Privacy

• they advertise themselves as degoogled, but instead let you connect to Google/Microsoft/etc services

• replace all the proprietary not at all Secure Services from Google, with.... Drumroll please.... Proprietary and not at all Secure Services from themselves and actively encourage it.

• They are For-profit

• and being MORE out of date then even Fairphones stock roms.

But a TL;DR:

/E/ is not Private. They just switch one bad comany to another one.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36575333

Main Page.

• Full Report- 33 Pages.
• Highlights 1 Page.
• Accessible PDF-28 pages.

Property technology broadly refers to the use of software, digital platforms, and other digital tools used in the housing market. Property owners and renters use these technologies for functions including advertising, touring, leasing, and financial management of rental housing. These tools may incorporate computer algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Selected Property Technology Tools Used in Rental Housing

Property technology tools used for advertising, tenant screening, rent-setting, and facial recognition have both benefits and risks. For example, facial recognition technology can enhance safety, according to three industry associations and all 10 of the public housing agencies in GAO's review. However, these tools also may pose risks related to transparency, discriminatory outcomes, and privacy. For instance, potential renters may struggle to understand, and owners to explain, the basis for screening decisions made by algorithms. Facial recognition systems also might misidentify individuals from certain demographic groups, and property owners might use surveillance information without renter consent, according to advocacy groups GAO interviewed.

The four federal agencies took several actions to address these risks. To combat alleged misleading and discriminatory advertising on rental platforms, agencies pursued legal action and obtained settlements requiring changes to advertising practices and improved compliance with the Fair Housing Act. They also took enforcement actions against tenant screening companies for using inaccurate or outdated data.

However, all 10 public housing agencies stated public housing agencies would benefit from additional direction on use of facial recognition technology. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) current guidance to these agencies is high-level and does not provide specific direction on key operational issues, such as managing privacy risks or sharing data with law enforcement. More detailed written direction could provide public housing agencies additional clarity on the use of facial recognition technology and better address tenant privacy concerns.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36487769

Comments

• Lobsters.

Now that my go-to exchange Tradeogre has been fedded, I’m looking for alternatives to swap relatively good amounts from and to XMR.

I've heard bad stories about ChangeNOW, Changelly, and FixFloat. On Reddit are full of posts where people accuse them of being scams or having funds locked. (Same happened to a friend)

Hopefully someone here has some good suggestions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51941292

Right now, my default is Cromite, and I occasionally use Brave as well. I have tried Firefox with uBO, but unfortunately it is slower than the aforementioned browsers and also lacks some features. I've also heard that Gecko-based browsers in general have a security issue on Android, but I don't know the details. Which browser(s) do you use/recommend and why?

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36285037

Full PDF report.

With a privacy protecting setup, the mainstream internet is almost unusable. To sign up for social media or even a gmail account, one has to provide a phone number for verification. Youtube doesn’t work when not signed into a Google account, or if one is connected to a VPN. Even downloader programs like yt-dlp and freyr have been rendered useless by the strict access controls of the major platforms. There is a vast amount of community, DIY, and educational material of all sorts behind these platform walls, so how can someone who doesn’t want to be tracked access any of it these days?

There are alternatives like archive.org and peertube which are wonderful but have nowhere near the amount of content that people have been uploading to YouTube over the years. For example, if I need to fix a washing machine and there is a tutorial on YouTube, how can I see it while still preserving a modicum of privacy online?

Cybersecurity firm Koi Security revealed that FreeVPN.One, a Chrome VPN extension with over 100,000 users, has been secretly capturing and transmitting screenshots of users' browsing activity to remote servers[^1][^2].

The spyware functionality was introduced in July 2025 after earlier updates expanded the extension's permissions. According to researcher Lotan Sery from Koi Security, "FreeVPN.One shows how a privacy branding can be flipped into a trap"[^3].

When confronted, the developer claimed screenshots were only taken of suspicious sites and were encrypted, but researchers found evidence of capture on trusted sites like Google Photos[^5]. The extension's "AI Threat Detection" feature discloses taking screenshots, but Koi Security found most surveillance occurred silently in the background[^8].

The case highlights growing risks with free VPN services, particularly as demand increases due to new online safety regulations in the UK requiring age verification[^3].

[^1]: GIGAZINE - Chrome VPN Extension Accused of Secretly Capturing User Screenshots

[^2]: It's FOSS - Google Verified FreeVPN Caught Red-handed Spying on its Users

[^3]: VARINDIA - Chrome VPN Extension Accused of Secretly Capturing User Screenshots

[^5]: It's FOSS - Google Verified FreeVPN Caught Red-handed Spying on its Users

[^8]: Instagram - Dhaka Chronicles post about FreeVPN.One spying

Hey just wondering if anybody has any experience in a decentralized cloud storage solution. Pretty much just a personal replacement of Google, Apple, and Dropbox services. I’ve been doing some research and it seems like a cool technology that I have not heard about until I went looking for it. So just wanted to know if anyone had experience with it, the pricing, and which one they recommended. Thanks you.

