I'm thinking of paying for Mullvad, but I don't want to waste my money if I won't be able to use it. My ISP blocks Tor (at least that is the conclusion I have come to - I can only connect via a bridge). Is there anything I can do to make sure I will be able to use Mullvad before I end up paying for it?

I don't need anyone to tell me that Facebook sucks because I already know that, and I would never use it unless in my country, for reasons unknown to me, public and private institutions use Facebook as a primary method of sharing news, such as schedules or promotions.

I don't have the slightest intention of creating a Facebook account, but as I said, I need to see posts from certain Facebook accounts and every time I go to a Facebook page and scroll for 2 seconds I get a pop-up forcing me to create an account. And as far as I know, there is no sort of Piped front-end for Facebook, I would appreciate any help.

And I just assumed they called Rainbolt

I found that Mozilla VPN uses Mullvad servers and I thought it may be a good way to use Mullvad while supporting Mozilla. Then after further research I found that Mozilla bought an ad firm for 'privacy-centric-advertising' and that sounded sus to me. Is it reasonable to suspect that Mozilla VPN may not be as private as Mullvad VPN?

Not sure if anyone else noticed but reddit is now testing a beta of an answers feature that generates answers based on reddit posts. Maybe this explains the phenomena people noticed of deleting posts only to have their posts reappear? Just saying if reddit was already bad for privacy it just got worse in my opinion.

I'm only on a free Proton plan but I'm still considering switching because of recent news. I've seen disroot's website before and they seem more politically left-leaning which I appreciate. How have people's experiences been?

I've been trying to find a good privacy respecting browser, but I can't really decide on what to use. I don't like the search results with Brave Search. DuckDuckGo shares my information with Microsoft and SearchXNG shows me NSFW images even with strict search on. I really like Presearch, but I'm not really sure what they're about.

EDIT: After tinkering with the settings of my SearXNG instance, it seems to have reduced the amount of NSFW images. I think I will stick with SearXNG for now.

If I pair my Android phone and my laptop, I can share files over Bluetooth from the phone to the laptop. I've started finding this a really convenient method for me to send files to a Linux laptop without needing to install a separate app on either the phone or my laptop. Especially when I'm away from my home network (I use SFTP at home).

How secure is this? Is there encryption by default and could someone else nearby with a receiver potentially decode the file you're sending?

Currently ripping my DVDs and building a Jellyfin server. Now on desktop and mobile streaming works fine but the Raspberry Pi 4 + Libreelec + Jellyfin/Jellycon Setup i tried has been somewhat janky - both in terms of navigation and also the framerate drops at times though it isn't really an issue.

Pretty sure the folks in the Jellyfin Subreddit/Forums would tell me to just get a Firetv stick, so I was more curious what experiences and recommendations you guys have.

Firetv + firewall whitelist?

Fix my Raspi install?

I don't know if it's the right place to ask.
I don't want a Google account. I don't use yt that much but I still need it.
I even tried yt revanced. None of them works

I'd like to make an informed decision on extensions I install. Usually I read about people caring about browser extensions. I install extensions in vscode, in zed, gnome, kde and probably in a lot of other tools like bash as well.

Usually, I do not think much about security/ privacy. I only install what I want/ need and delete what I do not need.

How can I judge which extension to install and which not? There are extensions releasing builds regularly but the last release of public code on github was years ago. Downloads and stars give a hint on popularity. With popularity the people who will look into the code increases but if there's no code, there's nothing to look into. And just because it's not popular, it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad software.

How do you judge which extension to install?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2ff6q/call_for_andy_yen_to_resign/

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I’m interested in a phone with a physical keyboard. There is a mod for the FairPhone I spotted, but that’s not fully supported in the US yet. So I’m looking at buying the inspiration for the mod the BlackBerry Key2. I’ve heard it can be hard to get other firmwares on it. I’m particularly eyeing CalyxOS. Has anyone had any luck with this.

