Have you had any privacy wins recently? Anything you’ve tried or tweaked to improve your privacy? Anyone who’s listened to something you’ve said? Do you have any privacy enhancing projects or changes you’re working on implementing
I managed to convert someone to Signal this week. Was having reception difficulties with a phone call (both of us in spotty areas) and after a drop out, managed to get them on board with Signal. A very notable quality improvement in the call which helped reinforce to them it was a good idea.
I’m going to work on setting up Pihole over the weekend.
Note: I did steal this topic idea from Techlore.
I stopped using Spotify last year, and recently dug my old ipod out of the drawer. Listening to music without an Internet connection and all the spyware is so liberating. If you have an ipod or other old mp3 player, try it out again!
Nice! I recently set up adguard home on my local network 😎 I’m also self hosting my own audio server with navidrome. Now I don’t have to deal with spotify :D
Take a look at Feishin and Tempo for android. 2 great music players that work well with navidrome.
Thank you so much. I have been looking for a good android client to go with navidrome. I tried symdfonium but the audio quality didn’t sound very good. I just tried Tempo and it works like a charm.
Tempo is beautiful. I was using it but was having some crashes so I switched to dsub2000. Not as pretty but functioned better for me. Tempo is a fantastic choice though.
Nice, I installed navidrome as well (along with the lidarr stack to download music) but I have troubles finding reliable sources for music, may I ask where you get your albums from?
Soulseek is a life saver!
It’s in my bucket list! Gotta check it out soon then, thanks!
I’m using Graphene OS since a week. It is a blast! I can only recommend it!
For my girlfriend I set up e/OS on a Fairphone 5. Until now she is not really interested. But will see :D
My privacy win was also to migrate a small WhatsApp group to Signal!😎
You actually got a WhatsApp group to move??!!?!!?? That’s so hard! Congratulations.
Put graphene on my phone and really like it.
Moved chat with my partner to signal.
Germany came out again against chat control.
Germany opposing chat controll is such good news. But we have to wait to see the true outcome.
A good thing was also that Germany officially said that “suspicionless surveillance must be taboo in states that have rule of law”. This indicates it’s a firm position and not a flimsy “maybe tomorrow…” position.
Its recent in being a month old now, but:
- set up a dedicated server mini PC that really let me expand my self hosting beyond my Synology
- switched from Plex to Jellyfin (including for music)
- found out I can hard link files with my Arr’s setup so I can seed without having to keep duplicate copies of files, so that’s a win for the network. The privacy aspect is that I’m happy to get rid of data mining services I was using before my Arr’s setup.
- started using Immich for photos. So far so good
- Self hosted notes (Joplin)
- got remote desktop working on my home server, so if I’m at work and need to do a personal task, then I can do it on my own PC rather than the work browser.
- I use a chat app to make groups in which I’m the only participant. This is for sharing things across devices (links, files, notes, etc). Even on locked down work PCs I can open the web chat app and access my self-shared content. I used Telegram for this before. Now I’m self hosting an Element server.
- I’ve got syncthing running on my Retroid Pocket 5 + PC with Switch emulation. So Now I can ditch my Nintendo Switch completely and keep control of my save files. Fuck you Nintendo.
How do you hardlink your Arr files?
In sonarr/radarr you just select hardlinking instead of copy in the appropriate dropdown menu in settings and that’s it. Nothing else needs to be done if they share the same storage.
Gone back to paying for nearly everything in cash (good for budgeting I find too, can’t make impulse purchases if I only have enough money to buy what I came to the shops for). I also got a couple more friends to switch to Signal and make some other privacy-related changes. Slowly getting there
I deleted more apps from my mobile phone, that was problematic. I deleted several apps from my Windows computer. I found more alternatives to apps I need, on my Mint22 computer. I set up NextCloud, and it works perfectly on all units. I got 3 others to join me on my NextCloud. I am still OMW to fade out FB completely.
Other than that, I keep my units up to date.
Man I’ve been a hot streak! I got NextDNS configured with Mulvad VPN and learned how to route Molly/signal through Tor. I also got a VPN router and was able to set NecxtDNS up on it as well.
Been on GrapheneOS for a few weeks. Great daily driver. I feel like I have control of my phone. It constantly asks me what to share and how much.
