Privacy is a legend

*client calls in*

Me: good morning, how can I help you?
Client: my ip is blocked, could you unblock it for me?
Me: certainly! What's your ip address? Then I'll have a look.
Client: I'm not giving you my ip?! That's too privacy sensitive.
Me: 😶
Me: 😶
Me: 😶
Me: sir, I'm very keen on my privacy myself but without that information I can't do much for you 😬
Client: ah so you're refusing to help me?
Me: not like that, it's just very hard to lift an ip block for me when I don't know the ip address.
Client: you just don't want to help, fine.

*click*

😶

Data privacy is a thing of past...

So, recently, a person in the US was arrested for stalking people.

The evidence was some data from google, a work computer and from a VPN provider.

Let's take a quick look at that VPN provider. It (PureVPN) says on their privacy policy page that they do NOT store logs.

Guess from what VPN provider the FBI got those logs? Yes, PureVPN!

Althouh I'm happy they got this creep off the street, it still means that PureVPN has been lying to its entire customer base.

I personally hope that their reputation will be destroyed now because this should never happen.

A screenshot I took from their privacy policy page is attached below.

Keep your eyes open when choosing a VPN provider!

So someone is constantly ddos'ing the privacy/security blog.

Just wondering if they really think that 500 hits a second will bring the site down?!

500 h/s consumes about 0.1 percent CPU and 1mb/s.

At least give me a challenge 😥

Started talking about Pi-Hole (still trying to install this fucker by the way) today with a collegue.

He had it installed and showed me around a little.

CW: Alright give me an example then I'll show you wildcard blocking.
Me: google.com 😅
CW: *enters and saves it. then tries to load anything related to google.com*

*no google.com domains load, all give a blocked error*

Me: Works great!
CW: Yup.
...
...
...
...
Me: Uhm so you aren't like surprised that I went with google.com as example and that I'd genuinely would block it?!
CW: No, why would I be?
Me: Well, most people consider me paranoid/crazy the second they find out I don't want to use google/google's services.
CW: well that's fucking retarded. why would anyone redicule you for not using something you don't want to use. You'll have your reasons.
Me: So if I'd say i do it for privacy reasons, you wouldn't find that redicilous?
CW: No, why would I? Not using google (and for that matter facebook etc) for privacy reasons is very logical really.

FUCKING. THANK. YOU.

Dance like no one's watching. Encrypt like everyone is.

People use duckduckgo on chrome while they are signed in.. I mean come on.. Seriously??

Hello guys. So after I posted the rant about me blocking Google and Facebook through my hosts file, some people commented with the idea of creating a gitlab page with more privacy tips etc.

Well, that is turning into a project (actual website) that I initially started alone but @ewpratten joined the 'team' as frontender!

He'll be doing the front end and I'll be doing the backend :).

I think this will be my first ever (active) collab so I'm pretty excited =D.

Suddenly everyone is updating their privacy policy.

So, as everyone knows on here by now (or, a lot of ranters), I am a fervid privacy person.

Appearantly a new surveillance law in my country is about to extend mass surveillance/hacking a lot. So here a rundown of what they are about to be allowed to do (stuff that is not okay imo and this is the reason I am so pro-privacy):

- Mass Data Gathering: The intelligence agency over here (lets call it IA from now) can pretty much record everything send through the country.

- Extra Protection: If they want to conduct surveillance on journalists/lawyers, they have to go through extra channels first at least.

- Data/survaillance sharing: The IA is allowed to share their raw/filtered data with foreign intelligence agencies without limits. Also, they're allowed to conduct surveillance based on foreign requests.

- Secret DNA database: A secret DNA database will be created which can store the DNA profiles of any person who has commited any kind of crime. These profiles are allowed to be stored for a maximum of 30 years. This database is allowed to be shared with any foreign intelligence agency.

- Hacking: Unlimited power to hack any device deemed neccesary to hack in relation to crime. From computers to smartphones and so on. Also, it's allowed to use zero-days without reporting them to the vendor (we have seen what can go wrong with that through the ShadowBrokers scandal).

- Automatic Database Collection: They are allowed to directly tap into any database they see required (banks, healthcare, messaging services and so on). Practically this can lead to backdoors being build in because if you don't cooperate, you can go to prison. (mother of god I am not using anything closed source anymore if possible).

So yeah, this is pretty much the reason why I am so privacy consious. This country is fucked.

I get that fingerprint authentication is very convenient but I'd never use it (not even for privacy reasons that much).

When someone guesses/gets your password you can just say "alright let's change my password"

Imagine that with fingerprints: "yeah sure let me change my fingers"

😆

Clearly Mozilla is the villain here for prioritising privacy and personal freedom over censorship, control, and surveillance. Oh, our parental controls don't work! WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN! wtf

*in a chat with a fellow devRanter who is aiming more and more towards privacy things*
*hmmm shall i tell him about my Firefox privacy addons... *
*nahh let's not get too intrusive*

3 minutes later

Him: hey bro, what Firefox addons do you have?

😄😊😂

Hey guys,

I have decided to stop worrying about privacy. I have nothing to hide so why should I even care.

I just created an Instagram and a Facebook account and I also installed WhatsApp again and I ordered an Amazon Alexa and a Google home device as well. These voice assistants are just so useful 😊.

I am also gonna use windows again, everything just works and it is the most used operating system so it has to be the best one! It is way securer than Linux because it is not open source and thus hackers can't find vulnerabilities because they can't see the code.

Prank calls then:
"Is your refrigerator running?"
"Yes? Why?"
"Well... you better go catch it! Hehehe-" *click*

Prank calls now:
"Is your server running?"
"Yes? Why?"
"Well... you better update your privacy policy! Hehehe-" *click*

In may this year, the new mass surveillance law in the Netherlands went into effect. Loads of people were against it with the arguments that everyone's privacy was not protected well enough, data gathered through dragnet surveillance might not be discarded quickly after the target data was filtered out and the dragnet surveillance wouldn't be that 'targeted'.

They were put into the 'paranoid' corner mostly and to assure enough support/votes, it was promised that:
- dragnet surveillance would be done as targeted as possible.
- target data would be filtered out soon and data of non-targets would be discarded automatically by systems designed for that (which would have to be out in place ASAP).
- data of non-targets would NOT be analyzed as that would be a major privacy breach.
- dragnet surveillance could only be done if enough proof would be delivered and if the urgency could justify the actions.

A month ago it was already revealed that there has been a relatively (in this context) high amount of cases where special measures (dragnet surveillance/non-target hacking to get to targets and so on) were used when/while there wasn't enough proof or the measures did not justify the urgency.
Privacy activists were anything but happy but this could be improved and the guarantees which were given to assure privacy of innocent people were in place according to the politicians... we'll see how this goes..

Today it was revealed that:
-there are no systems in place for automatic data discarding (data of innocent civilians) and there are hardly any protocols for how to handle not-needed or non-target data.
- in real life, the 'as targeted dragnet as possible' isn't really as targeted as possible. There aren't any/much checks in place to assure that the dragnets are aimed as targeted as possible.
- there isn't really any data filtering which filters out non-targers, mostly everything is analyzed.

Dear Dutch government and intelligence agency; not so kindly to fuck yourself.

Hardly any of the promised checks which made that this law could go through are actually in place (yet).

Fuck you.

Which asshole designer and stupid website owners decide to embed 110 trackers on a single page!!
I mean sure some ads add their own trackers....but THIS is beyond shit
R.I.P Privacy

As I'm a privacy conscious person and people often call me paranoid, i decided to have a look at the definition of paranoia.

Paranoia appearantly consists of:
- having intense fearful/anxious feelings.
- delusional thinking, thinking that things which aren't true are true.

These are the most common symptoms I could find on every health website.

The interesting part is that neither of those things apply to me... (not delusional either, the things I try to protect myself from are quite real)

................🤔

I'm currently programming on the cms REST api for the privacy site (its finally getting somewhere by the way) and I just noticed that I'm programming way cleaner and WITH comments.

