Privacy

42381 readers
276 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1
45
VPN Comparison (lemmy.ml)
submitted 8 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) by Charger8232@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 
 

VPN Comparison

I made a spreadsheet comparing different open source VPN providers.

Providers

Notes

  • Please do not start a flame war about Proton.
  • Please do not start a flame war about cryptocurrencies. Monero is the only cryptocurrency listed because of its privacy.
  • The very left column is the category for each row, the middle section is the various VPN providers, and the right section is which VPNs are the best in each category.
  • IVPN has two differing plans, which is why "Standard" and "Pro" are sometimes differentiated.
  • For accounts, "Generated" means a random identifier is created for you to act as your account, "Required" means you must sign up yourself. Proton VPN allows guest use under specific conditions (e.g. installed from the Google Play Store), but otherwise requires an account.
  • Switzerland is seen as more private than Sweden. Gibraltar is seen as privacy neutral.
  • All prices are in United States Dollars. Tax is not included.
  • Pricing is based on the price combination to achieve the exact time frame. For example, Proton VPN does not have a 3 year plan but you can achieve 3 years by combining a 2 year plan with a 1 year plan.
  • The availability section is security based. Availability is framed around a GrapheneOS and secureblue setup.
  • The Proton VPN Flatpak is unofficial, but based on the official code.
  • Availability on secureblue is based on the ujust install-vpn command. Security features must be disabled on secureblue in order to use the GUI for IVPN and Mullvad VPN, but not for Proton VPN. Mozilla VPN and NymVPN are available as Flatpaks, which are safer than layering packages.
  • I wanted to include more categories, such as which programming languages they are written in, connection speed, and security, but that became far too difficult and complex, so I decided to omit those categories.

Takeaways

  • NymVPN is very very new, but it's off to a strong start. It wins in almost every category. I actually hadn't heard of it until I started this project.
  • If you want a free VPN, Proton VPN is the only one here that meets that requirement.
  • If you want to pay week-by-week, IVPN is the only one that allows that.
  • If you're paying month-by-month on a budget, Mullvad VPN is the cheapest option.
  • NymVPN is the cheapest plan for anything past 1 month.
  • If you want to use Accrescent as your main app store, IVPN is the only VPN available there for now.
  • If you want to pay for a bundle of apps, including a VPN, Proton sells more than just a VPN.
  • Mozilla VPN is terrible. The only thing it has going for it is a verified Flatpak, but NymVPN also has that so it doesn't even matter.
2
3
 
 

Nowadays, a majority of apps require you to sign up with your email or even worse your phone number. If you have a phone number attached to your name, meaning you went to a cell service/phone provider, and you gave them your ID, then no matter what app you use, no matter how private it says it is, it is not private. There is NO exception to this. Your identity is instantly tied to that account.

Signal is not private. I recommend Simplex or another peer to peer onion messaging app. They don't require email or phone number. So as long as you protect your IP you are anonymous

4
 
 

Have you had any privacy wins recently? Anything you've tried or tweaked to improve your privacy? Anyone who's listened to something you've said? Do you have any privacy enhancing projects or changes you're working on implementing

I managed to convert someone to Signal this week. Was having reception difficulties with a phone call (both of us in spotty areas) and after a drop out, managed to get them on board with Signal. A very notable quality improvement in the call which helped reinforce to them it was a good idea.

I'm going to work on setting up Pihole over the weekend.

Note: I did steal this topic idea from Techlore.

5
 
 

Greetings, I need MFA and a few other things for work. I'd like to swap to a dumb phone on my off times. I don't want to constantly swap out a SIM as it eventually damages the card itself.

What are my options? And is there a dumb phone you recommended?

6
7
8
 
 

I’ve recently “moved” countries! And by that I of course mean the country I exit from online. I’m trying to keep a perma-VPN situation going.

