I don't post pictures of myself online anymore, and I systematically scrub the ones that do exist.

Corps always gonna glom data on you, the goal should be to appear as uninteresting and normal as possible, rather than exposing anything too unique. Outside of that you just don't want to enable random people to get information on you. Making that stuff difficult to find for social media nutcases is a lot more likely to keep you safe online rather than attempting to prevent the faceless data vacuum from sucking you up.
 
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InsufferableCynic

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I don't really care THAT much about privacy, unless politics or sex is involved. Most normie things I am happy to do on normie accounts. That actually benefits my privacy.

There's a reason normies laugh when people talk about "the importance of online privacy" because most normies are brainlets who don't post anything of value anyway and so who cares if others see it - all they will see is non-controversial pictures of cats or food or worthless mainstream opinions.

BUT at the same time, going for privacy paints a target on my back, as I do have controversial political opinions, and refusing to engage in mainstream internet society is a dead giveaway.

So I effectively lead 2 lives.

According to my Facebook, I am a huge enthusiast for brainlet ideas like getting extra jabs without question, supporting whatever the current thing is, and not knowing anything about what's really going on. My Youtube is nothing but CNN and gaming channels. A few Funko Pop review channels for good measure. To everyone paying attention, I look like a regular brainlet.

But then I have my anonymous life where everything is largely pseudononymous, I can express myself freely, and I take great effort to ensure these accounts are never linked together.

This is mainly because there's no telling what the future might hold, and it only takes 1 bad law to land people in jail for "bad opinions", so I would rather not take the chance and remain mostly undetected than become "one of those obvious privacy advocates with nothing to hide"

ALL THAT SAID

The absolute best thing about using "privacy centric" apps is that, by their very nature, the eschew control of them to their users, because that's basically required to function privately. As a result, my LineageOS phone is packed with largely free software and for the most part leaves me alone, doesn't constantly demand attention, and is just full of really useful software that won't charge me money or show me ads. Getting away from the control of big tech where they will drain your attention and money is worth it in and of itself, even if you don't care about privacy. You just get privacy for free as a result.

If enough people are interested, I could make a thread about "taking control away from big tech" and how much of a difference it can make in your life (although there are things you miss out on as a result"
 

zalaz alaza

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Coolest thing I've done at home is flash OpenWRT to a couple routers to build a DIY mesh network. The gui interface is really nice, I have a more complete set of controls, and it just makes more sense than most of the interfaces you get pre-installed.

I used to run a home VPN and just route all my phone data through it but slacked on server maintenance. I don't even really know how much this matters tbh.

I do have a pinephone and it just isnt ready yet. My plan was to hack around on ncmpcpp and make the interface decent for phones when i got it but it cant even make a phone call so it has just sat in my desk drawer for years.

Im curious about graphene OS but at this point w phones Ive taken the android/google pill as the security is good except in regards to google itself who more or less own my phone data.

For me the whole operation isnt just about privacy its about being able to customize my experience so that the technology really works effectively and in a pleasant way. Most proprietary anything just doesn't allow that its all just cumbersome and endless clickety clickety clicking to make simple things happen. Privacy/security is something that comes with the territory tho.
 
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grobulae

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If you really want a hold on your privacy, you could pack up everything and live in a remote cabin in Montana and become entirely self sufficient then you can start sending pipe bombs in the mail

But actually, I personally think security against other users is more controllable, and more realistic, cause if you blow up someone with a pipe bomb in the mail, the FBI or whatever the fuck can find you if they try hard enough, even if you do live in a cabin in montana, as long as you have an internet connection and made a tiny slip up even once. That's why you should just throw out your computer if you're concerned about it, I think
 

brainlvst_b0xcutter

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I like to think I care to the point you aren't going full schizo. I basically too run hardened firefox, added noscript to it, blacklisted google analytics and also remove http referer with an addon so that you can't know from which site I'm making a request. But besides that I'm not that extremely concerned. You pretty much escaped like 90% of tracking by that point, if not more. Going further than that only makes sense to me if you are in some great danger, but most people who go further than that aren't and mostly just larping.
yeah same. my main concern is just removing ads from my web experience. targeted advertising as it exists today is super creepy and should frankly be illegal.
i am also concerned about having a single account for everything. being able to login in to every website or service with one google or microsoft account just means they can track every place you sign into, and it acts a single point of failure in terms of security. once that account gets compromised, everything is fucked.
 