My subconcious is probably keeping the fact that the entirety of devRant will see my code in a not too far future 😅

Alright, I just wanna start off by saying that I'm a huge privacy guy. I hate all kinds of data collection companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon and all that. Yet I'm forced to have a Google account for certain reasons.

But the thing that I want to say is that I often talk to people to express my concerns about privacy. And most people agree and say that "yeah sure that's some scary shit" but don't actually do much about it.

And the thing is. If you just browse through all of the options in your Google account. You can turn off and remove almost all data collection/ad serving and identification options entirely.

And yet purple complain about that Google sees what you buy and shit. Turn everything off. Get and adblocker and get noscript. The single best browser add-on out there. It's almost that easy to get at least acceptable amounts of Internet privacy.

Please, don't ever ignore the significance of in Internet privacy. And the potential issue of net neutrality. Don't be ignorant. Don't be the client.

Dear Telegram, the fact that you're using a service which provides app usage/metrics/analytics kind of is not nice.

"But they've got the right to!"

Of course they do. But, when you advertise yourself as a messaging app focused on privacy, I expect you to behave that way.

And yes, we know your crypto is broken as fuck but that's not the point right now.

Oh and yeah, the next blog item will probably be about Telegram and how not-privacy friendly it is.

I just updated my website to be GDPR compilant. (hopefully). It was the last one.
I'm so pissed right now. I have invested tens of hours for this FUCKING SHIT. I'm not against privacy regulations - I appreciate them. But this is not the way to enforce them IMO.

So the country I live in is going to get a huge mass surveillance law. Currently we're trying to force a referendum because this is highly (privacy) intrusive. We can still sign them for a little bit and a friend of mine hadn't done that yet. His reasoning was that it I isn't binding anyways.

We've got this John Oliver equivilant in the Netherlands who did a piece about this.

I put it on for my friend saying that I just wanted him to watch it. If he wouldn't change his mind afterwards, I wouldn't pressure him or anything.

We watched it.

Afterwards he looked at me with eyes like 😵😧😷😲😮😫.

"they'll REALLY be able to do this shit!?!"
"where can I sign this fucking thing to get this referendum going?"

So I asked him why he suddenly was all for it.

"I'm not much of a privacy guy but this shit just crossed a fucking line".

He's going to sign it as fast as possible 😁

Real analog advertising for DuckDuckGo.
I have been a little bit surprised by that!

The text is:
"You want the same internet but with more privacy?
Leave it to us."

Could be because the advertising spaces became rather cheap after the Corona slowdown, or DDG really takes off now.

It's funny to see how a coworker of mine and me are very similar minded on some privacy stuff. He's a very cool/open guy and just a regular consumer (used the default services etc) but he shares quite some of my views. This is a convo we had today:

*got to the WhatsApp subject somehow*
Him: oh right, you didn't use that haha
Me: yeah 😅
Him: why was that again, privacy reasons or something, right? xD
Me: uhm yes *help*
Him: Well fair enough.
Me: so you'd think I'm right? I mean it uses end to end crypto... (I'm entirely with him in the next few lines but I always approach it carefully)
Him: they veeeery probably have some kinda fucking masterkey.
Me: why'd you think that?
Him: it has over a billion users, the owner is facebook, fb is directly integrated with several mass surveillance programs, they are known to work closely with one particular one, the intelligence interests are way too high for letting such an opportunity pass and after all, THE FUCKER IS CLOSED SOURCE AKA NO ONE CAN FUCKING VERIFY THE CRYPTO NOR THE APP ITSELF.
Me: I agree haha 😅
Him: it's not rocket science, it's modern day mass tracking/surveillance logic :)

I like that guy.

So I said I'd rant this yesterday but a long night of server management came in the way!

Yesterday @trogus mentioned in a comment that he thinks everyone deserves a place where they feel like home and this is that place for me along with some sub-places which derived from here.

So in this linux/foss chat yesterday I was trying to get into an IRC chatroom (all people there (or at least a lot) are also like minded on privacy/security). I don't want to use email signup if not absolutely neccesary (don't judge me, everyone there own thing) and I found out very late (after 20 minutes of instructions from a fellow devRanter) that this thing required email signup. I didn't wanna do that so I said that and started typing a whole essay of why I'd rather not do that and what my reasons are (privacy partly) but then the guy said: "haha you got it man".

For one second I forgot that I don't have to explain myself over there on stuff regarding privacy that a lot of people would find paranoid. Man, that feels like being home :).

It's high time.. delete uc browser (if you are using)

I have a pi-hole setup in my network for ad and tracker blocking and am dual-booting my pc.
I recently noticed just how much data windows really is trying to gather from my machine.
So I took the pi-hole graph and you can VERY clearly see the os switch. All this useless traffic coming from windows. (This is with all the privacy relevant options inside the settings already turned off!)

Your privacy is compromised

I just wanted to share a quote that I think is completely magnificent.

"Saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

- Edward Snowden

Hahaha, the DPC (Data Protection Commission) has asked Facebook in a letter to stop transferring Europeans' data to the US.

Since the Privacy Shield agreement is off the table, it's illegal regardless to send any kind of PII data from the EU to the US.

How about we stop nicely asking and start giving fines in the form of millions every time PII data is transferred from the EU to the US by Facebook?

If the EU could grow some balls, that'd be fucking great.

Working on the privacy site.

DAMN frontend can be a FUCKING pain in the ass!

I JUST WANT TO GET A SIMPLE BOOTSTRAP PAGE WORKING, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FROM A BACKENDER? 😭

Trend of the day:
1. Facebook is really compromising user privacy, will delete my account!
2. Post about deleting Fb account to twitter, instagram, etc
3. "Ok google, what is privacy?"
4. Find a random app in play store and allow access regardless

I hate Linux so much. I mean, how could anyone of you barbarians like it??

I don't understand the hate for windows. It's secure, emphasizes privacy, and it's Microsoft. What's not to love?

Linux is just proprietary malware.

Programming on the privacy website together with 404response, this is awesome!

It's great to have someone who's good at frontend while you suck balls at it so that I can fully focus on the backend :D. (ewpratten if you still want to you can join 404response, he can explain you everything he's doing and how you can help)

!!privacy
!!political

I had a discussion with a coworker earlier.

I owed him for lunch the other day, and he suggested I pay him back either with cash (which I didn't have), Venmo, or just by him lunch the next time (which I ended up doing).

I asked about Venmo, and he said it was like paypal, but always free. that sounded a bit off -- because how are they in business if it's always free? -- so I looked it up, and paid special attention to their privacy policy.

The short of it: they make money by selling your information. That's worth far more than charging users a small fee when sending $5 every few weeks. Sort of what I expected when I heard "always free," but what surprised me is just how much they collect. (In retrospect, I really shouldn't have been surprised at all...)

Here's an incomplete list:
* full name, physical address, email, DoB, SSN (or other government IDs, depending on country)
* Complete contact list (phone numbers, names, photos)
* Browser/device fingerprint
* (optional) Your entire Facebook feed and history
* (optional) all of your Facebook friends' contact info
* Your Twitter feed
* Your FourSquare activity
(The above four ostensibly for "fraud prevention")
* GPS data
* Usage info about the actual service
* Other users' usage info (e.g. mentioning you)
* Financial info (the only thing not shared with third parties)

Like, scary?

And, of course, they share all of this with their parent company, PayPal. (The privacy policy does not specify what PayPal does with it, nor does it provide any links that might describe it, e.g. PayPal's "info-shared-by-third-parties" privacy policy)

So I won't be using Venmo. ever.

I mentioned all of this to my coworker, and he just doesn't understand. at all. He even asks "So what are they going do with that, send me ads? like they already do?"

I told him why I think it's scary. Everything from them freely selling all of your info, to someone being able to look through your entire online life's history, to being able to masquerade around as you, to even reproducing your voice (e.g. voice clips collected by google assistant), to grouping people by political affiliations.

