I use MullvadVPN, GrapheneOS and Linux but I also search for any more apps not like OSes. What’a your favorites?
It’s not about what you use, it’s what you don’t.
I use open-source applications that don’t require internet access for tasks that can be done perfectly offline, which is great not just for privacy but for many other reasons as well.
XMPP + OMEMO & Mumble for chat, offline maps from OSM, self-hosted feed aggregator
NixOS, OpenWRT, LineageOS for microG, but would like to remove Android from my line up.
- MullvadVPN, and a free and privacy respecting OS is another good idea.
- So is using privacy respecting apps: LibreOffice instead of MS Office, Codium instead of VSCode. And so on, with many FLOSS alternatives to the usual proprietary ones.
- Services also matter, imho: I’m using ProtonMail for my email (Tuta would be another clever choice, imho, and there are probably others). I’ve very recently switched from iCloud to filen.io for my cloud storage needs.
- Using one’s phone as little as possible. I’ve almost nothing on mine, I mean only stuff I’m required to have (banking and IDs, stuff like that), no email, no social, not even music or games (the game I enjoy the most play I also I enjoy it the most when I play it offline: chess ;))
And then… I also started using analog tools much more in the last two years. This helps a lot maintaining one’s privacy. Amazon can’t track my reading habits when I read a printed book (even less if I do not buy it from them), Goofle cant’" track my writings when I use pen and paper instead of their apps, Apple (or Google or Microsoft) can’t track my paper agenda or my paper notebook. And the NSA or whomever is playing that role in my country can’t ask any corporation to install backdoors in my IRL encounters with people so they could spy on me. At least, they cannot do that for now ;)
Cromite.
Mulch is a mobile chromium browser made by DivestOS (same folks who make Mull). Maybe worth checking out over Cromite.
Why?
Cromite is excellent.
Too bad it’s chromium based, but works a whole lot smoother and snappier than Firefox based browsers, oh and safer as well… So for the time being, Cromite it is.
Librewolf on desktop Linux is my weapon of choise.
I trust the DivestOS team while I have no clue who runs Cromite. Plus, Bromite being abandoned made me look into other options, which makes me trust Divest to keep Mulch running longer than the Cromite team I guess.
For me the fediverse and Librewolf on Linux
Public forums do not have privacy
Ones like Lemmy fit in fine to my threat model. They enable me to use privacy tools up-to-and-including Tor routing, without a phone number or other personally identifying info (you can’t do those with many other social media platforms). I can use the Fediverse pseudonymously, and if I ever want to, anonymously.
I’m not hiding this conversation from you, but I am hiding my identity from companies.
Ah yea reddit seems to hate TOR.
Not to mention that most subreddits have a soft ban on new accounts. Extremely infuriating.
Lemmy seems so welcoming to TOR users, I mean I had to fill out an “application” but I just used a temp email. Lovely place, hidden behind anonymity, well kind of… as long as the NSA doesnt suddenly spend the entire US budget hunting me, I’d be anonymous. They got bigger fishes to catch.