I dropped popular social media years ago, mostly because it became a cesspool of conspiracy theories. After that I started getting away from most google services transitioning to more privacy centric services. VPN is on nearly all the time and I started self-hosting a lot of services I used to pay companies for. Now I host my own search engine, email, media, password vault, and file storage. I feel like I am finally owning and maintaining my own data, but I still have a long way to go.

I'm personally not super concerned, but being in control of my own services does feel nice.
 
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InsufferableCynic

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Don't use privacy because you want to hide your digital identity from the government and corporations. In most cases you're too small to notice and generally nobody really cares. Use privacy because by going private you are naturally required to go for open source, self-hosted, standalone solutions that don't phone home and so can't be remotely changed or deactivated without your consent.

Privacy doesn't matter. You should care about software freedom instead, that will massively empower you and improve your life in tangible, objective ways. When your friends phones stop working or go slow after a bad update, when they get the "This device is no longer supported" message on their smart kettle, and when they complain about yet another Youtube UI makeover that makes the site worse, you can rest assured you made the right decision. Even if they laugh at you for taking the 7 days of pain it takes to learn linux and host a server, you will get the main benefits in the long run. By doing this you will also get a whole bunch of extra privacy for free, because you also won't be using corporate garbage that spies on you.

Privacy is, at the end of the day, part of the bigger issue of freedom. Don't go for one without going for the other, as they are interlinked.
 

consonant

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i'm concerned about privacy stuff but thinking about ways i could be more private makes my brain hurt, and changing a bunch of the things i use so that they're more private seems like a hassle to me and it'd probably end up isolating me from my friends who don't care about that stuff.
the thought just overwhelms me so i become lazy about it which kinda sucks.
Don't remember what I used to use when I made this post, this might've been when I was still using Chrome and Google search
I can see why I did because the thought of trying to make everything private is kind of overwhelming, but now I've realized that I can at least make small steps to improve privacy, and I can prioritize what I need to change by thinking about how much data I send into something. I thought about how everyday I send in so much information to my web browser and search engine and there's no reason that Google should just be able to have all that information. I use Firefox now but I've barely changed anything about it besides ticking off telemetry options (which I should do something about, I don't really trust Mozilla). I also now use StartPage as my search engine, it's similar to Google so it doesn't really mess with my workflow, though it is closed source and uses Google's API (or something like that I forgot) for results so I have some doubts about it, but their privacy policy seems strong so I'll stick with them until I notice something seriously fucked up.
Your OS is also something you're throwing a shitton of data into so I'm trying to fix that as well with experimenting with Linux. From what I know Linux distros don't usually have telemetry (except Ubuntu having some in the past??) so I haven't been really looking at specific privacy ones.

When it comes to social media I don't think I really have much to worry about because I rarely use it in the first place. I log into Twitter sometimes when I feel like I want to be retarded and just scroll through things but I barely ever post. I mostly try to stay away from it because I know how addicted I can get. I do use Discord a lot though because it's what my friends use and sometimes I use it to store things which is something I've been trying to fix, but I'm not really storing anything important there. I at least run Discord in a browser because then I can use UBlock on it to block trackers and it doesn't have access to my whole computer. Youtube is also something I use a lot but I don't know if I want to go through the trouble of trying to use alternatives for it. I'm at least not providing data that's easily searchable by normal people.

The reason I care about privacy is because I love how anonymity gives you freedom, you can start over wherever you want on the internet and express yourself in completely different ways depending on the site. What's really set me off into caring about privacy is the fact that third-party tracking exists, websites selling information to each other so that they know who you are on a different site is disgusting. My interests don't need to be tracked cross-website, I use different sites for different reasons and they don't need to become the same.
 
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