He didn't have much to say about any of them, and actually thought the voice thing was really cool. (All I could think of was would happen if the "news" had that ability....) All of his other responses were "that doesn't bother me at all" and/or "using all of these services is so convenient."

but what really got me was his reaction to the last one.

I said, "If you're part of the NRA, for example, you'd be grouped with Republicans. If they sell all of this information, which they do, and they don't really care who buys it or what they do with it... someone could look through the data and very very easily target those political groups."

His response? "I don't have to worry about that. I'm a Democrat, and have always voted Democrat. I'll tell anyone that."

Like.
That's basically saying every non-democrat is someone you should be wary of and keep an eye on. That's saying Democrats are the norm and everyone else is deviant and/or wrong.

and I couldn't say anything after this because... no matter what I said, it would start a political conflict, and would likely end with me being fired (since the owner is also a democrat, and they're very buddy-buddy). "What if they target democrats?" -> "They already do!" or "What if democrats use it against others?" -> "They deserve it for being violent and racist, but we never would" (except, you know, that IRS/tea-party incident for example...)

But like, this is coming from someone who firmly believes conservatives are responsible for all of the violence and looting and rioting and mass shootings in the country. ... even when every single instance has been by committed by democrats. every. single. one.

Just...
jfl;askjfasflkj.

He doesn't understand the need for privacy, and his world view is just... he actually thinks everyone with different beliefs is wrong and dangerous.

I don't even know how to deal with people like this. and with how prevalent this mindset is... coupled with the aforementioned privacy concerns... it's honestly *terrifying.*

Hai devRant! Working on the privacy app and want opinions on the page for details on specific apps (as in, applications so web/app/mobile or even embedded?!).

Yeah I know that the aligning is deffo not perfect but hey, gotta start somewhere :). Detail: everything you see here (the content and actually also the icon path) is rendered from the database already.

Tips/opinions?

I am trying to understand something for a while. devRant is full of privacy advocates and to be honest, part of it is almost taken by a group of people that call other people random swear words people because they are using a particular product of a company.

I will raise some points and will try to discuss them with other people in comments.

I will stick with Google. Since it looks like it's the most hated one. A company that has built one of the most intelligent infrastructure, the most popular mobile operating system and of course, the best search engine currently available.

The problem everyone sees is the privacy. Google tracks the search history to give users a better experience and show relevant ads. You might not need this "better experience". In case you don't know, you can turn off personalized search any time to make sure Google doesn't track. Same goes with Google Chrome, you can turn off all the data it is sending to servers in settings. You can simply not sign in if you don't anything to be synchronised.

An argument is Google should be opt-in rather than opt-out. But the general users are not tech-savvy. And yes, going to settings and turning on personalised search is a lot of work for a huge amount of people. Trust me, I worked in IT before. If they find other search engine giving them a good experience without changing anything in the settings, they will just simply move to that engine.

What interests me most if how people back DuckDuckGo. First of all, not all parts of DDG is not open source (it's fucking not, you can argue all day). Parts of it is closed because of licensing issues.

That is perfectly fine to privacy community. But it's not when Chrome is closed source for almost the same reason. I mean when you're using DDG, you are supporting a US-based company that has privacy all over its face and using closed source application on their server. Have you not learned anything from history?

You might be wondering about my obsession with Google. It hurts me when I see a giant company whose popular software is open source is bashed like this. Google has made huge contributions to open source communities. Chromium, Android, Kubernetes, Angular, GoLang, TensorFlow etc.

And PRISM, how do you know that DDG is not part of it? it's US-based after all.

I just saw an article that used a video with a title "TNW - Aral Balkan - Free Is A Lie | The Next Web" while asking us to switch to DDG. Ummm....DDG is also free right?

Maybe we should raise concerns with the US gov first rather than Google.

Mother of god, choosing a topic for today's security/privacy blog post is hard!

I have too much choice 😅

Went to see Jason Bourne last night. No spoilers, but I'm guessing this is how the writers came up with the story:

Writer 1: Let's make it super techie
W2: Yeah, that way it's about current issues, like Internet privacy.
W1: Should we hire a tech consultant so we get things right?
W2: Nah, I saw the Matrix once, I understand computers.

Actual line from film:
"Use SQL to corrupt their database"
😑

The worst thing I’ve seen a dev do is create a social sharing platform that sells its user data to the highest bidder and then asks for forgiveness after the privacy horse is out of the barn.

I hope I'll be able to release the new/refreshed version of the security/privacy blog today.

Feel free to test stuff out and report back when it breaks!

Also, feel free to pentest it. The only thing I ask is to, if you find any vulnerabilities, report them instead of passing them to malicious people/abusing them.

And yes, post sorting will be fixed ;)

I managed to get a group of people to use an open source and privacy respecting service instead of its proprietary (surveillance) competitors today.

The experience was good for everyone and I wouldn't be surprised if at least some people who participated will remember this good working FLOSS solution.

My work is done here for the day :)

devRant is truly amazing, a social network where I don't have to give up on privacy by giving out my number to confirm that I am legit when I'd use something as a VPN to protect my identity (unlike twitter facebook and google)

Thanks for giving a fuck about privacy and not giving a fuck about my data

I find it so infuriating when someone uploads a lot of data containing other people's data as well without asking those people if that's alright with them. (Contact information, address book, etc).

That you don't care about that/privacy is your choice, even your goddamn right but then please don't take other peoples right to privacy/their own choice away in the fucking process.

Everyone is updating their privacy policy because of GDPR while my mom still busts into my room without knocking.... She hasn't read the GDPR has she?

Just decided to try brave browser. Not to actually try it out but to see if it calls home or not and what the default search engine is.

As for a browser which advertises itself as very privacy friendly, I would expect it to not call home and have at least duckuckgo or searx as default search engine.

5-6 calls home every damn time I open it and google is the default search engine.

How the fuck would you call that privacy friendly?!

I want to be PROGRAMMING on the freaking privacy site already, not having to search for icons, download them in the right color/format etc.

Fucking hell. (although finding good/fitting icons is a funny challenge though :P)

My dystopian fuckwad of a government just blocked duckduckgo.

China just took some of our land, so they got around to banning chinese apps on local internet. And while they were at it, for no reason they blocked a bunch of privacy apps and duckduckgo. Which is an American company.

How fucking convenient.

There is this service that I want to use (wont name it for privacy/legal reasons) and I have created a trial account which gives me a limited access to their apis. However the usage is where things are interesting.
The api access is restricted to some 1000 calls per trial account. But also they have a explorer option which lets to have the functionality as a web app like a dashboard and the explorer usage has unlimited access.

Now since I didnt want to exhaust my api limit, I let my service call the explorer apis instead. Is this ethically wrong or it is the fault of the service providers that they have such a big gaping hole in their licensing?

So I've been reading a lot about this #deletefacebook trend across devrant lately. And frankly I'm a little concerned.

As per my understanding, everyone wants to delete Facebook because they're harvesting data. Learning more about us.

While I would agree that I want my privacy. I am a little surprised at how fast this trend is picking up. People are turning a blind eye on everything else they do online just to assume they have privacy.

Let's put this Into perspective, shall we?

You are afraid of letting Facebook harvest your data yet you watch videos on YouTube which is owned by Google. You may even proceed to removing your Google account and use a stripped down version of Chromium to protect yourself from these companies yet you're using a Windows, Mac, iPhone, or Android all of which may be harvesting your data behind the scenes. Some may argue that they have stripped down their android phones but don't take into consideration that you are still using apps on your phone that may be collecting your data.

Let's say that you manage to get out of every sort of technology, you should remember that companies like Facebook also check data about you through your friends.

You use platforms like DuckduckGo assuming that they might not be collecting data about you in some way. I don't think there is anyway for you to prove that these privacy companies don't collect our data.

