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What phone should I buy for privacy? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I bought a Fairphone 3 and put LineageOS on it a few years back and can recommend it. LineageOS is less secure than GrapheneOS as far as I can tell but the privacy aspect is there, as you have a completely degoogled phone. I have some friends that have the same setup on the newer Fairphones and they are also very happy and have a smoother experience than me, because it is a newer phone.

Fairphone is an European country that has a move to open source (https://www.fairphone.com/en/open-source/).

To the compatibility and functionality:

  • SMS and Calling is no problem, VoLTE works and as SMS app I recommend QUICK.
  • AppStore I recommend F-Droid and Aurora Store. With Aurora Store you can download and install all apps that are on the Google Store. Just check, that your Banking Apps and so on support non-Google-Android OSs as some people I know had to switch back because some banks and services only work with Google Services (and that is a shame in my opinion, a Bank should NEVER be dependent on other companies for transactions and authentication. I for my part switched bank because of such a thing.)
  • microG can be used to use apps that need Google services, I do not use it but friends use it and are happy

In general you will find an replacement for every app you now use that is from a big company. Open Source came a long way and most alternatives are even better in my opinion.

Are you writing a book ? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm still in the world and character building phase. Sketching landscapes, rooms and such, writing little short stories to form the characters (my idea is that they have a "memory", don't know if it works in the end).

As for now I'm completely analog, I bought a nice notebook and do everything in it. But when time comes I think I will go with Obsidian as I already use it for my other notes/projects. I think it will be very powerful with the graph-view regarding relationships etc.

Obsidian is not FOSS though, and there are alternatives. I just hadn't the time to look at them.

Edit: Obsidian can be used for free when you do not use their sync features. I use it that way and just have it in a Git-Repo for accessing it on different devices. Obsidian notes are in Markdown so you also do not have some kind of vendor lock, it's just about the links between the notes.

Is "Sign up with proton" a planned feature? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

This feature is (in my opinion) very bad when you think a bit longer about it.

  • You add a dangerous single point of compromise to your accounts. When your Proton account is compromised, the attacker will have access to all other accounts that you have linked, without resetting the password as they can login with the credentials they just gained.

  • I agree with the others here, do NOT have everything in the same basket. I know it is very convenient to have everything in one place but one thing why Google is such a pain is the monopoly and the vendor lock (you can call it ecosystem but lets be real, it is a vendor that locks you into the products). This also comes back to my first point, single point of compromise.

  • Yes Proton is build for privacy, even is now switching to be a foundation with solid share holder rules etc. but we do not know where Proton will be in 10 years (it is like with governments, do not give them the tools to control you just because they are nice now, they can change). If Proton would change into a more data collection company/foundation they would have access to many more data points. All webpages/services you linked your proton account with, track pixels etc.

Let's beat Google by being more respectful to users privacy and not by just copying them, let's be better!

74
The XZ-Backdoor shows again the problem of FOSS maintainers regarding support and donations (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
13 comments fedilink
 

Hi

As we all know the XZ-Backdoor showed how open source can help to find out how and when things happened. You can look back into the source code, commits and comments to see what happened. Many started to talk about what it means regarding open source, and also showed that security is a very important part of computers and software.

But the XZ-Incident showed again one of the biggest problems of FOSS (and OSS), the lack of support the maintainers and contributors get. The maintainer of XZ (before he got replaced by Jia Tan via a social engineer attack), talked about mental issues and overall many things to look after. He was the only maintainer for a library that is used in many big Linux distributions but no one thought maybe to help him or support him.

We all use FOSS projects either knowingly or unknowingly (the XKDC comic comes to mind with the Nebraska maintainer project) and we all love and fight for open and free (libre) software. Simply using and pushing it is not enough we need to support the people that code, test and maintain the projects, libraries, programs that we use. If we don't, it will crash down on us sometime in the future.

When a friend does something for you, you say thank you and maybe buy him/her a beer. Why not do that too for a converter you used or some cool little terminal addition you found and now can't live without it?

As an experiment, make a list of all FOSS/OSS things you use in your daily life that you know of, and then look them up to see if they need funding or in general how they stand. Maybe you can donate to a few of them.

Make FOSS not only a philosophy but also a community that looks after each other.

65
[US] - Biden's NSA nominee defends collecting data on foreigners and Americans alike (www.reuters.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.ch/post/113885

Lieutenant General Timothy D. Haugh is very clear on section 702:

"In my experience it is absolutely essential," he told lawmakers.

New York Times on Section 702: https://www.nytimes.com/article/warrantless-surveillance-section-702.html

A very "good" designed power point of section 702 by the US government: https://www.dni.gov/files/icotr/Section702-Basics-Infographic.pdf

The law text and section 702 (page 4), I had to search way too long to get to that, mostly you just find an overview by a three letter agency to justify the section. It is like the government does not want that you read it in full: https://www.congress.gov/110/plaws/publ261/PLAW-110publ261.pdf

2
[US] - Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges (www.theverge.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874733

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

36
[EU] - Meta's Rush to Topple Twitter Sets Up Looming Privacy Debate (www.darkreading.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.ch/post/91950

Meta is one of the biggest privacy offenders,, not suprising that they already seem to break EU privacy law.

Some section sof the article:

Upcoming data privacy regulations are preventing Meta's new microblogging app "Threads" from launching in European Union (EU) markets. Experts say this is only the beginning of the privacy battle facing te Twitter clone.

Judging by its entry in the Apple app store, it's no wonder that Threads is being shielded from EU scrutiny. Browsing history, geolocations, health and financial information, and much more are all up for grabs. There's even a dedicated category for "sensitive information" which, according to Apple's documentation, includes "racial or ethnic data, sexual orientation, pregnancy or childbirth information, disability, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political opinion, genetic information, or biometric data."

36
[EU/UK] - EU lawmakers warn UK of end to data sharing agreement (www.theregister.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.ch/post/88668

I'm still reading into it but this seems to be another step of the UK-Gov to further attack the privacy of their citizens and to circumvent EU privacy laws.

Short section of the article:

It would authorize the UK government to issue political directions to the UK data protection body, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the groups say. And it would enable the sharing of European personal data to other countries with reduced protections.

And as it seems (not suprising), the UK already has applied to the APEC-Framework Cross-Border data transfer:

The UK, the groups observe, has already applied to join the US-backed Cross-Border Privacy Rules Declaration, which allows international data transfers under the arguably weak Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework.

Bill Law text: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-protection-and-digital-information-bill-impact-assessments/data-protection-and-digital-information-no-2-bill-european-convention-on-human-rights-memorandum#summary-of-the-bill

Open letter against this bill: https://peoplevsbig.tech/open-letter-to-the-eu-commission-regarding-uk-s-data-bill

Edit:

  • Added EU to the country tag because it also concerns EU citizens.
  • Added the APEC section
1
A place to have no fear of asking dumb questions (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
0 comments fedilink
 

I switched to Linux a few years ago and I remember how scary it was. No one in my surroundings used Linux back then, therefore I was on my own. I had lots of questions and had to use try and error, more error in the beginning I have to say.

Let's help new comers to the world of Linux to have an easy start, to then dive into the wonderful rabbit hole that FOSS is.