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 We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.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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VPNs are still worth it for that purpose, particularly torrenting.. Not sure who is saying this but they are wrong.
They might be confused about some VPNs removing port forwarding and thinking that kills their use case rather than limiting it
Somehow I've gotten dinged several times by my isp while torrenting behind a VPN. I'm not sure how it is happening because I am disciplined in my use and all the apps related to it will only function if the VPN is up and running. It's almost as if there's something in video file itself that activates outside of the VPN somehow. Or if private internet access is not offering comprehensive protection any longer.
Your OS might be leaking your DNS queries.
Check https://www.dnsleaktest.com
Bind your client to the torrenting software! Even with the best VPNs leaks can and will happen, so prepare for it.
I use a "virgin" installation of Brave for torrent browsing only and qBittorent, both bound to Private Internet Access.
How do you bind a browser to the VPN? Lol
It's a setting in private internet access that restricts apps that you set to communicating only through VPN. If you are not connected with the VPN, the apps will not function. Kind of like a app specific kill switch
That's basically split tunnelling which is not what I'm referring to. In my case I use qbittorrent, and in the advanced settings you can make it only download through a specific network adapter, which is infinitely better than split tunneling. I recommend you to try that!
Did you use free VPN?
They said "private internet access" which I think is a paid vpn
Yes, Paid and been great for years for me
It is owned by an advertising company, the same as expressvpn for what I now, so I dont trust it...
Edit: I checked, PIA was aquired by Kate Tecnologies which also owns ExpressVPN and the owner also has a gambling company. I would rather use Mullvad, because you can pay with monero or cash, but the best solution would be hosting your on vpn in a vps
Private Internet Access