I don't know why everyone seems to be interested in this trend. I absolutely don't see a point in it. If anything, things I see are super relevant to me.

Finally deleted WhatsApp!

Sorry for being late, stuffs came inbetween!

I have done a few privacy rants/posts before but why not another one. @tahnik did one a few days ago so I thought I'd do a new one myself based on his rant.

So, online privacy. Some people say it's entirely dead, that's bullshit. It's up to an individual, though, how far they want to go as for protecting it.

I personally want to retain as much control over my data as possible (this seems to be a weird thing these days for unknown reasons...). That's why I spend quite some time/effort to take precautions, read myself into how to protect my data more and so on.

'Everyone should have the choice of what services they use' - fully agreed, no doubt about that.

I just find one thing problematic. Some services/companies handle data in a way or have certain business models which takes the control which some people want/have over their data away when you communicate with someone using that service.

Some people (like me) don't want anything to do with google but even when I want to email my best fucking friend, I lose the control over that email data since he uses gmail.

So, when someone chooses to use gmail and I *HAVE* to email them, my choice is gone.

TO BE VERY CLEAR: I'm not blaming that on the users, I'm blaming that on the company/service.

Then for example, google analytics. It's a very good/powerful when you're solely looking at its functions.
I just don't want to be part of their data collection as I don't want to get any data into the google engine.

There's a solution for that: installing an addon in order to opt out.

I'm sorry, WHAT?! --> I <-- have to install an addon in order to opt out of something that is happening on my own motherfucking computer?! What the actual fuck, I don't call that a fucking solution. I'll use Privacy Badger + hosts files to block that instead.

Google vs 'privacy' friendly search engines - I don't trust DDG completely because their backend is closed/not available to the public but I'd rather use them then a search engine which is known to be integrated into PRISM/other surveillance engines by default.

I don't mind the existence of certain services, as long as they don't integrated you with data hungry companies/mass surveillance without you even using their services.

Now lets see how fast the comment section explodes!

Not to say anyone here is right or wrong about this, but I just do t get the whole privacy paranoia. Yes, I get that our rights are being violated. Yes I know I need to be aware and concerned.

People use specials rims, VPN software, etc... The bottom line is every keystroke, SMS, voice call, search text, historical reference... every piece of digital communication is recorded (At least in the US).

The sad reality is I can be as angry as I want, but unless I forego using tech or leaving the house, there is nothing I can do about it.

I await your comments, both positive and negative.

A big FUCK YOU to chrome, and a big FUCK YOU to google in generally. First the hell that is code.org, then the chrome. I genuinely want to open a dictionary in google to see if the word "privacy" is in there. Sure, first it was tracking users with by making them agree to a long ass TOS no one wants to read except lawyers, then barely even giving any info and asking for consent with YOUR data, but this is too far. For all you that dont know, LanSchool is an application that allows teachers to see students screens, internet history and more. Its the reason kids can't play games in English class. But most importantly, its a chrome extension. We have to do assignments from home right? So when we logon to the school account from home, LANSCHOOL GETS DOWNLOADED ANYRACKS EVERYTHING I DO. It pains me how teachers can view so much information unfairly because of some unknowing students, my friends privacy was unfairly in the hands of google and the school system. Right when I found out about tit (~2 mins after i first logged on) i made an Ubuntu VM just for goddamn google docs. Back to my friend, he went on some websites not to be considered appropriate, and got in huge trouble. He was completely unaware of the fact that they could see his screen, and I resent google for allowing a third party to manipulate my PERSONAL COMPUTER without my consent. Die google, you ruined android, which had so much potential, and now the web and virtual privacy. You should be <strike>ashamed</strike> dead, and I hope in the future you realize that one day people will have common sense.

Alright so the security blog is coming up soon (as in, days probably) and I'm working hard together with 404response on the privacy site.

I do want to gain some insight into visitor numbers and so on but OF COURSE, commercial/closed source options are a no-go for me!

I am thinking about maybe using Piwik with all the privacy options enabled Also self hosted obviously. What do you guys/gals think?

Firefox is not a “chrome alternative”. Firefox is a better browser. Even if we completely keep the chromium privacy out of question, Firefox is still faster and Firefox devtools are still waaaay superior.

Soooo, after raising my issue regarding microsoft's massive invasion of privacy and removing control from the user a couple of my friends, ahem I mean "aquaintances", said this to me:
"Get a mac! So clean, lightweight and user friendly and won't spy on you".

Clearly people who never looked at their list of background processes and installed little snitch. I swear, every couple of minutes something is trying to phone home to Apple.

Now I've been pretty open to all platforms (Win/Mac/*NIX/misc) until recently but this has reached a point it is no longer funny.

When I get a moment I'm gonna shove linux so far up that machine's arse Steve Jobs is gonna feel it in the ether!

Because the RSS feed is still down, hereby.

The post about what I personally take for security and privacy measures is up.

Hopefully you can learn something from it or even email me some tips!

Kudos to @trogus and @dfox for introducing the new refresh button on the nav bar instead of the odd position at the end of the comments.
It's looking awesome now.

Note: If the screenshot violates anyones privacy. Let me know. It is just a random screenshot

PSD2 is into effect in the Netherlands.

Because let's enable others to fuck over other peoples privacy!

Back to cash as much as possible it is.

Fucking hell 😡

I just got denied access to a metro station because I use the old BuzzyPazz over the new Mobib card, that digitally authorizes you and knows where you are, and when. I refuse to use it over privacy concerns and because my BuzzyPazz is indefinitely valid. LONG LIVE FUCKING TECHNOLOGY, DESIGNED NOT FOR LEGALLY GETTING ON A FUCKING METRO, BUT FUCKING DATA COLLECTION!!!!

I think we're going two sides:

For one, more and more technology is being developed/engineered which is even more and more and more intrusive as for personal privacy, I'm genuinely worried how this'll go as privacy isn't just a about not exposing certain things like passwords/bank account details and so on, it's also about being an individual who has their own thoughts, opinions and so on. If we keep taking that away more and more often, society will change and go towards the Orwell scenario (we're on our way there right now). We can change this as software/design/server engineers but that's up to us and I sadly don't see that happening quickly, also due to the 'nothing to hide' bullshit.

Second one is that were going more and more towards open source.
This is a good thing as this:
- gives freedom to devs around the world to improve software and/or modify it to suit their needs.
- gives people the opportunity to look through the source code of softwares in order to verify it as for backdoors and find security vulnerabilities which otherwise can remain hidden for the general public while spying agencies have way more resources to go vulnerability hunting.

For the people who think this isn't a good idea (even more open source), without it we'd be completely fucked as for moving forward/security/privacy. (I can give examples if wanted).

So my friend who was talking about Privacy and stuff about a minute ago is now using Google and Facebook.

Why?

Um.. yea I've published a GDPR contact email on our website, for issues about our privacy policy. Not sure if you Chinese marketing fucks behind the GFW know what this regulation is about though. I'm not interested in your stupid moulds.
Perhaps that firewall of China could use some further tightening... 😒

> Open private browsing on Firefox on my Debian laptop
> Find ML Google course and decided to start learning in advance (AI and ML are topics for next semester)
**Phone notifications: YouTube suggests Machine Learning recipes #1 from Google**
> Not even logged in on laptop
> Not even chrome
> Not even history enabled
> Not fucking even windows
😒😒😒
The lack of privacy is fucking infuriating!
....
> Added video to watched latter
I now hate myself for bitting

Unpopular opinion, privacy is dead.

For fuck sake, stop complaining about the lack of privacy everywhere.
I'm not saying that worrying about your privacy is bad, I also really want to be protected and I know the risks we run when put our information on the net, I care about my data, but please stop acting like whoever uses Google, Facebook or Windows is a fool and you're the only genius around.

Because guess, I use their services and when I use them I'm explicitly authorizing them to process my data, to track me and to create a profile about me. It's an exchange, I know what they're doing and I've control on the data I'm serving them.

