Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
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You don't know what the fuck you're talking about; a real Dunning Kruger.
There are many places where every bank uses SMS for 2FA...
Relax homie don't pop a blood vessel. I know it can be frustrating to realize you have to take some personal responsibility for your privacy.
You don't have to use a bank at all, you opt for a credit union or a host of other options.
The irony in you invoking the dunning-kruger effect when all you have probably done is read the wiki page gave me a chuckle.
My credit union uses SMS for 2FA, so does my (online) bank. What "host of other options are available"? Do tell. But GTFO if you are going to suggest paying my health insurance premium or rural grocery store in Monero or some nonsense like that.
I don't know your specific circumstance but I highly doubt you only have one option for a bank or credit union or other financial institution. Time to adult some shit and do your research. Complaining on Lemmy will only get you so far.
You are making the mistake of assuming that people make a decision about what institution to bank with solely based on what kind of 2FA they provide. In reality, there are many other factors involved. I ended up banking with these institutions for a reason. And I don't know what the overall situation outside the US, e.g. in Europe, is but I think in the US there are few banks that offer something better than SMS 2FA. Some will force you or invite you to use their special app (which may or may not only work with SafetyNet) instead, which is absolutely not an improvement except perhaps strictly in the security sense. I think there are a few experimenting with FIDO2 hardware security keys but that is the exception. This is a problem that requires regulation not telling random individuals that they just need to git gud at picking a bank.
If data security isn't your top priority when it comes to where you put your money, we have nothing to discuss.
I'm not telling people to "git gud" but, people here choose not to do the bare minimum and then complain that the bank, their parents probably chose for them when they were children, doesnt meet their needs.
Yes of course this problem needs regulation but that won't happen if all consumers do is complain on useless forums instead of actually putting their money where there mouth is.
The fact of the matter is if you do nothing while staying at a bank that does things you don't like, you are complicit and it tells the bank you are OK with that. Its not fair but, most institutions prioritize convenience over privacy and security for their customers because that's what they have shown they want.
I'm not sure why people are so offended that they might have to put in some actual effort if they want the privacy and security features from large institutions they complain about.
This is a very privileged position to take.
A very uncharitable assumption
You clearly do not understand how regulation is introduced. People moving to banks that already comply with a future/potential regulation does not bring about regulation.
This is not how things work at all. How is the bank supposed to know why you switched to another bank or why someone is banking with them.
It is for the most part not about the effort. You are expressing typical neoliberal "everything can be solved through the market" mentality. If people just put in the effort to buy the right product in the marketplace then everything will be alright.
This will be my final response as we will probably never see eye-to-eye on this and I have better things to do with my time than engaging in pointless arguments. This is not what I joined this privacy community for.
As someone who's banked with a credit union before: we still just call it the bank and they have all the same issues normal banks do with shitty tech support
If someone wants the ability to bank in person at all then it can be incredibly difficult if not impossible to find a bank that doesn't have shit IT
You get more freedom with online only banks (what I use now) but those also come with tradeoffs like cash being much more annoying to use
I'm not saying its easy or convenient but users here love to complain about issues while being complicit. I just find that annoying.
My main bank is sunsetting allowing users to have a hardware token (they only offer it to users without a smart phone now) and is forcing users to either use a proprietary token app or SMS. Did I just accept that? No. I made my voice heard and got an exception made and now I use a hardware token as my 2FA.
People need to realize, privacy requires some personal responsibility. Complaining on Lemmy isn't enough.