YouTube loaded for me on my computer, where I’m logged in, even through uBlock Origin. But no luck on their locked down phone app, where I’m also logged in. Very weird. Shuffled servers a bit and still nothing. And I’m not talking about sports content which is always super locked down.

Anyone else facing this problem? Has this been the norm for a while in some exit countries? Is this just one of those wait for it to tide over situations that works itself out in the end?

Weirdly it loads shorts just fine.

I wonder at what point it would end up being better to just rent a VPS and wireguard into that.

In case your answer is “Just use Peertube!” my reply is Inshallah I will

9
 
 

This app has been under development for a few months now and is ready for use.

Should be available on Google play first. IOS in the works and released soon.

If your a developer who can contribute and make it even better that is welcomed it's still very early.

10
 
 

Let's say I want to bridge from WhatsApp or telegram to Matrix, have I gaibed something in terms of privacy? In which case would it make sense? Public group chats? Direct chats?

11
 
 

The EU built a system called CounterR that essentially performs pre-crime thought surveillance. The TLDR is that an AI company, with direct input from half a dozen European police forces, built a tool that scrapes social media, forums, and other sources to assign citizens a score based on what they think as opposed to what they've actually done. The EC also has not released details of the project..

The report itself acknowledges that this sort of automated system "can trigger new fundamental rights risks that affect rights different than the protection of personal data and privacy."

The European Commission's White Paper on Al observes that Al-related processing of personal data can trigger new fundamental rights risks that affect rights different than the protection of personal data and privacy, such as the right to freedom of expression, and political freedoms - in particular when Al is used by online intermediaries to prioritise information and for content moderation.

The police were active co-developers, sitting in meetings to define the criteria and feeding real, anonymized data from their investigations to train the LLM. So now you have a feedback loop where police define the threat, the LLM learns it, and the police validate the results, with zero external oversight.

And of course, it's all shrouded in secrecy. The whole thing is confidential, the source code is proprietary so even partners can't audit it, and the ethics board is made up of the same people building the thing. There's no clear requirement to track false positives, so you could be flagged as a potential radical and never know why.

Regarding transparency of funded research, it must be noted that generally research proposals foresee Confidentiality of some results is often necessary, especially in the realm of security.

The cherry on top? The core technology, developed with public funds, was recently acquired by a private company, Logically, who can now sell this dystopian scoring system to whoever they want.

The citizens of the EU literally paid to build our own panopticon. The whole project is about normalizing the idea that the state gets to algorithmically monitor and judge your political beliefs before you ever commit a crime.

12
13
14
 
 

I've been a user of Mullvad for a while and love there stance on privacy. I really like how they have stayed focused. But recently I feel like there speeds have gotten way worse.

For example I may be able to get 150ish up and down without a VPN but once I add Mullvad it gets way slower. Still very useable for most tasks but limiting when I have bigger downloads. This is across several different networks to eliminate it just being an individual network problem.

Has anyone else been experiencing this?

15
16
 
 

I'm looking into installing a door lock w/ key pad at home for two use cases:

  1. I'm out of town and need to allow someone to enter my home, in an emergency or for any reason.
  2. Nice to have - "oh shit, did I lock the door" - ability to lock the door remotely from my phone, would also solve use case #1 by unlocking remotely.

If there are no privacy respecting / self hosted apps for remote control (use case #2), then a "dumb" electronic lock w/ key pad that enables me to set a PIN that I can give to a friend or neighbor in a pinch and then reset the PIN after I get home, that would be good enough. If no such keypad/electronic locks exist, then my backup plan is to just make a few copies of my key for trusted friends & family and/or hide a key, but I'd like to explore the keypad route.

17
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36982928

Tyler Robinson, the suspect of the Charlie Kirk's assassination, almost got away with it all. This is how the FBI really caught him. Support my independent work: / thehatedone

The FBI is telling you that the manhunt for the suspect of Charlie Kirk's assassination was a result of a historic investigation with the use of the most advanced intelligence techniques available to law enforcement.

