Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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NO GOOGLE TRACK - CODEBERG (lemmy.ml)

submitted 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) by AuroraSine@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Peace and data security be upon you all.

This is my German-language site on Codeberg:

https://aurora-shine.codeberg.page/no-google-track/

It covers Google's abuse of power, Project Nimbus, and more. I also list alternative browsers and search engines, complete with pros and cons. I show you how to block Google services using uBlock Origin and strengthen your browser using the hidden about:config menu. The entire text is in German, but I hope automatic browser translation works well enough for you to understand. If you have questions, feel free to message me.

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[–] PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 19 minutes ago

As a side note, I've grown increasingly disappointed with fairphone. I recebtly switched to shiftphone, which also supports degoogled ROMs, and offers the same repairability. I think shift is much more aligned with the values fairphone claims to represent.

[–] UndergroundGoblin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 hour ago

Please don't take this the wrong way. Just a little food for thought. Please stop using the term "junkies." Junkies (derived from "junk") is a pretty dehumanizing and derogatory term for people suffering from a serious addiction.

[–] It_is_gaslighting@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 hours ago

Hi, nice and interesting website. While reading through the first bit, I noticed that you regularly criticize the Israel conflicts and I just can't shake the idea that it would be kind of difficult to maintain the content when the situation in the conflict zones might somewhat change/shift. I share the critics and want solely point out that the information on privacy/security hardening will most likely be relevant long term while the conflicts will just end hopefully 'soon'. Let me know if I shall elaborate.

Check out mullvad browser and their VPN. Also who historicaly build it. Tor browser had a huge vulnerability for nearly a year and the intelligence agencies and other shady entities IDed a bunch of people (also political activists).

I read about the webRTC setting, which is important and can leak DNS even when using VPN. AFAIK, when enabled, it can also enable torrent streams which can pose legal problems for the users, who think they use some random streaming page. Did you suggest any VPN besides Tor? You watch (1440p?) youtube how exactly and how slow is it? Because I find it difficult to let go of YouTube but I hate alphabet/meta. Did you mention browser agents and window size? We can randomize some settings to be less recognizable. I find it difficult to navigate the content, so my suggestion is for example to add collapsible footer links at the bottom and maybe a search.

Did you suggest an own DNS resolver/filter like pihole/adguard?

You mentioned fairphone. Do you know about grapheneOS? This is the end game of deggoogled phones. Right now it is only compatible with Google Pixel Phones, solely because they are the only ones having the granularity of control over the hardware. (Chipset makers need to deliver drivers with adequate access/control over it). This will change soon as Motorola will release compatible phones soon to meet the grapheneOS specs.

F-droid is difficult. I know the focus here is privacy, but the APK signatures of the devs get over-written by F-droid. https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues/ So what grapheneOS users like me usually do is use the app obtainium and preferably import from github and cross-reference the signature directly. So you access the apps directly from source.

I also like this site: https://www.privacytools.io/

[–] papagaya@feddit.org 4 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Link for people on mobile: https://aurora-shine.codeberg.page/no-google-track/

I didn't read it all, but am kinda surprised about the fingerprinting explanation. For me its the combination of all individual characteristics of your browser. What's the canvas graphic thing (item 2) you are explaining here? https://aurora-shine.codeberg.page/no-google-track/about-config.html

[–] FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

What’s the canvas graphic thing (item 2) you are explaining here?

Canvas is a special "place"/way of drawing images on a website. It can be used for fingerprinting since different gpus/drivers etc draw things a little differently. Basically a script on a page draws thousands of shapes, pictures whatnot on a canvas you can't see i.e. is placed somewhere out of the standard view area. Then the script calculates some kind of hash or checksum. Combine that with other fingerprinting characteristics you'll get pretty nicely unique browsers.

For example LibreWolf blocks canvas by default for everyone and randomizes the canvas data on every read. If you happen to use a site that uses the canvas for legitimate purposes you won't ever see what's supposed to be there by the original design.

[–] AuroraSine@lemmy.ml 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Thank you so much for explaining this in such detail! I'm still quite new to this 'privacy world'. If there are any mistakes on my site, I'd really appreciate feedback. And I'm trying my best to understand everything, even though my English isn't great yet 😅😅

[–] AuroraSine@lemmy.ml 2 points 14 hours ago

Hi. Thanks for the comment! The confusion likely comes from the automatic translation of my German page. Sorry.

When I wrote 'We distort this graphic,' I didn't mean that I manually change it. I meant that the browser setting privacy.resistFingerprinting automatically spoofs the Canvas data for you.

So, to answer your question about 'Item 2': It refers to enabling privacy.resistFingerprinting = true in Firefox's about:config.

Once this is active, the browser automatically returns a generic, identical Canvas image to every website, preventing them from creating a unique fingerprint based on your GPU. It's a built-in feature, not a manual process.

Hope that clears it up.

Please let me know if anything is still unclear or if I made any mistakes. My English isn't great, so I'm using a translator, and I want to make sure I'm communicating correctly!