Privacy basics, can anyone help?
Privacy basics, can anyone help?
Hello there! Im looking for increased privacy when it comes to my network connections. So far I know of TOR as an almost absolute bastion of security, but how do I ensure the remaining network traffic is encrypted and private? I know of signal for communication, and I’m aware of VPN’s. However I’m not sure whether to trust most providers regarding government interference as their software often isn’t open source. Is there a federated VPN of sorts, similar to how lemmy and other fediverse apps work?
You're viewing a single thread.
It depends on what you want to achieve.
Encryption (if done right) will protect you against people eavesdropping on your connection, but not against tracking by cookies, device fingerprinting or similar technologies. I.e Google, Facebook etc. will still be able to track your every move. A web browser with good ad/tracking blocking will go a long way here, but if technically feasible you'll also probably want something like Pi-Hole to complement your browser's ad blocker and also catch network traffic from other apps.
For better recommendations you'll probably need to tell us about what exactly it is that you want to protect yourself against.
Isn't a secure operating system essential anyway though? Like, can any decent privacy level be achieved on a windows computer?
The first question is always: what’s the threat model?
Maybe but at the end, user data is bought and sold by corporations, so if you avoid a few collecting them that doesn't mean you'll be private.
I agree in principle - on Windows it's a bit of a cat-and-mouse thing between people building tools to disable Windows telemetry and Microsoft building 'better' telemetry. And don't get me started on Edge. It really is time for the courts to force Microsoft to allow consumer choice once more.
Having said that, it does depend on what your objective (resp. threat model) is whether or not you consider Windows telemetry a problem. Microsoft will know that you've used this web browser for that much time, but not what websites you've visited (unless it's Edge of course). It's up to you whether that bothers you.
I never bothered checking edge's TOS and data collection since I never considered using it in the first place so idk how bad it is :p.
But also can't the person you're hiding from also buy your data from Microsoft anyway? I mean, they collect them to sell, not only store. Your metadata are the ones they go after first right? Easy to store and analyze, usually betray behavior patterns etc.
Having said that, I do get your point and maybe it does depend on who you want to protect yourself against. But I'm just asking to verify my own knowledge.