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[Valued Gamer]

I thought it would be good to have a thread for information about how to keep your data safe and private from all prying eyes, including Government and scammers.

In Australia we have had the Goverment introduce metadata retention laws, laws to compel IT companies to break encryption on messaging apps to allow back doors for the state, and even forcing ISPs and phone makers for download updates which includes spying software.

Of course this is all in the name of catching pedos and terrorists, but in reality its anyone they want.

On top of that we have companies like Apple, Google and MS recording all your search terms, site visits, and even logging your movements through your phone.
Are they listening to your background conversations through the mic? Some say yes.

So what things should people be doing to keep their data and privacy?

VPNs? Don't use Google to search the net?
TOR? What phone apps are good for hiding your media and private info?

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

I think everyone who believes in freedom of speech should invest in a VPN by the end of this year.

 

[J-Roderton]

Seems like a cool thread. Why not in off topic though?

 

[Valued Gamer]

I think everyone who believes in freedom of speech should invest in a VPN by the end of this year.

For sure.
They need to make sure they use a company that doesn't keep logs or any other data on their users.
Also one that keeps strong connections with its proxy servers.

 

[Valued Gamer]

Seems like a cool thread. Why not in off topic though?

Because its politicians who are the ones we really need to keep out of our buisness.

But if mods think its better to move it then that's cool.

 

[J-Roderton]

Because its politicians who are the ones we really need to keep out of our buisness.

But if mods think its better to move it then that's cool.

Cool. Just thought it might get a few more views over there.

Definitely been wanting to learn more about VPNs.

 

[Karunamon]

• Use Google as little as you can get away with. There's probably no avoiding their search engine since all others suck, but at least don't put your email there.
  • Use a paid email provider like Fastmail or Protonmail or something, some place where you're paying a company to provide a service that is their main service.
  • On that note, avoid free email providers in general. The ways they make their money is never privacy friendly.
  • Use a non-Chrome web browser like Firefox. If you must, use the open source versions like Chromium or a fork like Brave.
• Run Linux and open source tools if you can.
  • Whether FOSS systems are objectively more secure is debatable, what is not debatable is that proprietary vendors are often the target of government backdoors and orders to do things to ruin your privacy, which they will gladly do without putting up a fight.
  • Gaming on Linux is still inferior to gaming on Windows, though Proton is pretty decent and getting better all the time.
• If you have the time and inclination, host your own stuff.
  • Dropbox -> Nextcloud for example
• Ensure you have a browser that gives strong privacy guarantees and gives you addons to shore up the corner cases.
  • NoScript
  • uBlock Origin
  • Privacy Badger
  • Decentraleyes
• VPN in a country unfriendly to the country you live in
  • DO YOUR RESEARCH. Many VPN companies lie about not keeping logs.

 

[eddie4]

I will vouch for PIA as a VPN provider, have been using them for years and I have no complaints. ($79 for 3 years, about $2/month) Apps for all devices, browsers. Port forwarding, proxies, 5 devices per account. They do not sell your data as they have stated this and it has been proven.

Do not use free mail providers as they do mine data, use Protonmail or Fastmail. I use Protonmail personally.
I use DuckDuckGo for search, when I can't avoid it, I use google.
Don't use Windows or Mac. I understand a lot of gamers use windows because it's the only OS where most games work. Use Linux or another open-source OS. If you must use windows, debloat and remove the telemetry features that are built-in.

For messaging, use the Tox protocol as it provides end-to-end encryption.

Try to self-host things that you can get for "free". I know people don't want to go through the trouble of setting everything up, but in the long run its great.

 

[Valued Gamer]

I will vouch for PIA as a VPN provider, have been using them for years and I have no complaints. ($79 for 3 years, about $2/month) Apps for all devices, browsers. Port forwarding, proxies, 5 devices per account. They do not sell your data as they have stated this and it has been proven.

Do not use free mail providers as they do mine data, use Protonmail or Fastmail. I use Protonmail personally.
I use DuckDuckGo for search, when I can't avoid it, I use google.
Don't use Windows or Mac. I understand a lot of gamers use windows because it's the only OS where most games work. Use Linux or another open-source OS. If you must use windows, debloat and remove the telemetry features that are built-in.

For messaging, use the Tox protocol as it provides end-to-end encryption.

Try to self-host things that you can get for "free". I know people don't want to go through the trouble of setting everything up, but in the long run its great.

Apparently Gmail and Hotmail both use AI to scan your photo attachments to see if any of them could be child porn, which means dont send any nudes of the GF on those platforms as they will most likely be flagged and looked at.

 

[eddie4]

Apparently Gmail and Hotmail both use AI to scan your photo attachments to see if any of them could be child porn, which means dont send any nudes of the GF on those platforms as they will most likely be flagged and looked at.

Yep, they also scan for keywords, so that they can tailor ads to you, if you talk about specific items. Also if you talk about some illegal shit they can investigate.

