freedomPusher

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/40633635

PDF24 used to be a way to send a fax to European fax numbers. It was a gratis service. It’s still advertised as such but it’s broken now.

The US is covered by faxzero.com, but for faxing outside the US they charge an absurd $2.09 per fax (more than postage in a lot of places). They are also Paypal-only. Fuck paypal.

Any suggestions?

PDF24 used to be a way to send a fax to European fax numbers. It was a gratis service. It’s still advertised as such but it’s broken now.

The US is covered by faxzero.com, but for faxing outside the US they charge an absurd $2.09 per fax (more than postage in a lot of places). They are also Paypal-only. Fuck paypal.

Any suggestions?

When filing a complaint in an agency of a government or ombudsman/mediator, the traditional workplace where everyone is on-site yielded more privacy for complainants because there were more meetings and verbal discussions over the processing. So fewer records were made about complaint processing and decision making.

Now with all the post-pandemic teleworking, most office workers collaborate on cases remotely. Thus more personal data ends up in internal email between case workers. Superficially that’s a detriment to data subjects. Most agencies are Microsoft boot-lickers so MS is needlessly in the loop on your sensitive data. Yikes!

To reduce exposure to MS, I only submit complaints offline on paper. In some cases, MS is at least out of the loop on correspondence to and from me. In other cases, MS sees it anyway because some receptionists are tasked with scanning postal mail then emailing it (indeed, we are fucked in this regard because there is no MS opt-out in those situations).

The advantage we can exploit

There is one little known advantage to this shitshow: when your case or complaint yields an unsatisfying result without rationale or with clumbsy/broken rationale, you can do a GDPR access request for all records. This includes all internal email among case workers and their advisors. It’s a way to gain powerful insight into the REAL reason your case was treated adversely. And that can be used against them.

Snag 1

Privacy policies sometimes give an email address for the DPO but either no offline contact information or the general mailing address for the whole agency. This means your snail mail letter could be internally delivered to your case worker based on your return address. Thus, the staff who fucked you over to begin with sees your request first, which triggers them to delete all email that embarrasses them about the case. Their CMY¹ move likely works. By the time the DPO gets the request on their desk, they have no incentive to assume malice and try to dig up deleted messages (assuming that’s even possible).

¹ CMY: cover my ass

Snag 2

Some orgs wildly interpret what “personal data” is. I’ve known a data controller to deny a GDPR request on the basis that “someone’s email address is not personal data”. So there is not much to stop them from claiming information about a case is not the personal data of the complainant.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/39004447

As someone who pulled the plug on residential Internet, I have naturally clung onto broadcast radio. It occurs to me that tuning into broadcast content gives a rare media source where you are not tracked. There is no digital footprint on your listening.

Tor (along with a couple even more obscure technologies like i2p) are the only viable cloud-sourced ways to escape consumption tracking. Tor is indispensible but it’s not as traceless as tuning broadcast signals. And Tor users are plagued with access discrimination.

Yet broadcast radio must be struggling. They likely lost copious listeners to the Internet. Seems like there is a missed opportunity to promote their stations and privacy along with it. Radio stations should inform people that tracking online is not just to advertise but it’s also used for personalised political manipulation.

Duckduckgo’s privacy theatre demonstrates that privacy promotion works. But DDG relies on trust and it’s rife with scandals. OTA¹ broadcasts do not rely on trust. Promoting privacy would have a long-term self-promotion effect. That is, as listeners come to develop their value of privacy more, their listenership becomes stronger.

Some (most?) stations likely also stream online. But they could still play a different jingle on the broadcast service, no?

¹ OTA: over the air

As someone who pulled the plug on residential Internet, I have naturally clung onto broadcast radio. It occurs to me that tuning into broadcast content gives a rare media source where you are not tracked. There is no digital footprint on your listening.

Tor (along with a couple even more obscure technologies like i2p) are the only viable cloud-sourced ways to escape consumption tracking. Tor is indispensible but it’s not as traceless as tuning broadcast signals. And Tor users are plagued with access discrimination.

Yet broadcast radio must be struggling. They likely lost copious listeners to the Internet. Seems like there is a missed opportunity to promote their stations and privacy along with it. Radio stations should inform people that tracking online is not just to advertise but it’s also used for personalised political manipulation.

Duckduckgo’s privacy theatre demonstrates that privacy promotion works. But DDG relies on trust and it’s rife with scandals. OTA¹ broadcasts do not rely on trust. Promoting privacy would have a long-term self-promotion effect. That is, as listeners come to develop their value of privacy more, their listenership becomes stronger.

Some (most?) stations likely also stream online. But they could still play a different jingle on the broadcast service, no?

¹ OTA: over the air

The !python@sopuli.xyz community is locked and redirecting people into Cloudflare. That’s not good for privacy, digital sovereignty, and decentralisation.

