I'm sure those who have run and maintained a mail server, and cryptologists, would probably want to throw something at me for spouting crap, but please bear with me.

Firstly, the Fediverse appealed to me because I knew it was the true answer to these centralised social media platforms. But the problem is that cross server encryption is difficult. For example, I hear that Mastodon servers cannot federate with each other properly if end-to-end encryption was rigorously implemented.

Secondly, there are EU laws that are proposing that messenger services should be interoperable. So in theory, Signal users can chat with WhatsApp user and Telegram users. They say it is possible with open protocols and API tooling.

So together, I wanted to know if this was possible for email. I know that some of the ancient protocols (in computing timelines) don't lend themselves very well for the hostile encryption heavy requirements of the modern internet, but I think it is possible to envision an grassroots alternative.

Am I completely missing something super critical? or are there already federated, end-to-end encrypted emailing services that can be easily spun up?

Copied from the reddit post:

Hi all, last night, a post from last year from my personal X account suddenly became a topic of discussion here on Reddit. I want to share a few thoughts on this to provide clarity to the community on what is Proton's policy on politics going forward.

First, while the X post was not intended to be a political statement, I can understand how it can be interpreted as such, and it therefore should not have been made. While we will not prohibit all employees from expressing personal political opinions publicly, it is something I will personally avoid in the future. I lean left on some issues, and right on other issues, but it doesn't serve our mission to publicly debate this. It should be obvious, but I will say that it is a false equivalence to say that agreeing with Republicans on one specific issue (antitrust enforcement to protect small companies) is equal to endorsing the entire Republican party platform.

Second, officially Proton must always be politically neutral, and while we may share facts and analysis, our policy going forward will be to share no opinions of a political nature. The line between facts, analysis, and opinions can be blurry at times, but we will seek to better clarify this over time through your feedback and input.

The exception to these rules is on the topics of privacy, security, and freedom. These are necessarily political topics, where influencing public policy to defend these values, often requires engaging politically.

The operations of Proton have always reflected our neutrality. For example, recently we refused pressure to deplatform both Palestinian student groups and Zionist student groups, not because we necessarily agreed with their views, but because we believe more strongly in their right to have their own views.

It is also a legal guarantee under Swiss law, which explicitly prohibits us from assisting foreign governments or agencies, and allows us no discretion to show favoritism as Swiss law and Swiss courts have the final say.

The promise we make is that no matter your politics, you will always be welcome at Proton (subject of course to adherence to our terms and conditions). When it comes to defending your right to privacy, Proton will show no favoritism or bias, and will unconditionally defend it irrespective of the opinions you may hold.

This is because both Proton as a company, and Proton as a community, is highly diverse, with people that hold a wide range of opinions and perspectives. It's important that we not lose sight of nuance. Agreeing/disagreeing with somebody on one point, rarely means you agree/disagree with them on every other point.

I would like to believe that as a community there is more that unites us than divides us, and that privacy and freedom are universal values that we can all agree upon. This continues to be the mission of the non-profit Proton Foundation, and we will strive to carry it out as neutrally as possible.

Going forward, I will be posting via u/andy1011000. Thank you for your feedback and inputs so far, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

I need to send a sensitive email anonymously to a VP at work. I was given information I should not have but it's important to get it to this person. I don't have much trust in local management to address the situation. I also need to protect myself because I won't be ready to leave this job for a few more months.

Any recommendations? It can be a simple one and done or one that's good for a limited time/number of emails.

TIA!

EDIT: I appreciate the recommendations! I will start checking them shortly. I'm hoping we can fix the situation locally but knowing that you recommended these helps me feel better about going this route if it becomes necessary.

All of us have made privacy mistakes at some point in our privacy journeys. In an effort to help those earlier on in that journey, please share some of the mistakes you've made, and how you could have prevented it.

I use an RSS reader to curate my Lemmy feed, which means I see every post, including deleted ones. Every so often, posts will crop up with pessimistic content such as "Why try anymore?" etc. Most of the time these are a result of privacy burnout, where the individual has a threat model that is too strict for their own tolerance.

We all wish we have perfect privacy. We all wish the world could be more pro-privacy than anti-privacy. One day, that may be the case. For now, we have to accept that nobody can be completely private. Privacy is a spectrum, and doing what you can to minimize data collection goes a long way. You can't become private overnight, so taking small steps like these means you can grow a strong foundation for future privacy. Privacy takes time, so take it as slow as you need to.

Even if a company already has your data or another means to track you, by minimizing you are making it harder for them to extract that data, and it increases the odds that your data becomes stale. By caring about privacy to begin with, you're showing companies and other people that the data collection is not ok.

