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For most protesters, activists, and journalists, your smartphone is an essential tool you depend on for organizing with your peers, accessing and distributing information, and helping others. It also represents a great risk, as a tool that is easily appropriated by authorities for targeted and mass surveillance. The perennial question
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"No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers" proclaims the Firefox homepage, but that's no longer true in Firefox 128. Less than a month after acquiring the AdTech company Anonym, Mozilla has added special software co-authored by Meta and built for the advertising industry directly
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Apple's press release yesterday reads with the professionally and poise of a teenager throwing a tantrum, it's amazing really. Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European UnionApple announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store impacting developers’ apps in
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The recent move among U.S. states to add digital "age verification" to websites which serve adult content is a troubling one. Digital age verification systems are rife with privacy concerns, many requiring you to upload your government ID to third-party vendors or even directly to the website
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
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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