But the reality will tell you a different story. A story that is now very well reported and reveals how the suspect was actually caught. In what's about to follow, I'll explain to you every detail of the surveillance and intelligence behind the manhunt for Tyler Robinson, the alleged shooter at Utah Valley. In reality, it is not clear whether anything the FBI did actually helped track down the suspect.

The most damning admission of this fact is that after a full day of endless investigation, full 24 hours after Charlie Kirk was shot, the FBI, Kash Patel and local law enforcement were so confused they had “no idea where” the suspect was and they weren’t even sure whether he still was in Utah or not.

By the time the police did finally catch Tyler Robinson, he was so far away from the scene of the shooting that had he simply kept running, he probably would’ve gone away with it. He was arrested 250 miles away, in his parental home in St. George, Utah, whole 33 hours after the shooting.

SOURCES [References available in the transcript: / how-they-really-140361439 ] [0] • Kash Patel discusses investigation into Ch...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/us... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/... [3] https://www.tmz.com/2025/09/13/tyler-... [4] • Chilling Emergency Dispatch Audio Captured...
[5] https://news.sky.com/story/charlie-ki... [6] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2... [7] https://archive.is/K6rQw [8] https://archive.today/01VkR [9] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/... [10] https://archive.today/4BcVY [11] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/us... [12] https://x.com/UtahDPS/status/19662919... [13] https://www.economist.com/science-and... [14] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025... [15] • Tyler Robinson, suspect in fatal shooting ...
[16] • You Can Run but Not Hide: Improving Gait R...
[17] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/... [18] https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.17206 [19] • Suspected Charlie Kirk shooter seen in sur...
[20] https://innovationcenter.msu.edu/who-... [21] https://www.tmz.com/2025/09/13/tyler-... [22] https://x.com/TMZ/status/196627181449... [23] https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/produ... [24] https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.04616 [25] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.15946 [26] https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content... [27] • Raw Video: Charlie Kirk shooting suspect a...
[28] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20... [29] https://www.newsweek.com/tyler-robins...

18
19
20
21
 
 

I'm thinking about paying for a VPN, I currently don't use one.

I'd like to use Mullvad but they don't seem to have regional prices, while Proton does.

I wonder if Proton is still a reliable option, Proton is 60% cheaper in my country, probably because regional pricing (but I didn't check if it's really the case).

If anyone has any other suggestion I'd like to hear it.

22
23
 
 

I just installed Brave to have some different accs logged, and then I saw that addon... I'm running it right now but... did I just set a Tor relay? Really? It wasn't that easy before :S

24
 
 

In order to protect your privacy even more efficiently, you need to do something very simple whenever using an online service or a software. Something that most people fail to do is reading the terms of service, also known as a TOS, from companies or developers' software. This usually will tell you straight up whether they're spying on you, selling your data, or using it to sell ads. This will solve a lot of problems with people not realizing that some software is actually the opposite of privacy, but they keep using it thinking it enhances their privacy.

25
 
 

I know this might come across as a very impractical expectation but I wanted to hear from people who have a fulfilling career and also a sense for privacy: How did you do it?

I've recently had trouble finding a new job in the tech sector. So far I've been doing alright without LinkedIn, just directly applying to companies, but it seems less successful now. So I thought what the hell, might have to do this after all. After I've made an account I got quickly banned for logging in once from a VPN connection. Only way to get unbanned is to give my government ID to them - but that really rubs me the wrong way (so many leaks of IDs recently and all).

I'm remaining banned for the moment, contemplating what impact this might have on my career. It gives me a fair bit of anxiety, considering that my sense of where my boundaries are seems to be deemed unacceptable by the monopoly of international job markets. Should I just give in and send my ID? Am I delusional?

As always, I appreciate the discourse of this wonderfully decentralized community we have here on lemmy! ☺️

view more: next ›