I've been a privacy activist for years now, and I will also face periods of privacy burnout. I handle it by stopping, taking a step back, and reevaluating my threat model. It's good to take breaks like those, because it means you don't push yourself past your limits and become burnt out.

It's really easy to get caught up in the "breaking news" of privacy, too. This is more of a personal stance, but getting caught up in politics and news often leads to stress and makes it harder to make real progress. (This is one of the reasons I use an RSS reader, I can curate my information without stressful headlines.) You don't need to use the most private software or jump ship the moment anything goes wrong. If you feel you need to switch, do it when you have time and when it won't cause problems elsewhere.

Take a look at how far you've come, and realize that even if you're not where you want to be yet, you've taken steps to get there. Every person who starts to care about privacy, even you, is one more person to help make the world a more privacy respecting place. It may not seem like you make that much of a difference, but it's not just you. You and everybody else who cares about privacy makes a huge difference.

Don't give up now. Privacy is an uphill battle by design, but the payoff is worth it.

Good luck!

still deciding which i’ll go for but it’s a good list

How can I go back to using Google Drive, Gmail, downloading the WhatsApp application, trusting proprietary software in general?

How can I go back to convenience knowing what I know now? Constantly aware that I'm trading my privacy and my data for convenience? Why must this road be so arduous?

Genuinely struggling with this, how do you all manage? Do you just accept it and use this stuff trying to minimize how much information on yourself you give away? Or have you resigned to self-hosted email and wood cabins (unable to fully interface with payment systems, government bureaucracy, modern technology)?

In an unexpected mask off "secure" email and VPN provider Proton took the stance of siding with the fascist MAGA Reps. Proton's services are no option for me and many others any longer. Let's collect and discuss alternatives (E2E encrypted email and VPN) here 🔐👇

Always try to provide:

-Server location (jurisdiction)

-Governance

-Integrity/trustworthiness/transparency

-User experience/ease of use (grade 1 to 10, lets take Proton as a benchmark with an 8)

-Pricing and links

If you know alternative setups, feel free to share, too.

#ProtonExodus

Background: https://lemmy.ca/comment/13913116

Edit:typo

App: https://chat.positive-intentions.com/

A p2p encrypted file transfer and messaging app. Here are some features below:

• Open Source
• Cross platform
  • PWA
  • iOS, Android, Desktop (self compile)
  • App store, Play store (coming soon)
  • Desktop
    • Windows, Macos, Linux (self compile)
    • run index.html on any modern browser
  • Decentralized
• Secure
  • No cookies
  • P2P encrypted
  • No registration
  • No installing
• Messaging
  • Group Messaging (coming soon)
  • Text Messaging
  • Multimedia Messaging
  • Screensharing (on desktop browsers)
  • Offline Messaging (in research phase)
  • File Transfer
  • Video Calls
• Data Ownership
  • Self Hosting
  • GitHub pages Hosting
  • Local-Only storage

Check it out!

• App: https://chat.positive-intentions.com/
• More info: https://positive-intentions.com/blog/introducing-decentralized-chat
• GitHub: https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat

(I apologize if this is not the right community for the question described in the post title.)

My problem with setting up Mollysocket is that my knowledge and competence with such things is very limited (I have MSc in natural sciences) so the instructions on their Github repo are not clear enough for me to resolve the issues I've faced. I have a strong passion for these though, and there are still lots of things I do understand.

However, none of the three alternative methods to install Mollysocket worked. First I tried using crates.io, but hit the wall when trying to perform "cargo install mollysocket" because it ended up giving a feature error which I couldn't pass regardless the given instructions of using nightly version and enabling such unstable feature (+ I've no idea where to find Cargo.toml file).

So next I tried the precompiled version, but then the issue was that I couldn't start mollysocket via systemctl. Troubleshooting by myself was impossible because I couldn't find anything from the search engines related to this.

And the Docker option, well, I think I understood everything until the step where I should generate VAPID key. I copy-pasted the given command from their Github, but this results in a error that such command does not exist.

The instructions given on their Github are, in my opinion, not so beginner friendly, thus I would be very grateful to those who could help with this.

Unnecessary and deeply concerning bow to the new "king"

Update: position got backed up by an official Proton post on Mastodon, it's an official Proton statement now. https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503

Update 2, plot-twist: they removed this response from Mastodon - seems they realize it exploded into their face!

There used to be some application named vigilante that had alert when microphone or camera was activated. Then it's dev stopped updating it and that was that.