If, for some reason, I want to be more protected then I fucking use some open source iper-safe alternative, and that's it.

Seriously, I'm happy if you use those fancy alternative services for everything (for your reasons, I don't care) and I'm glad if you decided to don't use any closed source service anymore, but please, stop screaming against who uses them

" this page uses cookies"
"We've updated our privacy policy"
*30 sec full screen ad* OR "please turn off your adblocker and refresh"
"Would you like to take a survey?"
"Click to read more"
"You've reached your free articles for the month. Please subscribe!"

Jesus fucking Christ! Is it such a sin to read articles in peace? How does anybody use your shitty site. How does anybody PAY for your shitty site?! Fuck your articles. Why do companies think this is a good model?!

Guy using VPN:
why would anybody use tor unless he hides something?

Me (using Tor):
why would anyone use VPN unless he hides something?

In my opinion there is no difference in using Tor than in using VPN, it's all about privacy. I would consider Tor as an free alternative for your everyday privacy needs, if you can't afford VPN, or am I wrong?

Hopefully seeing the app that I've been working on for months officially released and on both the App store and google play store.

I say this because I've been waiting months and months for my boss and some other people at this company to be done with the privacy policy + terms of use for the app (which is needed due to how the app works) and I want to resign soon due to minimum wage + 2 hour commute twice daily + want a proper development culture (get treated as the IT guy at work)

Obviously an error that the application caused, and not something artificially induced by Microsoft not liking the fact that I don't have their Photos as default (which actually I do. IrfanView may have left some extensions to itself but so fucking what Microshit?!)

Freedom of choice when it comes to opening stuff with the application you like? In Windows 10, it seems to be non-existent.

Lest we forget that there is such a thing as privacy and freedom of choice.

"I have nothing to hide."

I admit, I did utter these disgraceful words once. But I now take privacy seriously.

What is really sad and potentially dangerous is the fact that younger people do not give a fuck about privacy. Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram - these people use these apps and do not pay ANY attention to what might be the consequences of their actions.

The more data they own, the more they own you. We should start a privacy basics course in high school. Things could get out of hand in the future, as if they already aren't.

I start with the features I want for sure and then i start looking at what data I really really need to store. Then I start looking at what data I don't have to store because of privacy reasons anyways.

Next stop is looking at the security.

When that all looks good, I simply start programming!

With the recent mark zuckerberg hearing, a ton of websites have actually changed their privacy policies and terms of service, to be much more transparent, so it did have a good impact, but the thought that it took that, to implement those changes is infuriating

So apparently my university is doing a privacy promotion event... if only I had the time to go..

"Google control is not privacy #savelocal news" this was flying over Google io

Instagram just imported my birthday from my Facebook, which btw, was not specifically linked when I used to post on Facebook.

Mark Fucking Fuckface Fuckerberg's team is destroying Instagram now. Ffs. 😒😒

Why is everyone okay with this invasion of privacy? And when is telegram launching an image sharing platform?

Goddamn, people who rant against the GDPR make me rage...
Making privacy issues more complex for both user and provider is exactly the damn purpose! People who dont care about their private data make me sick! These ignorant fucks get to elect my government? Wtf! GDPR means more work for companies but that also means companies who actually care will implement it and everyone else can gladly fuck off! Keep your stuff in the states where you can build your own manipulative society...

Damn... I should relax a bit...

Privacy is going bust
We're robots now
Chewing on our politians delicate ARSE

Fuck this shit
I'm going underground
Cold War Two awaits us.
The net shall be our shelter.
They blew it. We dig deeper.

Jesus Christ are we assraped

This is a reminder for the people that keep saying ApPle CarEs FOr My priVacY BeCausE thEy stoPed 3rD PartY aPps fRoM cOllEcTiNg mY dAta

Today I learned in a cafe why (some) users think that Facebook doesn't allow them data control. Due to drunkness I'm paraphrasing here, but it went something like this:

- I don't trust Facebook, because my posts that I make are visible to people that I didn't want to have it be seen to.

> Audience controls. Use them.

- This guy in town sent me a friend request, why would he be able to??1!1

> He and you share hometown. So probably friend suggestions based on you both explicitly sharing location, or he just visited your profile on name and wanted to get in touch with you. Socializing on the internet, it exists.

That's the kind of user that's roaming the facebooks on the internets and the googles I guess? The type of user that's surprised that their Facebook games and nametests expose information that they explicitly consent to? Give me a break. I care deeply about privacy, but this is just ridiculous.

On a different note, why the fuck is not a single one of those very same fucking Facebook users worried about 25-ish% of websites running their JavaScript (which you can check and block using NoScript and co.), which is the *actual* privacy threat? But muh nametests!!!

Fuck ignorant users!!!

If you're using snapchat you might want to go on it immediately and change your privacy settings.
New update came out, they added a map with everybody's locations down to a couple of meters in accuracy... And the feature is on by default for EVERYONE to see, not just your friends.

What the actual fuck were they thinking?? Just think of all the ways this can go wrong.

Rant!

When I'm in my "zone" working please for the love of god don't stand behind me staring at me and my screen, every time you do that you make me feel that my privacy is being raped and I can't do anything about it !!

Rant !Dev

News says FB took a huge plunge and Zuckerburg lost $15 billion in 1 day and this is the result of all the privacy breaches

I'm looking at the price charts and even from my memory, it's still higher than when I checked last time.

Am I missing something or it seems news these days and the headline journalists are just monkeys finding the quickest way to get attention and some money? And reporting things out of context... Too me it just looks like a market correction... Just like bitcoins...

What the fuck is privacy?

-Facebook (2004-present)

Why has "privacy minded" people fallen for the illusion that Signal is good?

- It is centralized, which means you can't have control
- It uses google play services
- Using third party servers to send gifs
- The apk has flaws
- There is a reason F-Droid dont want it in its repo

I really can't wrap my head around why "privacy minded" people would embrace it.

I fucking hate the Safari browser to death.
This piece of disk space waste is 50% of the reason why I have to spend hours to find out what the fuck is incorrectly displaying or not working on W.I.P. websites.
The other 50% is Edge, IE <=11 and Firefucks.

Just for piss smelling Safari, I need to either run a VM with Crapple OS X for debugging or borrow a Crapbook from $randomPerson.
Is it fucking not possible to compile Safari blowser to run on Linux or Winblows?

Eventhough I'm disgusted about Google and its privacy and data mining policies, Chrome is the most decent browser there is on the whole digital world. It only happens extremely rarely that something is not working/displaying as expected during development.

Most browser developers seem to be useless pubes eaters and like to shower with curd soap.

!rant

Wanted to share a project with you, which I heard about at a Python Conference I attended.

It's a Raspberry based Hacking Station to educate and sensitize students about data privacy. The amazing thing about the project is, that it is a graduation project from a high school student.

If you're interested, check out spypi.ch

This is not an ad or something, I was just amazed by the talk and the idea of the project and wanted to share it with you.

My current project. Won't reveal anything about it until I've got a usable version (which might take more than a month) but it would be a good way to give a middle finger to a big ass surveillance company.

It won't exactly match with their product since this is impossible for me to do as this would compromise user privacy but it'll come close enough!

Several minutes waiting for site to work after clicking on "required cookies only". Is this really what privacy laws were aiming for?

Not sure if you'd call this an insecurity but regardless; frontend.

Much of the stuff I develop is meant to be user/privacy friendly.
Like, at the moment I'm developing an end-to-end encrypted notes web application. The backend is a fucking breeze, the frontend is hell for me. I'm managing mostly but for example, I need to implement a specific thing/feature right now and while the backend would take me about 15-30 minutes, I've been only just thinking about how I'm going to do this frontend wise for the past few fucking hours.

My JavaScript skills are quite alright, html is manageable, css only the basics.

And before people tell me to just learn it; I. Fucking. Hate. Frontend. Development. My motivation for this is below zero.

But, most of the shit I write depends on frontend regardless!