I recently learned about a great search engine called SearxNG. it can be self hosted and is a metaseach engine, AKA it uses everyone else's search engine and puts the top results out of all of them in your search results. I instantly loved this because it gave me AD free/ Sponsored free search results, aswell as the added benefit of keeping my search query's on my local machine. However i then realized, it asks other search engines like google and bing for querys. I did not like that, so i setup Gluetun as a network host in docker, which then takes all searx querys and tunnels them through the VPN. making it harder to figure out what im searching compared to my raw IP adress. i have the DockerFile and thought i would share. anything with $$$ needs to be changed.

https://pastebin.com/NfHcUWLs link to dockerfile

Was watching this and thought id share. It is very intreasting. this video topics cover, recommended mobile operating systems. chat apps, smart TV's and modern cars.

all of which like to track and spy on the end user, and what some good alternatives are.

Since the recent Proton events I need to change providers and I found RiseUP.

I would like to know how good is this service and if I should consider it.

Moreover as I know that it is no open to sign up how to get a RiseUP account? THX for all

Nothing crazy, but it would be cool to be able to build automations in home Assistant off of my Microsoft teams status. (Pause music and whatever I'm casting to Kodi if I get a call, etc)

Maybe even browsing Lemmy? Maybe not though lol

If there's no good options, no worries, I certainly have no problem keeping it in a work sandbox (connected to the same guest network I keep the work computer on and stuff like that)

But I just wanted to see if there's any more value I could squeeze out of it

Thanks in advance!

EDIT I wouldn't be casting shit FROM the iPad or anything, just to be clear

I still use my first ever made email address, at this point it's pushing 28 years old. However I have a major problem. I can rarely log into it anymore. There are so many attempts to login to the account daily from whoever out there that wants to gain access that the login is normally locked out for a period of time. At this point I've moved everything of financial value off of it as someone did get access once, but there are still plenty of random little things I'd like to hang on to it for.

I know I can just make a new one and ditch that one as a quick solution, but I figured i'd ask a wider community if they had any insights I might not have. It's a Microsoft account, and my windows is tied to it, but I'm pretty sure I can just migrate that to something new.

Edit: I may have given too much weight the the Arkenfox dev's assessment. Upon more research and consideration, I think Librewolf could still be a better option compared to straight Firefox, though hopefully the Librewolf team receive more help/contributors in the future to ensure its success long term.

I've been a user of Librewolf for a about a year now, and it's always served me pretty well as a nice easy way to get a hardened Arkenfox Firefox.

However, recently I was curious why Librewolf wasn't recommended on PrivacyGuides, and took a look through their reasoning on their forum. That thread spans multiple years, and for the most part I thought their reasons for not including it were a bit unfair, especially after Librewolf started offering automatic updates.

But towards the end of that thread in October, a Privacy guide team member posted a link to the Arkenfox github issue tracker, where a Librewolf team member reveals how the project appeared to have lost steam after a critical member left, and they are struggling to keep it up to date with the latest Arkenfox updates, despite putting out new releases.

I'm not sure if those problems have been resolved since that time. One of the maintainers did mention they're still short staffed in this topic on taking over maintaining Mull.

After considering the arguments for and against in the PrivacyGuides thread, I think their conclusion for not recommending does have some merit. Using Librewolf adds an additional layer of trust, not only to not be malicious (which I don't suspect they are) but to also be able to adequately fulfill what they set out to do reliably.

Another big part of them not recommending it was the existence of the Mullvad Browser, which I didn't realize was in fact a very well hardened version of Firefox (essentially the Tor browser without the Tor part), and is far more effective for private browsing compared to Librewolf or an Arkenfox'd firefox.

Ultimately you'll have to come to your own conclusion, ~~but personally I'll be switching back to Firefox as my convenient daily browser full of addons, alongside the mullvad browser for (more) private browsing.~~

So, since the recent news of Proton, im kinda thinking to get over off it... my problem however is with simple login. Simple Login belongs to Proton and this service is such a incredibly peace of art for me. This would me allow to create alias for every software i use, and use too for my health care - specific alias create with simplelogin - and bank - same thing.

I create this method to separate things from my inbox and this help me to be prepare if some leak from dark web happens.

The main problem is that Simple Login belongs to Proton. I can switch email provider, and that is easy, but change all my alias now is incredibly a nightmare. Anyone have some suggestions on what to do now?

I remember see people/communitys self host Simple Login ( for example, like private.coffee , tchncs.de or nomagic.uk do but for other services they plan) and im totally fine to donate who do that. I just dont know what im doing now... and SimpleLogin is the one i find, for example, to create a alias for services like discord (for example, i remember discord dont accept anon addy domains).

Thank you in advance