I know android should show some small icon when camera or mic is active, but that doesnt help me if i'm not actively looking at the screen at the time.

Do you know of anything that could still do what vigilante did? I'd prefer to know if something was trying to be sneaky. Or is it pointless even trying to do that due to something?

I recently learned that my company prefers closed-source tools for privacy and security.

I don't know whether the person who said that was just confused, but I am trying to come up with reasons to opt to closed-source for privacy.

I didn't liked it because of their proud claims "we are better than Tor" talking about their blockchain-based "incentives", and their venture capital small start-up model. VC always means you're product is doomed to be sold, abandoned or screwed. Apparently they also proudly claimed "we are better than Signal". Good luck.

Now that Mull is no longer being supported, what are some recommendations to tweak fennec so that it matches Mull in terms of privacy and security?

The stock Graphene SMS app sucks, it lacks basic features and customization that standard SMS apps have.

I see no real need to keep it for security and privacy reasons unless someone can share legitimate information about the application for a need to keep it that is note worthy I am all ears to be educated.

I'd like to explore other privacy focused SMS alternative apps. Not services. Just the app. Thanks! I hope this helps others too. I can't be the only one! I chose top 3 because I would rather not try 50 apps. Just the cream of the crop.

Edit: I tried several. Fossify seems to be the best overall, I encourage others interested to try it on F-Droid. Thanks everyone!

As the title says I'm looking for a good alternative for Heliboard. I've tried a few of them and:

• Heliboard is my favorite but the suggestions are a bit meh, sometimes it doesn't suggest correctly or does not auto correct me. Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn't
• Futo is goat in suggestions compared to Heliboard but it doesn't have an much personalization as Heliboard (even if Heliboard isnt goat on that aspect). I can't change symbols layout based on my taste (or muscle memory tbh), themes are a nothing crazy IMO, I wish I was able to make my own but its currently set to "coming eventually"
• FlorisBoard was my first ever open source keyboard but at that time, it didn't have suggestions but placeholders so I uninstalled it because I need them

I'm looking for a few things (ordered by importance):

1. Multilanguage support for correction. Is it even possible? Before switching from Samsung Keyboard to Pixel + Foss keyboard, I think there was something similar but I could be wrong (Top priority but at the same time is optional if not possible/hard to have)
2. Great correction for multiple languages (IMHO Futo is superior to everything I've tried)
3. Customization: Symbols layout, I want to set my own symbols and "subsymbols" (? The hold to show more)
4. Customization: Themes. I want to be able to change the colors of the keys/background/etc basically how Samsung Keyboard is customizable with the Keyboard plugin in Good Lock (or some nice themes with limited personalization but I would love to set my own colors

Thanks!

Let’s say I live in a police state. How can I publish a blog with complete anonymity? If I am found out, there is a high chance of imprisonment or death. What can I do so that the government cannot discover my identity?

I need a blog or website where I can publish articles, with a mailing list feature so I can send those articles out to subscribers.

What tools should I use? What steps should I take to protect myself?

I would greatly appreciate any information or resources that can help me with this.

In my local community, we have a WhatsApp group for mutual help and services / goods exchange, the rule is no money, so it's mostly populated by leftists more or less open to understand the problematics of internet privacy (for context). There are a bit more than 350 persons.

Today, someone sent a message telling everybody that he's leaving Meta products for good, thus this group. A few other persons complained about meta, then I suggested that we could all leave WhatsApp and go on Signal and I briefly explained the network effect by saying that if no one uses signal because nobody is on it, then no one will ever use it if nobody takes the first step.

And this argument worked because an admin just created a signal group! More than 50 persons already switched!

Obviously the WhatsApp group will not be abandoned right away, but it has been decided that both groups will be used for now, then we'll see at the end of the year which group we abandon.

I really see hope in that kind of events, because if I managed to make more than 50 people switch, a portion of them will do the same for their other groups and family / friends.

I plan on hosting little conferences with this group on the libre culture and the attention economics, so hopefully I'll convince all of them that it's the right thing to do!

I have loads of files and paperwork that can be scanned into files. I would like to have AI scan all the data, compile results and recommend options. For instance.

A large list of 176 food items ranked based on ones immune system response to each food item compiled into a diet plan. I can strip the identifying information for privacy reasons.

I just want to know how to have AI do more advanced tasks. While also respecting privacy. These concepts seems reasonably possible. However Chat, and other LLM do not scan files as they cannot be uploaded or scanned and input.

Self hosting possible but not necessary for this as I can strip personal info before uploading or inputting.