This rant has been one that I've been wanting to rant about for a while now. Me being drunk as fuck right now (mind, stay awake!) doesn't really help, but meh.
At least Wanblows was able to install its "features" properly... Except it wasn't, being the featureful ShitOS it is.

I want to rant about privacy. Not about "nothing to hide, nothing to fear". That's been ranted about plenty by the MIcroshaft-loving folks as well as the privacy-aware opposition. Rather, I'd like to rant about the privacy-concious.

I am a privacy-concious-person, with his current status quo being that he doesn't yet know a privacy-concious solution to every data-intrusive "common solution" out there. So I tend to value privacy next to De Lijn while sharing location data to Google with Google Maps. Point is, I do not know privacy-concious solutions to everything out there yet. So I use the convenient over the privacy-aware.
(after review while drunk I was unable to make sense of this)

In the privacy-aware circles I tend to see that it seems to be black and white. You share your data with Google, yet you oppose data collection by local institutes? WRONG!!! YOU MUST BE A TINFOIL HAT!!!
No, seriously I don't want to share my data with Google. Just that they're the only realtime navigation platform with decent UI out there that I know of right now.

Privacy isn't all black and white here. I block any intrusion that I'm able to, anything else I abide to, while awaiting a good alternative that does respect my privacy which I would gladly use instead. That does not imply that "I have nothing to hide". I do, and I have a lot to hide.

So that makes up the black and white nature of privacy, which is a fallacy. Another one is the whole idea of "I have nothing to hide" to begin with.

If you have nothing to hide, would you be comfortable with sharing your location data (IP address, habits, common trends, etc) with me? To share your information with me, to have your contacts share your info with me, without your consent? Of course you wouldn't. But that's what's happening right now.

Wow! Google's update in its privacy policy is impressive. Still too lazy to read it though. I trust Google. LOL

Privacy

Fuck I hate bloated app permissions but I guess todo lists that know who you most likely to chat to when taking a dump is what we get for demanding everything for free. I get why Snapchat wants so much, I just find it fucking ironic that this is from a company that founded itself on the concept of privacy 🤦‍♂️

Last week I sent a pic of Nestle Crunch chocolate to my friend in Whatsapp. Today he told me that he got an ad in Instagram for Nestle Crunch!! Holy crap!
We were trying to figure out how did it happen because we never discussed about the chocolate other than that image. Then I realized that Whatsapp and Instagram was owned by the same fucking company - Facebook!!!

I've stopped using Facebook, Instagram for a very long time and I have ad blockers on every electronic device I touch. So I never understood the gravity of people losing shit over privacy, until today. This indeed is creepy and it hit me real hard. I'm now reading all rants with "privacy" tags and methods to harden my devices to repel from those buggers.

'I have nothing to hide'

in the last 20 hours i have heard this lie three times from three different people.
I just don't understand them. Everytime the topic privacy comes up (a lot of the times it isn't even me who starts talking about it) they I say this.

Would you want someone following you at all times, looking through your window, recording everything you say and writing all the information he gets about you into a notebook, potentially selling this information to others?
I really hope that you don't want this.

Privacy is a human right and it should stay that!

Privacy is a part of freedom and while freedom may be pretty difficult to define, privacy should always be a part of it.

Ok this is fucking freaky!!

I was talking to my girl that she mentioned a song on a phone call today and I was listening to YouTube and all of a sudden the same song she mentioned came up which is an old out of my regular genres.
I freaked out and told her that's why I have fucking privacy issues!
And then I suggested making myself a private chatting app...
Her next sentence was:
"Yes you can baby... Basically the world is your app store!" <- her first coders quote (we are contagious)

„You have the right to access, change and delete data stored about you. To do this click here“ very funny... very very funny...

Just had a scolding from an asshole behind the wheel for using my old BuzzyPazz instead of their new electronic system. I didn't go with the invitation earlier because I don't want a central server to know where I am, and when. Yet that mofo is gonna threaten me with sanctions because I value my privacy, and even showed that I'm a legitimate passenger that's properly paid to get on the fucking bus?! Catch the right "criminals", motherfucker!!! 😤

I feel I should open a github repo, for people to contribute privacy policy parts into, have say folders like "google analytics" and then whenever people encounter those in the wild, add examples there, so people could fetch together a full privacy policy for free, as all those new cashgrab websites are just fucking insane. But I am not really sure, if that would find any contributors tbh sadly.

P.S: I seem to have developed now a third sense, when the devrant post cooldown is down, so I can rant more lol, because whenever I feel like posting the thought or rant, the cooldown is just about to expire

FUCK!
After submitting a registration form I noticed the site is served over plain HTTP. Their marketing site is served encrypted, but login and register are not! What the fuck!!!

Fuck everyone who does this stupid fucking shit with disregard to basic security features! Their goddamn bullshit privacy policy is bragging about how it's top priority to protect their customers' information and shit like that. Get the fuck out, cunts!!

I contacted them so I might have a continuation to this rant if I'm not satisfied with their answers.

Goddamn it!

Audacity repository being on fire for the new privacy policy is something I just can't stop watching ... I love it.

@dfox @trogus Hi, I was just wondering how to find the privacy policy? If I am missing it, sorry!

My question is about who owns the rants. It doesn't matter either way, I am just curious.

Should I care about privacy anymore ?

I had to switch to windows from Ubuntu in my laptop because of driver related issues.
Everytime I use Windows , I feel uneasy because of the data it collects but at the same time I am happy that I can play a couple of video games , my battery life is better and my display is better.

I own an Android phone , and no matter how many add ons I use , or VPN , I know that Google gets sufficient amount of data to know a lot about me.

It's getting harder and harder to keep my data private and it's becoming inconvenient as well.

In my country almost everyone I talk to uses Whatsapp. I removed my Whatsapp account for a few days and I barely talked to anyone and it was not a good feeling.

My point is , is fighting for privacy worth it ? How much inconvenience are we ready to accept ? Can I do anything to keep my data private and still use convenient services ? Please enlighten me .

Haveing Arch Linux on my old laptop. Before Arch it was slow. Now I have OS so minimalistic that there's almost nothing after booting.
I even have to start GUI manualy beacouse I don't need it always.
Almost non of my friends can use it so my data is safe here (I like privacy).
But for downside I imagine useing vim in text envirement during flight. Non tech guys can assume that useing vim is plane hijacking.

Just me getting angry about the reaction after the Cambridge-scandal?
The news are spamming it every hour, and suddenly everyone is "well aware about my privacy" and deleting their Facebooks.

I mean, as if we didn't know this all along. O-fucking-course your data is stored and sold for adds, you accepted it when you wanted to "see which celebrity you are alike"!

I walk around and talk about privacy with people kinda a lot, and nobody seems to care. And then this happens, and people are going nuts. Waow, what a surprise!

Haha, have a nice evening DevRanters! ;) (20:55)@swe

Dev: "presenting my privacy-focused XYZ app!"

App: is 100% online despite features I could build in fucking bash, has integration with 3 other sites

Me: [x] Doubt

My own colo server. My own cloud. My own infra.

Fuck all of the CSP's and their fucking broken TOS and their data privacy violations!

Why do you think Amazon is so cheap? Because when they discover a product/service/software on AWS makes money, they WILL Reverse engineer it, make it and price you out of the market. It's their business model!

I don't understand privacy advocators.

Am I the only one who wouldn't give up practicality in exchange for "potentially more secure"?

I don't understand so much what the deal is with people who avoid Facebook, or don't trust Google or Microsoft, just in the basis of "privacy" or "security".

Websites tracking you to serve ads? Well, it's pointless because I very rarely buy something from the internet or let myself be influenced, ads are waste of time, just use an adblocker.

I can pretty much upload my whole life or documents on Google drive, even if I made it public no one would really care or read it all. It's like that GitHub project you uploaded but never documented, so no one cares. I usually use alternative software not because of "privacy" but because it has features other software doesn't have.

