Privacy

TL;DR: With Firefox 56, Mozilla combined Firefox Health Report and Telemetry data into a single setting called “technical and interaction data”, which was then enabled by default. This data was then shared with advertising partners on a de-identified or aggregated basis.

Synopsis

I'm curious what everyone thinks about DuckDuckGo's current settings. I have my browser settings set to delete history, cache and cookies on closing. This creates an issue when using duckduckgo as my primary search engine. Their 'default' settings (available right below the searchbar) seem far from privacy focused. AI Chat is on by default and used 'sometimes', as well as 'advertisting' and 'location' settings that are on by default. This requires me to have to change the settings every time I load my browser due to any settings I save being deleted by my browser setup. I don't want to install a duckduckgo extension. How do others deal with this? I know you can 'save anonymously' your settings in the cloud, but I'm not eager to do that.

To fill these gaps in our knowledge, we have created an open source project called Rayhunter.1 It is developed to run on an Orbic mobile hotspot (Amazon, Ebay) which is available for $20 or less at the time of this writing. We have tried to make Rayhunter as easy as possible to install and use, regardless of your level of technical knowledge. We hope that activists, journalists, and others will run these devices all over the world and help us collect data about the usage and capabilities of cell-site simulators (please see our legal disclaimer.)

I am not the author.

The answer to "what is Firefox?" on Mozilla's FAQ page about its browser used to read:

"Android System SafetyCore’ claims to be a ‘security’ application, but whilst running in the background, it collects call logs, contacts, location, your microphone, and much more making this application ‘spyware’ and a HUGE privacy concern. It is strongly advised to uninstall this program if you can. To do this, navigate to 'Settings’ > 'Apps’, then delete the application."

Stolen from @vmstan

VPN providers see blocking orders as a threat to security and some consider exiting France, if blocking measures are granted.

This really hit home for me:

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has observed increasing efforts from several Russia state-aligned threat actors to compromise Signal Messenger accounts used by individuals of interest to Russia's intelligence services. While this emerging operational interest has likely been sparked by wartime demands to gain access to sensitive government and military communications in the context of Russia's re-invasion of Ukraine, we anticipate the tactics and methods used to target Signal will grow in prevalence in the near-term and proliferate to additional threat actors and regions outside the Ukrainian theater of war.

Today we are announcing a new privacy feature coming to Kagi Search. Privacy Pass is an authentication protocol first introduced by Davidson and recently standardized by the IETF as RFCs. At the same time, we are announcing the immediate availability of Kagi’s Tor onion service.

Two players who mostly worked independently are increasingly collaborative.

First I'm hearing of ObscuraVPN at least, but it does seem to be a very new player in the market. However from reading through their website and Github. This service does look very promising! Though it is slightly more expensive than Mullvad.

Whatsapp is privacy invasive, and we likely know that even when using E2EE, this is possible due to metadata tracking.

#IronFox's icon is a love child between GitLab and Grindr's.

thought you guys would find this blog post from Brian Leiter today funny. he's a pretty good guy and a respected scholar so no shade on him, clearly just misinformed. i wonder if this is in some way downstream of the recent political drama around proton.

Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new "king"

Import into your F-Droid client directly by tapping this link: fdroidrepos://fdroid.ironfoxoss.org/fdroid/repo?fingerprint=C5E291B5A571F9C8CD9A9799C2C94E02EC9703948893F2CA756D67B94204F904

Last year, I outlined the specific requirements that an app needs to have in order for me to consider it a Signal competitor.

Insurance giant sued by Texas for using surveillance without consent to jack up premiums, deny coverage

This post contains a canary message that's cryptographically signed by the official BusKill PGP release key

The ads you're viewing in popular apps have been co-opted by companies harvesting your location data — and now hackers have it.

What's the deal? I'm testing using https://coveryourtracks.eff.org Is it truly unique (and repeatable), or is it perhaps being randomized on every request?

I know this has been discussed a lot across the fediverse already, but I recently learned about the Fogg Behaviour Model (FBM), and thought it would be interesting use it as a frame.

Hackers have reportedly breached Gravy Analytics, a parent company of Venntel that sells smartphone location data to the U.S. government. The hackers claim to have stolen considerable data, including customer lists, industry information and individuals' location data. They are threatening to make the data public.

I have never liked Apple and lately even less. F.... US monopolies

In the light of Divest OS shuting down i am searching for a new Android browser that doesn't send telemetry data to Mozolla and I stumbled over IronFox. Does anyone have any opinions or other recommendations?

Archived Link

The gift card store secured the public cloud storage server containing customer ID documents, which was not protected with a password.

This enforcement action marks the first significant implementation of India’s 2022 regulatory framework governing VPN apps. The rules mandate that VPN providers and cloud service operators maintain comprehensive records of their customers, including names, addresses, IP addresses and transaction histories, for a five-year period.

Apple users may get $20 each for up to five Siri-enabled devices.

More Info here: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/the-end-of-divest/23396/13

Anyone know how they compare to Quad9?

The Dutch data protection authority (DPA) has issued a decisionand is imposing a fine of €4.75 million against Netflix because it failed to adequately inform customers about what it does with their data. Netflix has already objected to the fine, but hasn’t yet appealed the decision as a whole.

I have installed simplewall on Windows, which is a application level firewall which is supposed to block all requests from unwanted apps and only allow requests on apps that I specifically allow.

*Today, noyb has filed a complaint against the social media platform BeReal over the latest “dark pattern” to get consent. When people open the app, they are confronted with a pop-up asking them to say “yes” or “no” to the use of their personal data for advertising purposes. [...] if users click “accept”, they will never see the consent banner again. If they dare to click “reject”, however, the banner will appear every day – until the end of your days.*

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23044112

My old ones broke two days ago and I needed new ones. I chose earbuds from NOTHIHG because according to reviews they are really good for the money. Now, their app is asking me to accept this privacy policy. Maybe this policy is just some general place holder for other products because they sell phones too. And they would have browser history there. Or I could use the earbuds without the app. But the default tuning on them is very bass heavy and I need to change that.

https://windowsreport.com/mozilla-firefox-removes-do-not-track-feature-support-heres-what-it-means-for-your-privacy/

Real unfortunate news for GrapheneOS users as Revolut has decided to ban the use of 'non-google' approved OSes. This is currently being posted about and updated by GrahpeneOS over at Bluesky for those who want to follow it more closely.

Improved private group video calls in Signal with new features, incl. call links.

Germany and Poland may say yes to chatcontrol!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22758570