@alphonse Sorry, I double-posted a link to the same tweet. This was coincidental, we posted almost at the same time!
It might be better to use nitter.oksocial.net. It’s Tor-friendly so more people can see the linked post (while nitter.net is blocking Tor now).
Thanks for pointing out potential problems. The post has been edited to include a warning. Though it seems obvious that one shouldn’t believe anything blindly, there may be gullible persons too.
(Deleted, because the link to post/1090829 may show an ad of this VPN, when seen from a remote instance.)
‹silverpill:poa(.)st› Anyone working on a GUI for multisig (or planning to work on it)?
‹tobtoht:monero(.)social› I am.
‹tobtoht:monero(.)social› As part of Feather
cf. Is An XMR Version of Nunchuk Wallet Technically Possible? https://monero.town/post/1017203 @japananon@mitra.anon-kenkai.com
Leave it to the cryptocurrency people to turn a simple tutorial into an ad.
I’m from the same Lemmy instance monero.town (technically a mod?) and can see your point. Initially I was vocal about perceived link-spamming, advertising this SimplifiedPrivacy thing; at least a few users there were/are feeling the same way, as you can see e.g. here. So please don’t lump crypto (esp. Monero) users as a single kind of people.
Like @leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone pointed out, some of info provided by this user (ShadowRebel) can be useful. Perhaps some people prefer a video to text. Monero users tend to respect freedom (of speech) and advertisement is not forbidden in Monero.town anyway. Perhaps you can understand that this does not mean “the cryptocurrency people” are the same.
You’re basically using Kuno to attract potential VPN customers? That could be an interesting, new business model. Some marginalized people can get humanitarian help via Monero, while these supporters (Monero users) are likely to be interested in privacy, so they might buy your VPN service. In theory, this could be win-win-win :) A good potential.
On the other hand, it’s rather obvious that you’re not one of us, not someone privacy-aware. You can read some discussions about Kuno here:
Use Cloudflare (while saying “We protect your privacy”), and you’ll immediately lose 50% of trust. Additionally, the script via CDN in question is for Google Translation… 😓 Like this, perhaps a typical privacy advocate doesn’t even consider your VPN. The worst part is, you’re not even able to see the problem… If you were a privacy advocate, Google wouldn’t be even an option to begin with. (If you’re wondering why, perhaps you shouldn’t do VPN business.) How about LibreTranslate, for example?
Get rid of anything Google, and stop using CF (MitM) so that you might be able to rebuild credibility. Make everything Tor-friendly. That’s a minimum requirement for the “privacy industry”: even something rather iffy like Proton has a token onion. I also suggest you be transparent about Kuno. Make it clear it’s zero-fee because it’s there as a promotion for your VPN business. Such transparency doesn’t make you look bad. On the contrary, people may trust you more, if the reason why it’s zero-fee is not hidden and people behind it are honest.
Kuno could be a great website—it has already helped a few people. Some of us were even saying (thinking) that we were willing to make donation to Kuno itself (not buying your VPN, but we could send you XMR anyway “for free”). Still, I hope Kuno will become somewhat more privacy-aware, so that a typical Monero user feels comfortable with using it. Thank you for reading.
The SimplyTranslate front end has many languages, translate engines selectable: Google | DeepL (Testing) | ICIBA | Reverso | LibreTranslate. Some instances are Tor-friendly, even onion. The project page seems to be https://codeberg.org/SimpleWeb/SimplyTranslate
Refusing to use Google is just common sense. LibreTranslate itself is decent (at least not Google), except a website hosting it may have some opaque JS or Google things (Font, Analytics, TagManagers, etc.)
Either way, translation can’t be super-private in general. For example, if you use it to write a private message or love letter in a foreign language… even including real names and physical addresses…
Also, metadata like “a Danish-speaker is reading this German text about X” can’t be hidden, and if the language pair is uncommon and/or if text to be translated is specialized (not generic), the engine provider may easily guess “this request and that request yesterday may be from the same user”, etc. if they want to. A sufficiently powerful “attacker” might de-anonymize you, helped by other info about you, already gathered. In practice, maybe not a big concern, if you’re just translating generic, non-sensitive text, not showing your real IP, and clearing cookies frequently.
Just fyi: recently EFF is creating Privacy Badger browser add-on and GNU also has LibreJS. They’re technically not ad-blockers, though; apparently a tracker-blocker and a non-free-script-blocker, respectively.
kuno.anne.media started hosting this VPN’s ads, since around the end of October, 2023, also blatantly calling /cdn-cgi/apps/head/ (trying to installing some CF app(s) via .js if your browser is lenient).
Not sure which is better: zero-fee idealism + ad-supported (implicitly selling some info) vs. low-fee realism + ad-free
A Cake contributor or contributors are also running, or related to, a blockchain analytics provider, Moonstone Research, specialized in tracing difficult-to-trace payment methods such as Monero, proudly saying, “Moonstone Research can provide leads when no other blockchain analysis firm can.” How? Maybe because their technology is so great, and/or unlike other companies, they’re running major remote nodes themselves, monitoring and recording a lot of things.
The positive side is, this Moon-Cake duality could help Monero improve, become more private, more untraceable. They simply may have tried to help solve the recent incident, never using it as a promotional opportunity of their unparalleled blockchain analytics.
That said, this reminds me of Team Cymru, a company basically selling its skill to deanonymize netflow data. Someone from Team Cymru had managed to become an important board member of the Tor Project, hosting TorProject.org website and several bridges to the Tor Network. The Tor Project admitted the conflict of interest, and quickly fixed the issues once discovered.
Like mentioned above, the Moon-Cake duality could work positively for Monero. Nevertheless, one might want to think carefully about the potential ramifications of using Cake Wallet, related services, and especially their remote nodes. Nothing personal against Cake, its contributors, developers, supporters/users. On the contrary, I genuinely thank Justin Ehrenhofer (sgp/SamsungGalaxyPlayer) for revealing (at least part of) what they can do, what they’re doing as a side business. Thank you!
Thank you for confirming that there would be indeed some COIs between Cake and Moon, and that at least one of Cake’s contributors or ex-contributors has started this anti-Monero (?) blockchain analytics provider.
A dilemma is: if Cake is not a honeypot, of course you deny the claim that it’s a honeypot; if Cake is indeed a honeypot, of course you deny the same claim. If Moon and Cake are totally unrelated, you say, “They’re unrelated.” If Moon and Cake are secretly or subtly collaborating in some way, you say the same thing. So asking or answering a question about something like this is largely pointless.
Probably an ideal solution is not trust, but math and technology. Yet pure P2P doesn’t look very realistic, so a centralized big player like Cake may be necessary to some extent. There is always a trade-off between privacy and convenience.
As of writing this, GitHub shows Justin Ehrenhofer as your contributor. You may want to erase the past to avoid “misunderstanding” about what happened. Things must be much easier on Reddit or Twitter 🤭 sorry about that, but this is Monero.town.