In reality you realize people aren't that interested in your life more than their own life.

What do you think is the biggest lie on the intenet? I think it is "we care about your privacy".

Recently I flashed Android 9 (Pie) on my Nexus, but to this day I still haven't logged into Google from it. One reason is because I don't know my password and I didn't git clone my password store yet (where it's contained). Another reason is because I want to reclaim my privacy and not be a data battery for a Matrix of convenience that feeds itself with my personal information. Eh, it sorta works out I guess. Yalp is an amazing alternative to the Play Store, and even offers its own shadow accounts to use along with Google Play.

One problem though, while I've noticed that I could log in with my own account to get all my premium apps (couple hundred euros worth, so not easy to just discard) it apparently violates Google Play's ToS to do so from a third-party app. So I'm a bit hesitant to do that. Do you know of any viable alternative way to preserve my privacy yet install, keep and have validated those premium apps? I could download them from e.g. BlueStacks and export the apk's, but that'd be tedious and wouldn't be able to get those apps validated on my phone unless I log into Google there as well (which kinda defeats the purpose). Any suggestions?

On A privacy research focused Hackaton, my team lead got up, and said:
Our group is going to look at porn sites privacy issues! and @magicMirror is going to lead that effort!

And went on to say Porn+@magicMirror in every sentence. Very loudly.

fukin 🤡.

Mozilla has announced that it's rolling out changes under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to all Firefox users worldwide.

According to report of ZDNet: The CCPA (America's privacy legislation) came into effect on January 1, 2020, offering Californian users data-protection rules. Much like Europe's GDPR, the CCPA gives consumers the right to know what personal information is collected about them and to be able to access it. While the law technically only applies to data processed about residents in California, US. But Mozilla notes it was one of the few companies to endorse CCPA from the outset. Mozilla has now outlined the key change it's made to Firefox, which will ensure CCPA regulations benefit all its users worldwide. The main change it's introducing is allowing users to request that Mozilla deletes Firefox telemetry data stored on its servers. That data doesn't include web history, which Mozilla doesn't collect anyway, but it does include data about how many tabs were opened and browser session lengths. The new control will ship in the next version of Firefox on January 7, which will include a feature to request desktop telemetry data be deleted directly from the browser.

Start to read the book from Jaron Lanier "Who owns the Future". And suddenly realize that the company which offering us "free services" is trying to build a superior model of machine learning and read all of our behaviour.

Thus, i start to logout my facebook, twitter, instagram and all of my social media. But, i'm not the lucky one who could fight this "selling data practices", because I still use devices with "Android OS". My privacy stolen & sold is inevitable. What a Digital Life!

GDPR is about to happen.
Has anyone read the provisions?
It's like they put some flat earther anti-vaxers in a room and made them scribble up a law.

For those who don't know - it's a new, EU-wide "data privacy" law that's about to take effect on May 25th.

The gist of it is that if you fuck up even a little bit, you get to personally pay a fine of up to 10 Million Euros (for companies there's a separate clause, this is for employees only), or/and 2-3 years in jail if that fuck-up has caused material damages.
That little fuck-up can be as simple as losing a tiny amount of data between back-ups, or entrusting a third party with full access to some data (which is not prohibited) without controlling 100% what he can do with that data (which IS prohibited).

I shit you not, these are the explicit articles of that law.

If it is enforced in this way, it is the swift death of European economy. Just because some retards didn't read the privacy policy before agreeing to it, and then made a shit storm, everyone has to suffer.

One of the reasons their extensive data collection is becoming annoying for not just the privacy freaks, but everyone is when it starts suggesting me dumb stuff like no thanks I learnt coding by spending two years on messed up projects and wrecked half a dozen servers before I had an idea on how to host a website go feed this zuckershit to some other n00🅱

I have finally decided to stop helping people setup a proper machine learning environment inside of their machines with Proper GPU support.

I-fucking-give-up.

Goggle Colab, EVERYONE is getting dey ass sent to Colab. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK about privacy and shit like that at this fucking moment, getting TIRED af of getting messages about someone somehow fucking up their CUDA installation, and/or their entire machine (had one dude trying to run native GPU support through WSL 2, their machine did not have the windows update version 2004 and he has on an older build, upon update he fucked everything up EVEN THOUGH I TOLD HIM NOT TO DO IT YET)

.......fuck it, I am sending everyone to Colab. YES I UNDERSTAND THAT PRIVACY IS A THING and Goggle bad and all that jazz......but if you believe in Roko's Basilisk then I AM DOING THEM A FAVOR

I work hard to get our robot overlords into function, let it be known here, I support our robot overlords and will do as much as possible to bring them to life and have me own 2b big tiddy with a nice ass android.

I should also mention that I've had a few drinks on me already and keep getting these messages.

My own cloud service. Mainly because of privacy reasons, but also playing around with servers can be fun. Before you know it you've got your own Spotify, Netflix, Google Drive, Last Pass etc... Without sacrificing all of you data :)

Sure, at first it may be a bit expensive because you have to get a server, but you don't need a crazy server to run these things, if you've got an old pc or laptop laying around you can use that too (in that case setting up your own cloud services is practically free).

F*cking morons complaining of privacy yet busy posting practically everything from pictures to finger prints and weird f*cking full details on social networks and some weird online places and platforms...😑🤕😤😤😤 (best safety, never go online)

Is it bad that I kind of don't like using DuckDuckGo as a search engine?

I mean, I use it cause duh privacy. But when it comes to search results- google always gets what I want-

Jesus that kinda sucks why can't i get both

I start shaking and getting nervous when there is something I really, really want to say.

Today in school we started talking about Amazon Alexa and privacy.
This topic concerns me a lot and I started talking in front of the whole class about Google and things they do to spy on you. After about 30 seconds of me talking I started shaking because there was so much I wanted to say and with so much enthusiasm and also a bit of anger.

If I was to name one reason I use Safari on my Mac, it would be internet captchas disappearing completely from all sites. And this is with privacy-protecting measures enabled. I tested them, and it fucks fingerprinters even better than resistFingerprinting flag does in Firefox, and that's HUGE.
It seems like Safari is so rarely used by bad actors that if you use Safari, you get a pass.

Brave Browser was found hardcoding referral links to partnered Crypto sites, even if you manually type the URL.

Since then , they have fixed the bug but it's hard to trust Brave again.

Privacy is built on trust. I have recommended Brave to my friends and family and seeing news like this , makes me skeptical about the company.

Been using Snapchat for a while.
But yesterday I uninstalled it. Since morning, while using YouTube, I've been getting advertisements to install Snapchat. Where is the privacy?

"We value your privacy, that's why we want you to agree to all of these tracking cookies."

Fucking GDPR, is getting on my nerves now, can't go anywhere without encountering a cookie wall.

!Rant
The new bill passed the house for ISP to be able to sell data. This get me ticked off. I already ausme that ISP did it under the table. Doesn't make it right. Now it legal for them to breach our privacy. At what leave do i need to run my own internet just to feel safe. VPN can sell the data, ISP can sell data about you. I spend my life teaching how to protect people online and now I can't even say they are safe at home from someone with wrong intention. A quote​ comes to mind.
"Dear lord I need to see some change, because the man in the mirror is wearing a mask"
I shouldn't have to feel every time. I boot my PC, that I need to remind my self that what I'm doing now is being sold so someone can lable me. When will the common man learn to protect their privacy online; And where is the line in the sand?

It not all bad, this event has given me the itch to code. Just to spin some heads I'm going to make a script to make random Google query across the widest array of topics, so my profile is full of contradiction.

The few who read this have a nice day!

Emails from devRant contain spy pixels 🙂

Okay now, I know it is SendGrid's doing and I only assume good will from devRant devs. But they also need to understand that anonymity and user privacy are crucial qualities of the devRant platform and they're essentially what makes it work.

I thought that developers' attention should be drawn to this.

You all know that these AI dev tools are reading your code right?