 

[ManofOne]

I got me a VPN, a government sanct........shit

 

[MaestroMike]

Is Apple's Safari browser good for privacy? It has this tracker thing that prevents you from being tracked I think and I'm using it, now.

 

[Karunamon]

Is Apple's Safari browser good for privacy? It has this tracker thing that prevents you from being tracked I think and I'm using it, now.

It's merely okay from that standpoint. Apple's one of the better companies out there for privacy, but they are still a large corp that has to be trusted at the end of the day.

 

[nush]

I think everyone who believes in freedom of speech should invest in a VPN by the end of this year.

Nordvpn.com/neogaf for 10% off and two free months.

 

[Karunamon]

Nordvpn.com/neogaf for 10% off and two free months.

Wouldn't trust 'em.

Everyone gets hacked in 2020, but they had to be outed.

 

[Tesseract]

cling to the embers while you can

 

[IWasInSeinfeld]

http://privacytools.io/ is a good place to start if you're looking for privacy-friendly way to browse the internet.

 

[nightmare-slain]

The last few years I've started to take privacy online seriously. A couple years ago I was literally balls deep in Google i mean i had an Android (Pixel from Google), chromecast, mini speaker and i used chrome, google search, youtube, maps, drive, gmail, etc and even let them keep my browsing/search/location history, voice recordings, etc in my account without having it auto delete. They had everything on me. I used to have a facebook, instagram, and tiktok account

Changes i've made:

• For starters deleted FB/IG/TT.
• Moved to iOS about two years ago. i know you can't trust Apple but they at least seem to pretend like they care more about privacy. i have iCloud+ so get disposable emails and private relay for safari. i also use Wipr extension for adblocking. the app privacy report is also useful to see what apps are tracking you and to what extent. When it comes to smartphones you're choices are only really Android or iOS. With Android you not only have Google gathering data but either Samsung, Xiaomi, Oneplus/Oppo, etc. I know they are things like LineageOS (if that's still a thing...) where you can strip all the Google shit out it but support wasn't too great and it's not easy for the average person to set up. I also got rid of my Chromecast/Speaker.
• moved to Firefox. i'm on the ESR channel. my extensions are uBlock, Privacy Badger, Cookie Auto Delete, Multi Containers, Decentraleyes. i had NoScript + ClearURLs but they were causing issues. I tried running uBlock in medium mode but it was frustrating having to constantly tweak it. I have both uBlock + Privacy Badger to completely block anything from Facebook/Instagram.
• Moved to Outlook for email. I know...I know... it's a free service by Microsoft who will be collecting data on me too. iCloud is my secondary email just for stuff related to my Apple account/iPhone and for disposable emails. I looked into Proton but can't remember why I didn't use it. At this point it's too much hassle to move to another email. I'll keep researching email providers to replace Outlook and maybe gradually move over but it feels daunting thinking about changing all my accounts over
  
• I use Duckduckgo. For years I kept trying to get used to it but always went back to Google. Now it's actually quite good I think. I've been using it for about 2 years although I will sometimes do !g so I can search on Google instead.
• I use Apple Maps on my phone. Duckduckgo also uses Apple Maps. On desktop i sometimes use OpenStreetMap but the lack of satellite/3d imagery makes me go back to Google. Although DDG uses Apple Maps it's just embeded in searches and not a page you go and use like Google Maps.
• I don't use cloud storage much. If I need to then I'll use my iCloud drive to move a file between my phone/desktop but i don't actively store anything on it. I do have onedrive on my PC but all that's in it is game saves/data.
• Bought a new router which has a lot more settings/customisation that helps privacy. I did use Google DNS but just changed to Quad9. I tried Cloudflare but was having a lot of issues downloading games. I also have DNS over TLS enabled.
• I've had a VPN for years. I used to have PIA but moved to NordVPN. They say they don't keep logs and they are based in Panama. They seem legit but i suppose there is still some risk because they are so popular. At first I was using my VPN for watching football matches which weren't available in my country so I was only really using it once or maybe twice a week during the football season. Now, on my PC i have the VPN enabled most of the time when browsing the internet. I have split tunneling so Firefox goes through the VPN and everything else goes through my normal connection. I used to have everything go through the VPN but I kept running into issues where programs would think my account was being hacked or something and sometimes accounts would get disabled/banned. Discord was one of them. Some websites also done the same if I connected through a VPN. Patreon was one of them.

I can't think of anything else... probably forgot something else I've changed. When I ditched Google I shut my account down and made a new one exclusively for YouTube. The last couple months I had been using YouTube Music but I decided to go back to Spotify. So when I ditched YT Music I decided fuck it I'm just gonna shut down my Google account completely. So that's another small step away from Google... i don't have an account at all with them. And regarding DNS i was using Google's up until yesterday and that's when I moved to Quad9. That's another little step. I can't see myself giving up YouTube completely so there's that... and of course it's pretty much impossible to stop Google tracking you across the internet.