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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. Terrible acronym aside, the RESTRICT Act claims to… empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services operating in the United States in a way that poses risks to Americans’ sensitive data and our national security....

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 hacked, with the branding changed and livestreams posted promoting cryptocurrency scams. Within a matter of hours, all three channels were completely gone, with links to the channels and any of their videos reporting that the channels had been terminated for YouTube community guideline violations....

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 and age, precisely because there are no clear-cut answers. In the episode, Henry posed the idea of a theoretical platform on the internet with strict identity verification, an idea which I feel has some merit: Anonymity online is too often abused in the modern day by malicious actors to spread disinformation and hateful ideas while skirting any potential consequences....

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 Ventura is no exception. Some notable new additions to the macOS privacy ecosystem include: Lockdown Mode Rapid Security Responses Passkeys Let’s venture in and see what these updates will mean for you....

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 October 2020. The rest of the PrivacyTools team left to join me at Privacy Guides nearly a year later on their own accord. The only reason he blames me specifically is because he is so out of touch that he probably wasn’t even aware of everyone else that had been giving him free website content for years....

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 for future reference. An extended version of this page was originally published on Privacy Guides to clear up misinformation being spread by the project currently known as PrivacyTools....

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 online subcultures (Linux community, Android vs iOS, etc.), but it’s especially hard to keep seeing it crop up again and again in the privacy community — such an important topic we’re very involved with on a daily basis....

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 more private and secure something is, the more restricting or less convenient it is. This balancing act between high security and privacy, and usability and convenience is one of the trickiest problems to overcome both when creating software and services and when choosing which services to use....

Matrix is a modern, open standard for decentralized communications. It boasts a production-ready specification maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation and it’s being used by anyone from small hobbyist collectives to national governments. Essentially, it’s an instant messaging service, but one that can be under your complete control: Your data won’t be snooped through by Big Tech organizations, and it won’t stop existing because one company decides they want to shut it down....

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 make sure their “reviews” are what you see first when you begin your research. Some of them are even operated by VPN providers themselves, operating under anonymous business entities to hide their bias, or doing it right out in the open, hoping you’ll mistake their advertising-filled press releases and blogs as insider knowledge of the VPN space....