It is sending it back to a data center and doing evaluations on the code. This is like handing your code to an unknown entity with no guarantees for privacy or copyright protection.

This concept bothers me and I would have to consult with my employer to even determine if we wanted to take that risk. I think it is just a matter of time before a bad actor takes advantage of this and rips off a company somewhere.

Why the fuck are you making me put in my email to look at a computer desk? I saw an ad and was curious about it and the price, so I clicked the ad. I don't give a shit and don't actually plan to buy anything, just let me look asshats.

Shit like this is why you have an email inbox with 650,087 emails about a fucking privacy policy update.

Recruiters company emailed me to accept their privacy statement. I asked them what kind of information they got from me. Get an email back with: your information is deleted. I didn't expected that. It's clearly to hard to just send me the info...

being a sheep over the last years I just recently started to overthink my software choices in terms of privacy. but hell it's far from easy!
just now I realize how dependent I am from all of these services. I mean no problem ditching Facebook for example, it's not essential to me. but what about WhatsApp and GoogleDrive? I'm using these services on a daily basis...
any advices on what software or providers to use alternatively? especially browser, messaging app, email provider and cloud service?
please keep in mind that although I am willing to bring sacrifices I by no means want to neither could live like Richard Stallman. so an argument like "sell your MacBook because macOS is spyware" is not that helpful to me - more like what can I do to increase my privacy within the boundaries given to me. I have to find some sort of compromise. so curious about your advices, stories and opinions right now!

ARGH!
Since that privacy cookie policy change thingy, every goddamn site pops up the dialog asking about it.

I just want to fucking read the page, quickly; get off my screeeeeeen!

There should be a standard to add something that lets the browser tell the page if you accept cookies or not, and which options to use; or at least make all the sites use a specific attribute for the elements of the div, so it can be automated (I know this is a dream).

I hate how people automatically assume anything coming out of China is spyware. Because the US and EU have such good reputations for preserving privacy right?

Fuck this shit! Roommate just barged in at 3:30AM, his gf in tow. They went to bed like I am not here and he is snoring like a chainsaw. I never understood how can she sleep next to him while he snores like that. I have earplugs and active noise cancelling headphones on. I can still hear that motherfucker loud and clear. How the fuck is she not awake?!

But more importantly, 50% of this fucking room is mine, what makes him think he can just have his girlfriend over while I am here is beyond me. Like, sure, if I am not here go ahead but when I am here I would like some privacy, I guess the plank wall that I made in the middle of the room is not an obvious enough clue that I want privacy and I don't want to be disturbed :-/

Can't wait to have enough proof of his bullshit to get the block manager to throw him out.

Edit: To add to the snoring problem: I had a girlfriend who would snore, less than my roommate but still loud enough that I was awake the whole night when I went to sleep at her place... I HATE SNORING ... And when I went home for some holidays and my brother snored even for a second I kicked him off of his bed (because why not, he is an asshole to me like 99% of the time - and so am I to him :D //sibling love//)

I really like how there is something new everyday that you can do to protect your privacy even more 😄

A follow up about Mozilla IRL spotify radio.

Very interesting talk relates to internet and privacy in gerenal. (Not about programming btw)

Eg: Bose headphone app sends your data to data broker,
which ransomware rated with top customer service,
how to setup a bait for catching Twitter bots

It feels like Mozilla is fighting for justice.
I'm totally sold.

!rant
I have a Facebook account, but I never post anything! neither I like or comment on any post, also I am following random pages!!!
I bet their privacy spying algo is confused af!!!

I think the " we've updated our privacy policy" is a meme now

Because everyone else is ranting about this too:
I'm not afraid of Microsoft wanting to monetize everything or that they will restrict site access to Microsoft Edge only. What I am afraid of is that they change the privacy policy.
Who knows what they are up to?
I hope GitHub is awesome enough to decline the offer.... Let's see.

European Union is really awesome with the new privacy regulation.

A colleague came to me ranting about some feature marketing wants.
"Save whether the user accepted, rejected or ignored the TOS." They have to accept the privacy agreement first, so this feature is most likely about annoying users who rejected the TOS. Totally justified. Fuck that marketing team.

So I have to give a technical presentation in front of 50+ people in 6 days. I'm just about shitting my pants right now. And thinking what to talk about.

Any ideas? Mine are:
1. Arduino and Raspberry Pi--the future of automation.
2. Privacy and how personal information is now another way of profit.

Is Signal the best messenger for privacy and security loving people?

Given the recent election, I'm taking measures to ensure the privacy and security of my data. Call me paranoid, but I think the NSA is going to be getting some extra funding soon. I'm already working on encrypting a ton of my data. Any other tips some of you guys could give me?

Salespeople telling clients "Your site doesn't need a privacy policy/cookie policy since you don't actually sell anything on your site."

Wrong wrong wrong WRONGITY WRONG WROOONNGGGG!!!!!

Client to PM to me: "Well Jim said we don't need those on this site."

Me: "Well Jim is misinformed, since we use Google analytics, Facebook Pixel, and contact forms, you need to have both a privacy and cookie policy."

PM to client: "We'll find you a template you can use to get started, it'll cover most of what you need."

Me to PM: "we will do no such thing, we can send them a few links explaining why they need these, but they should consult a legal professional and cover their asses for their own business practices. I can provide any technical details they may need like what data the cookies collect if necessary."

PM to me: "well I'll just find something for them then."

*In my head* please just go crawl in a hole and die.

Returning moron here, missed ya guys.
Now, idk if this qualifies as politics but i guess it does have something to do with tech/privacy/hacking.
Free Julian Assange?
Surprised no one is talking about this honestly. @linuxxx any opinions?

Three syntax elements, pixels on screen.
By Unknown (for privacy), 2021

In this installation, the Author's desire to prove the whole world that stupidity is achievable with just 2 syntax elements is... self-evident!

Observe! The finely crafted letters composing this installation in their beauty! While the middle element is purely a distraction (one could argue it's there to be sure a critical issue doesn't happen even if the default value is already `true`), the sides of the installation reveals the true horror.

As the vision of the observer is attracted to the center, the peripheral vision sends the informations to the subconcious, making the observer slowly realize both that the Author willingly compiled `.less` files with postcss and that .less files are in the css folder, proving that stupidity is demonstrable in just two syntax elements.

A masterpiece.

'Google knows everything about you.'
'Facebook records conversations.'
'Personalized ads manipulate you.'

Guess that's why YouTube showed me an ad in Spanish yesterday. Or why I never clicked on an ad. Or why only every 1 in approx. 10 ads is somewhat relevant to me (and thats with me explicitly stating my interests in ad personalization options).

I don't have anything against shielding your privacy. It's your right not to use a product if you don't want to, but I don't see how people can make these statements without providing solid proof.

Just my opinion.

To everyone who understands German and is at least a little bit concerned about privacy: I recommend watching 'PRISM is a dancer' by Neo magazin royale and Jan Böhmermann

Google's privacy sandbox. The latest evil empire is 10x more monopolistic than MS in the 90s. Not excusing any of that behavior. Just noting that it's now much much worse.

Along with the usual sheet of our contact data that our school gives us to check if it is still correct, we now also get a nice, thick layer of privacy policy because of the GDPR. Nice!

Fuck the EU.

Their privacy laws fucking suck and don't even get me started on their braindead cookie law.

I think we should be able to make laws for them and not just them making laws for us.

First order of business is that by law all EU bureaucrats must have "I'm a fucking moron, punch me in the face to accept." tattooed to their foreheads in large bold letters with the rest of their face in intricate detail tattooed explaining what a fucking moron is so to educate their subjects.

Privacy is a myth, just like democracy

me after watching snowden(2016) yesterday : "Holy shit, government is going to fuck our privacy!!"

me after watching the circle today: "Holy shit big private companies are going to fuck our privacy!!"

My office senior watching me "Holy yeah boss is going to fuck your privacy"