I'm looking to get a new router, but all of the ones I've found try to force a mandatory internet connection/account creation to activate them without any bypass methods (at least that my searching could find).

Is there any way to get a new router to work without connecting an account to it? Or a way to bypass it? If not, is there a specific used router that might be more privacy friendly?

I don't need anything special, it's just home wifi.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36111319

EFF: Atlas of Surveillance.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36109840

Photo by Sora Shimazaki

by Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor
August 19, 2025

Police did not act improperly when an officer gained access to the phone of an individual detained for kidnapping, sex assault, and other serious charges after watching the man enter his cellphone passcode and committing it to memory, a New Jersey appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Tyrone Ellison, who was arrested and convicted after kidnapping a minor with substance abuse issues from a Newark hospital, had no reasonable expectation of privacy when he unlocked his phone while in police custody and under the supervision of a detective, the court ruled.

“There was no violation of defendant’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination where defendant voluntarily requested his cell phone, was not compelled to provide the passcode and voluntarily entered the passcode in the officer’s presence,” the judges wrote.

Police could not leave Ellison unattended with his phone without risking him deleting evidence, the ruling adds.

The judges said prior case law that found an arrestee maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy when making a call from a police station without being told that call may be monitored or recorded does not apply to Ellison’s case.

Ellison, the judges wrote, was aware of the detective’s presence when entering his passcode, did not attempt to conceal his password, and was not stopped from concealing his passcode from police.

“There was no deception or trickery used to obtain defendant’s passcode. Nor did the police orchestrate the situation to induce defendant to reveal the passcode,” the court wrote.

In effect, Ellison’s expectation of privacy vanished when he chose to unlock his phone in the presence of police, the court found.

A divided New Jersey Supreme Court in 2020 ruled in Andrews v. New Jersey that while the Fifth Amendment presumptively protects individuals’ passcodes, they can be compelled to reveal them under the foregone conclusion exception to the amendment. That exception allows the compelled disclosure of documents and passcodes as long as authorities know they exist and the individual subject to the warrant knows and possesses them.

Tuesday’s ruling says another doctrine that allows authorities to use improperly obtained information if it would have inevitably come into their possession through proper channels would have allowed police to use the passcode even if it was initially obtained improperly.

Police obtained a communications data warrant to search the phone and could have obtained an order to compel Ellison to disclose his passcode, the judges wrote.

“Once the passcode was compelled, law enforcement would have been able to access the contents of the phone,” the judges wrote.

The New Jersey Office of the Public Defender represented Ellison. Alison Perrone, deputy of the office’s appellate section, called the ruling concerning and said her office will ask the New Jersey Supreme Court to review the case.

“The ability of law enforcement to observe and later use a person’s private phone passcode while in custody presents serious questions about constitutional rights in the digital era,” Perrone said in a statement.

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New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: [email protected].

Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

cross-posted from: https://lemmybefree.net/post/1243814

Hi! I'm looking for a privacy respecting Android tablet.

I ruled out the google tablet due to it being too expensive with an LCD screen

I would prefer a nice OLED screen if possible (or similar), and preferably cheap. Must be able to stream HEVC encoded videos (not 10 years old hardware), and preferably more (VP9, AV1, for future proofing)

The main use will be to watch content (movies, series, videos) from YouTube and Jellyfin, and sometimes some other apps if they're not enforcing the Play Integrity API

So far I've searched some OS and I'm considering LineageOS or /e/OS, with /e/OS looking better in terms of privacy. Don't want google to track everywhere I go and everything I do.

Any recommendations for good cheap hardware with bootloader unlocking, and recommendations for a good Android ROM?

So we know the UK, France, Sweden and Australia all have “pondered out loud” about getting platforms like Signal to allow backdoors into encrypted calls and messages.

This creates a sense of safety about these platforms being secure, because governments want to come after them.

Here’s a tinfoil hat take: Five Eyes is significantly reducing inter cooperation. The non-fascist parts of the alliance don’t want to share with the obvious authoritarian, but the authoritarian one used to share the fruits of their established backdoors with them, and now they don’t.

Note that the US isn’t asking signal for a backdoor. Why? Back in 2015-2016 (last years of Obama), Apple had a loud and visible feud with the FBI. Since the authoritarian came to power, this all disappeared from the media. Interestingly, 10 years have gone by since that moment, every single aspect of our lives has become more surveilled, and somehow the US govt has stopped trying to get into phones? *While the CEO is making hand deliveries of 24 karat gold bars to the Oval Office?

TLDR; I think a safe assumption that they are in our devices by now. Fundamentally people misunderstand encryption. Encryption is only as strong as the weakest link. If your signal chats are unencrypted for consumption on your device, then that’s when the unencrypted content can be captured.

For the longest time, Apple stored your iCloud backups encrypted. Looked good in marketing materials, until they casually admitted the decryption key is stored in the same cloud.

Combine this with ICE capturing citizens without due process. If you have a vanilla smart device, you’re doing the surveillance for them. /tinfoilhat

Why was I banned from GrapheneOS? That’s a good question.

Why I was banned from GrapheneOS by Daniel Micay)