The clarify, they said to get rid of all that stuff from OTHER peoples devices. The point being that you’re not the weakest link in this chain.

To illustrate, I have a phone number for less than a year that maybe 20 people have. All friends and family. I still had a sales call on it who was targeted and addressed me by name.

If your internet connection is coming from hotspot tethering to your phone you’ll want to put it in a Faraday bag when not in use since your phone will be trackable at all times even if off. If you use a hotspot instead the cell signal and WiFi are still trackable but the lack of Bluetooth and GPS aids greatly in keeping the tracking to a minimum.

I’ve had the same thing happen for my own personal domain that I run through Addy. Its frustrating because people can’t tell what a “good” domain is, so how can you have any rules about it? And if you do, then have a verification system with your customer service team.

But I’ve always said to myself, if this service won’t take my email then I don’t really want to be their customer. What else are they going to screw up when I give them my data?

I don’t know. I’m sure it only transmits when active, but that doesn’t mean its not collecting data at all times. If you’re on windows you can turn it off with a script, but it might turn back on after major updates.

I would probably argue they are the same in terms of security and privacy. Privacy communities tend to disfavor Proton because its all eggs in one basket, and also for political reasons. Both of those are subjective to your personal threat/privacy profile.

Its true that a single point of failure is more risk than separate services, but that fact doesn’t undermine their security on a technical level, and has nothing to do with privacy. As for the political, yes it’s something to watch but nothing wrong has been done. They are set up as a non profit with checks and measures in place to prevent corruption from happening. I’m OK with different points of view and having different points of view on a board is a good thing.

Steam has telemetry. They gather a ton of data on you. What details, how they use it, and how secure it is I can’t answer, but it’s clear that it’s happening.

I’m no ghost, not even close. Be careful though, “what’s the point?” Is essentially the question everybody asks at every phase of that iceberg diagram.

A possible answer to your question though, is that even if the state doesn’t know or care about him today that might change tomorrow.

That’s not my threat profile but it’s a valid one.

Lol. Well, that’s most people’s take on privacy. OMG they are taking our data and showing us ads that we hate. But I guess we can’t do anything about it. Oh well.

Well no, the intent is not to inconvenience others, but to not inconvenience yourself.

I love animals. Dogs, cats, rabbits, whatever. Love them all. I’m highly allergic to most of them though.

As a customer of an establishment, why do I need to deal with the animal that belongs to another customer of the establishment? And I’m not being a jerk. I’m not complaining or making a fuss, but if I’m trying to buy toilet paper I shouldn’t need to worry about hair, dander, or if somebody’s dog is well behaved or not. I am the one being inconvenienced, and there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for it.

That goes to the point of the comment you replied to. And to your point, if nobody else is being bothered… Are they checking if others are being bothered? Usually not. That’s a generalization but I can say in my experience it’s true more often than not (and I notice when it is). I’m not saying to ban pets in stores, but it should not be the norm and expect others to just deal with it.

I take the stance that I’m privacy minded and while I think everybody should be I don’t force my opinion on them. I do express myself and usually my “odd” behavior makes people I know question me, which I then give an answer for.

Most people don’t understand why they should strive for privacy. I usually start soft with ads because it’s a universal that nobody likes ads and they’ve experienced all the listening and tracking stuff but not connected the dots.

If they are responsive then in later conversations I can go more into deeper thoughts regarding it all. If I rake them down the rabbit hole right away their head will explode and run away.

Thank you for this. I appreciate the write up, learning a few things, and just the general let’s all get along heart behind it.

Just as a tip, set up and use a spare machine if you have one to make the transition easier. I’ve been running Mint now for a few months.

I have a test machine that I am learning and getting familiar with, setting up a virtual machine to learn that (I have some windows apps I will not escape from so running in a VM is my solution), etc… And all of this is with the freedom that if I break something I can wipe it and not care. I have since set up a media center and a gaming machine as well.

That experience is getting me feeling better about he whole thing. Honestly learning little idiosyncrasies like folder permissions not being inherited (I say as I set up my media center) are the things you juat need to learn through practice. Just my two cents as I am only a step ahead of you in a similar journey.

As many have said, it shouldn’t matter.

Personally, I have been known to look at email addresses because I assess everything the resume gives me. No, I don’t really care what provider you choose, but it’s a tiny bit of information.

So if your email name is “BigBootyQT” then I have a glimpse of your personality and how you may or may not fit in the role. That’s a real example BTW. It also might bear light in other ways, say if you’re applying for a job in cybersscurity but you’re using a yahoo email. Yeah, that’s a negative mark.

Will any of this be THE reason I ditch somebody? No. But it weighs with the rest of it. I would not disqualify somebody for a typo for instance, but it is a negative because that should not have occurred (especially of the role requires attention to detail).

I’ve been trying to work this out since the beginning of the year. This is anecdotally what I’ve done, what works and what doesn’t.

Most of my solution comes from JMP.chat for my phone number along with the cheogram app for functionality.

Basically I got a number for friends and family. I got a second number to give to businesses that don’t care about VoIP (my dentist etc). ($5 ea). Cons here are that SMS groups are limited to 10 recipients. This doesn’t work for my large family chats (I can get them but can’t respond). Another thing I dislike is since its XMPP based, all contacts are listed as their phone number if in a group, so it’s hard to tell who’s in it. (Solo texts show as names just fine). They have a premium tier that routes differently to allow more than 10 in a group text, but I’ve tried that twice now and the actual phone calling gets screwed up. So I’m still trying to get it all sorted out (and I’m not optimistic) It’s also a service only in USA and CAN.

My original number that I’ve had for 20 years and all big tech have assigned to me, I ported to google voice ($20 fee)

Since my original phone number was a carrier number it is already assigned to all the stringent companies like banks. They continue to use it without knowing its now a VoIP number. I have all SMS messages forwarded to my email so I don’t have to log into google ever. It works perfectly for 2FA. Shortcoming of this is that any group texts the email just says you got a group text, but a single source text the actual text is forwarded. I don’t use it for groups so its not a problem but just mentioning it as a potential con. Then of course, its legacy so opening new accounts won’t work the same way since its a VoIP number now.

I bought a hotspot from calyx. By far the most expensive part of my solution. But it gives me WiFi access without a standard carrier (it does use T-Mobile but calyx doesn’t track you like they do). Check them out to see if it fits your threat model. It works out to about $50/mo but the biggest issue is that its an annual lump sum.

Another option I’ve been trying is 4freedommobile. They have decent plans and are focused on privacy. Everything runs through their app for encryption. But I’ve found the app lacking both in UI and functionality. You can’t do group SMS (which is apparently coming very soon) but my biggest issue is they require google play services for notifications. They state they don’t, but they do. Hands down it just doesn’t work without it. So that’s a deal killer for me.

Honorable mention is the premium service Elfani. I haven’t used it but have considered it. Its very expensive at $99 a month but is secure. However I don’t see much on privacy so I’m not sure how different they really end up being from their base AT&T provider.

Also Snowden calls Signal the best messenger on the grounds on him using it daily and still being alive so that’s also a pretty good sign.

The real litmus test right here.