It sort of reminds me of the granular control you get on Linux.
Been years since I flashed a new ROM but it was way easier than things had been. Literally a web installer. Love it!
Sold all my Apple devices, bought a second hand Pixel 8a and am running GrapheneOS on it. Bought a second hand Thinkpad T14 and am running Fedora on it. Subscribed for a year to Proton and activated VPN Killswitch on all my devices. Next up will be to learn how to selfhost Nextcloud, Syncthing and Immich. 😁
How did you get VPN Killswitch on Fedora? And SyncThing is great
Honestly, idk. I just turned it on, set it to advanced and it just works 🤷♂️
You must use the linux app then and not manual wireguard conf files
Ah yes! But for my raspberry pi with ubuntu server on it, I think I followed something like this https://protonvpn.com/support/wireguard-configurations
there is no tutorial for kill switch in manual confs on that website, i think you have to set it up with ufw
If you’re new to self-hosting I highly recommend you look at YUNOhost. All of those apps are available on it.
Thank you very much! Will look into it :)
I too thank you for the recommendation.
I can finally pin-point what gave away the latest game I played. I was playing 2077 and their launch client problaby sold the data about my steam account.
That’s dope! Can you give a brief overview of how you accomplish that ?
Well, I was only playing on my personal PC which has Linux. My steam has been setup not to sell personal information. I did not search the game anywhere (I was just starting). It’s just easier to see where things leaked when you take a privacy focus so if I notice a leak it’s problably on the new thing I had to boot up to play.
Oh I gotcha. I thought you had an app/device/software/etc that would help point out leaks.
I recently switched from Google Photos to Ente.
Privacy wins…hmm well I’ve managed to block 1,824,754 trackers, ads, cookies, and assorted undesirable traffic from my network this month.
how did you get that number?
Combined number of blocks of all lists on my pFsense box. I am filtering quite heavily. You could do about the same thing with a PI-Hole Unbound.
i’m also a pfsense user and didn’t notice this.
or atleast i was; i have to fix my pfsense router again so i’ve temporarily switch an ancient router for now.
I’ve had very good success with pFsense. For a freebie, it sure is packed with all the goodies. I’m probably not utilizing it to it’s fullest extent, there are just so many options. I run DNSBL and Suricata for IDS/IPS, and NTOPNG + Graphana for observables.
it’s impressive to me too since it’s free: i used to use the vpn feature heavily when showing up to work in the office was still a thing for me.
i still use the ssh server with sshfs as a cloud-like storage for uploading things from my phone and work computers like pics and for downloading media like music and videos; although i’ve been gradually weaning myself off that via social media content so that now i barely use it at all besides as an ssh tunnel.
the add blocking alone makes the effort worth while for me and i’ve gotten so used to it that i can no longer tolerate adds when i have to to use other people’s rigs; it’s makes me strangely angry somehow. lol
i created this post about how i have it setup; but this time around i’m going to replace the windows vm behind the pfsense vm with a physical AP since that’s the part of the stack that’s the most proned to breaking. i’m not to enthused about doing so because i have a high gain antennae attached the internal wifi nic that i was using as an AP, so i got GREAT signal for really long distances and even into the underground parking lot of my apartment building and the beach nearby, but i rarely ever us it as such so it’s hard justifying the headache to myself.
i’ve rebuilt this server multiple times each time i encountered a “gotcha” or a surprise that i had not anticipated and it made some needful component stop working
I feel that. LOL I will reinstall something over and over until I get to the finished project without ‘gotchas’. Probably, most of mine are benign, but I don’t want to always have it in the back of my head that something I did during set up is now hindering me in the present.
Running ADGuard at home and being able to only use Linux privately
I started self-hosting! I got Nextcloud and Grocy set up! Jellyfin too, but I got some small issues to work out. Next up is, a workout application and home assistant. I’ll be transferring all my cams and stuff to HA. My whole family uses Signal, which is pretty cool. And I’m about to take the Graphene plunge, but I haven’t ROM hacked in years. I hear it’s super easy with Graphene, though.
Graphene is more than easy. It’s a browser based install with a USB cable. It’ll take some time to read through and execute the steps, but at the core its like 15 minutes of real work.
