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You Should Connect to Tor via a VPN
A video in which I respond to Mental Outlaw’s “Stop Using Tor With VPNs” video that somebody shared with me, and then also talk more about Tor security.
Jonah Aragon
Jonah is the founder of Privacy Guides, a member of the Techlore team, and an educational YouTuber. Additional work with HackerNoon, DigitalOcean, and Experimax.
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Digital Wallet Privacy & Security
Google Pay and Apple Wallet don’t work quite how most people expect. Can they be trusted to protect your privacy and security? I made this quick explainer to cover how both of these products work.
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"Non-Binary" Memory? 48GB DDR5 SODIMM Modules
In which I upgrade my ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2023) model to 64GB RAM, thanks to non-binary DDR5 memory~
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Bluesky Social's Advantages and Disadvantages Explained
Bluesky Social is one of the biggest contenders in the fight to replace Twitter, but does it live up to its goals? I’ve been using Bluesky for a few weeks now, and I want to highlight some of its advantages over other popular competitors like Mastodon, and explain why
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Passkeys: Good or Bad?
Passkeys have really started taking off since Apple and Google announced native support for them in iOS and Android. They’ve been in the news again recently, because earlier this month Google announced support for passwordless authentication for Google accounts with Passkeys. So, with big tech companies seemingly going all-in
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The RESTRICT Act Will Not Improve Privacy in America
Privacy advocates have been calling for the United States to adopt strong consumer privacy protection laws along the lines of the EU’s GDPR for a long time now, but the proposed Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act ain’t it, chief.
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Linus Tech Tips Hacked. Who's to Blame?
First, some background: Henry and I discussed this topic on Episode 8 of the Techlore Talks podcast, and if you watch YouTube yourself and haven’t been living under a rock, you probably already know: Early in the morning (Pacific Time), Linus Media Group’s (LMG) three biggest channels were
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In Defense of Internet Anonymity
Despite its occasional abuse, anonymity online is a valuable privilege that cannot be given up nor taken for granted. In Techlore Talks #4, Henry and I discussed freedom of speech, anonymity on the internet, and the content moderation policies of online platforms. Certainly these are hot topics in this day
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New Privacy and Security Features in macOS 13 Ventura
macOS Ventura was released this week, and the Apple users among us may be interested in the improvements it brings to your personal privacy and security. We always recommend running the most up-to-date version of your operating system available. Updates add privacy and security improvements all the time—and macOS
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Brief Statement Regarding PrivacyTools.io
At some point, Marco Wollank, the operator of the “PrivacyTools.io” website, published a defamatory blog post entitled: “Jonah Aragon’s (PrivacyGuides) Failed Attempt to Takeover PrivacyTools.io” The allegations presented in that blog post are completely false, and I am considering pursuing legal action. Additionally, I left PrivacyTools in
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What is the deal with PrivacyTools?
If you don’t like drama, feel free to ignore this whole post. It’s honestly a very boring topic that nobody besides terminally online people with an axe to grind will care about, however because I continue to be asked about this topic anyways, I had to publish this
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Toxicity and Fanboyism in the Privacy Community
I wrote this piece as a response to (and general agreement with) The Real Privacy Enemy is Ourselves by Henry from Techlore, which is a very interesting read. I do work on the Techlore YouTube channel and online community myself. Toxicity and fanboyism is a big problem in many niche
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Threat Modeling: The First Skill You Need To Begin Your Privacy Journey
I originally wrote this piece for the Privacy Guides blog, although the information herein has been largely superseded by my contributions to their Threat Modeling and Common Threats pages, which I recommend exploring. The major trade-off with many privacy-centric services and software I’ve seen is that in general, the
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The Trouble With VPN and Privacy Review Sites
There’s a massive problem in the privacy world. Websites, social media accounts, and other platforms are constantly popping up out of nowhere, telling you to buy The Greatest Service Ever in order to solve all your privacy woes, whatever that may be. These websites often employ marketing teams to
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Choosing a VPN
So you know what a VPN is, but there are so many options to choose from! Well before we dive into this, let’s get one thing off the bat: Avoid Free VPNs Privacy-respecting VPNs can provide their service because you pay them for it. Free VPNs are worse than
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Understanding VPNs
A VPN — or Virtual Private Network — is a tool that secures your internet connection from attackers on your network. But before I explain how that all works, let’s talk about the internet without them. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can see everything you do online. Well, nearly everything: When