I suggest either deleting it entirely (it’s empty), or redirecting to !python!python@lemmy.sdf.org.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/37823770

Every bank, shitty giant social media platform and countless websites demand a phone number. It’s foolish to give them a voice number (esp. mobile) unless you actually welcome calls from them, their partners, whoever they sell your data to, and whoever exfiltrates it. The best move with all these untrustworthy data-sharing-happy businesses is to give them a pure fax number which is answered only by a fax machine.

In the rare case where reaching you is so important that they would use the number to send you a fax, then it’s probably a message you want to receive anyway (and best to have it in writing). I kept a gratis fax number for decades and never got fax spam.

One extra perk to this is if customer files have fax-only numbers, it could give some pause before a company decides to ditch their fax line.

My unsolved problem:

J2.com no longer gives free fax numbers. I can only find providers who charge a flat subscription of ~$15—25/month (which includes an allowance on outbound faxes). I don’t really need a fax sending svc. I wouldn’t mind paying <$10/year just to have a number that emails faxes to me, even if there is some small measured rate when it actually gets used. A pay-per-fax service like that is hard to find. Any tips would be appreciated.

Every bank, shitty giant social media platform and countless websites demand a phone number. It’s foolish to give them a voice number (esp. mobile) unless you actually welcome calls from them, their partners, whoever they sell your data to, and whoever exfiltrates it. The best move with all these untrustworthy data-sharing-happy businesses is to give them a pure fax number which is answered only by a fax machine.

In the rare case where reaching you is so important that they would use the number to send you a fax, then it’s probably a message you want to receive anyway (and best to have it in writing). I kept a gratis fax number for decades and never got fax spam.

One extra perk to this is if customer files have fax-only numbers, it could give some pause before a company decides to ditch their fax line.

My unsolved problem:

J2.com no longer gives free fax numbers. I can only find providers who charge a flat subscription of ~$15—25/month (which includes an allowance on outbound faxes). I don’t really need a fax sending svc. I wouldn’t mind paying <$10/year just to have a number that emails faxes to me, even if there is some small measured rate when it actually gets used. A pay-per-fax service like that is hard to find. Any tips would be appreciated.

℻ numbers are dropping like flies. This is a disaster for the very few of us who will not lick the boots of Microsoft or Google, unlike the 99%¹ of the population who is happy to use email (which traverses MS or Google servers in a vast majority of non-p2p comms).

So FAX numbers are disappearing. Some are removed from websites and stationary (letterheads), but still exist. Some fax numbers persist in publications, but the plug has been pulled. Not enough people are using fax to say “please plugin your fax machine”.

the race condition

Corps, NGOs, and govs likely ditch the fax after it idles for a long time with no activity. It’s a use-it-or-lose-it scenario. Part of the problem is someone’s rare will to send a fax is hindered by lack of info. If we had reliable access to fax numbers, we could do our part to keep them active.

open data remedy?

When a gov has an open data policy, one possible solution is to make open data requests for the fax numbers of gov offices.

previous posts

• https://sopuli.xyz/post/12970199

¹ made-up figure obviously, but likely accurate enough nonetheless

Is there a legit security risk with Afgan immigrants in the US? Or is the US policy just xenophobia motivated collective punishment to hit back because one of them happened to be a violent nutter?

This question was answered by Ben Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in the linked article.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/37371338

The question can be broken into two parts:

1. would people use it?
2. is it appropriate for a library to have a media room?

I have no TV and I suspect with so many people subscribing to streaming services lately as their sole source (from surveillance capitalists), probably not many people even have antennas to pick up local broadcast TV anymore. Is that a safe assumption?

A couple years ago I setup a MythTV for someone. Their local broadcasts were completely different from what I recall from decades past-- mostly educational (documentaries and how-to shows) and mostly commercial-free. It seemed to be largely fed by tax-funded public broadcast service. It used to be rife with commercials but commercial interests seem to have abandoned it.

Where I live now, I am offline and also lack equipment to see what’s broadcast locally. Not sure it’s justified to buy gear just to see what there is. And I have never seen what free satellite signals are like anywhere.

On the one hand, I could see it turning into an entertainment/cinema type of space with people bringing in popcorn.. which is perhaps a deviation from the library’s purpose. OTOH, it could be information focused to give access to locally aired educational broadcasts and to (perhaps more importantly) show people what content exists locally and to experience MythTV. Library users could even schedule shows to be recorded for them (as the library is not open 24/7). The MythTV PCs would of course be running Linux, which would be a covert way to promote the escape from proprietary OSs.

As I ask myself whether this is all crazy talk, a local library has Arduinos for people to experiment with.. which has nothing to do with books or media.

A parallel mission could be to get the library to run an Invideous instance to try to liberate people from Google’s stranglehold and their ads. Google would probably block the library’s instance but the blockade would then serve to inform people about Google’s politics. I guess the question is whether Invidious is too much in the legal gray area for libraries to seriously consider.