I visit sites by Wiley, Elsevier, and Taylor and Francis a lot recently because I am trying out to do research in a specific topic.

Despite using uBlock, I find that some ads creep through. Also, they have trackers everywhere. How do I go about identifying their trackers?

That's it, I get an error message whenever I try to post or comment if I'm connected to my VPN, butnot trouble if I just get disconnected. Does not fit the idea of decentralized social media I had, but overall I'm mainly curious as to the reason why it is so.

Hello, I'm wondering if there is a way to download webpages anonymously, without actually having to visit the website. I want to access this website, but it requires Javascript. So, instead I'm just wondering if theres a way to download the webpage (I want to download the webpage with its functions, like any audio features along with it, for say, Ultimateguitar.com). I recall there being some GNUWebProxy downloading tool or whatever, I just forgot the name of it.

Thank you!

This post is not really about questions I have. I just feel like I need to write this somewhere to express my concern.

First of all, online stores have become a huge part of our society and I admit I heavily rely on that. That alone could be privacy issue but I’d ignore that for the sake of not missing the point of this post.

The problem is rather in the way these online stores send out their receipts. You might already know that emails are by default not client side encrypted. That means your email server admin (Google if you use Gmail, Apple if you use iCloud mail. And Proton if you use Protonmail. Yes Proton claims it stays encrypted as soon as the emails arrive to their server but who can really vouch this? It’s behind the curtain anyway. ) has access to your receipts including of the past.

Now email has been around for a really long time. And the client side encryption part has been worked in a lot of forms such as S/MIME. But none of the online services really implement it even though they contain critically personally identifiable info such as items I bought along with my name & address.

And the thing is even though these online sellers acknowledge this privacy risk, they don’t have options to not email us receipts. For example, Amazon has a dedicated page on their site where I can see the list of everything I bought. That’s literally enough for me. They can stop sending me the receipts in the worst possible way! At least they could provide us with better way (even WhatsApp will do) yet they don’t. This is a severe privacy issue.

I can’t help feeling, with all the sophisticated technology we have at hand, that we deserve better.

So, I had an idea for an Invidious alternative that would be pretty difficult for YouTube to block. Basically, YouTube can block instances because it is really easy to detect which IP is making a lot of requests. But what if everyone using Invidious were an instance? Like, if one person wants to watch a video, they would get it from a random person using this software. I don't really know how it would be done—if it would be something like torrents, which have a direct connection, or if it would go through some server in the middle. This is just a suggestion; I don't really know how I would implement it. But if it can be done and someone wants to do it, it would be great.

Edit: switching to https://sky.rethinkdns.com worked, thanks for all the suggestions!

Hope this is the correct forum to ask this question.

I've recently switched to RethinkDNS and quite like it. I've run a PiHole on my home network for a while, and Rethink finally gives me the same functionality and customizability while away from my house.

When I'm at work at [REDACTED BIG CORPORATION] my Internet won't connect at all while on company wifi with Rethink active ("No Answer" response to all queries). I just turn DuckDuckGo app tracking protection on instead (also technically a VPN according to my phone), and the Internet works. CyberGhost VPN behaves the same as Rethink, so I'm unsure why DDG doesn't run into issues.

Does anyone know of a way to automatically swap between VPNs while on certain networks? I'm sure it is possible to do so with a GPS fence and SmartThings, but I don't want to give that app (or any for that matter) location permissions.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to do this (I'm fine using apps outside of Google Play, as you can infer from my use of RethinkDNS and DDG in the first place), I'd love to hear them!

Cheers, Hank

I use the built-in sync service in various Firefox forks to sync bookmarks/history/tabs, using the default Mozilla servers.

When I went to "Manage Account" to review and prune the devices ("services?") linked with Mozilla Sync down to what I'm actively using currently, and noticed "Mozilla Monitor" in there.

I can't find any info on why Mozilla Monitor required sync credentials, and I don't remember Mozilla Monitor telling me it would be gaining access to my sync data, nor can I find any way to review what data "Mozilla Monitor" has access to.

Any ideas?

For now I'm signing out that entry, while I consider other sync options.

Edit: changed title from 'Mozilla/Firefox sync - why is "Mozilla Monitor" a signed in device?'

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'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?

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

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'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.

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'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?