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....
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 your ISP when it comes to respecting your privacy, because selling your data is the only way they can make money, whereas an ISP is primarily paid for by you....
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 websites use HTTPS (or TLS, or SSL. these terms are often used interchangeably when referring to website encryption), indicated by the padlock in your web browser, your ISP cannot see exactly what you’re doing on the website....
I can honestly say I didn’t see this coming. On August 29th, 2019, Apple announced they would begin not only selling original OEM parts to independent repair businesses, but also provide them with the tools, guides, training, and diagnostics required to complete repairs on out of warranty iPhones. This is great news. It’s a surprising turn of events from a company that has spent years lobbying against Right to Repair bills across the nation....
Outline is a suite of open-source software developed for journalists to safely access their network and the internet while traveling in countries where their activities may be monitored or censored. Despite this, the Outline platform is ideal for a wide range of users, especially less technical users, and users in censored countries like China who may have little to no knowledge about how VPNs or proxies work. Outline consists of two parts, the Outline Manager and Outline Clients....
If you run servers for public services, like I do with privacytools.io, you definitely want to monitor them for any successful logins to user accounts (via SSH, et cetera). The way I plan to accomplish this is to set up an automatic notification to the Pushover app on my phone in the event of any login. I’m going to implement this as part of PAM authentication, and configure it to fail any logins if the notification script fails for whatever reason....
Some people called for me to write a more technically detailed/in-depth guide to setting up Tor with alt-svc after we set it up on privacytools.io, so while I do it all over again on our Mastodon server, I figured I’d write this post! Plus, it’ll make it easier for me if I need to do this again in the future :) When Cloudflare introduced their Onion Service last year, it marked an important milestone in Tor adoption and connectivity....