this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
381 points (95.9% liked)

Privacy

31993 readers
446 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.

And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already 'good little pets' of these giants.

Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don't have individual opinions.

Although the fight still continues, It's time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It's time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it's almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.

PC

For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Mobile

For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.

(page 2) 34 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

A lot of these services have a network effect. Being the only user on the platform doesn't create any value. You need to have someone on the other side to interact with. I was able to get my entire family using Briar as an SMS replacement. I'm working on a few ideas for networking people who want to use Briar with each other so we can have private forums for an array of interests.

Another idea I thought of was copying static websites (won't work for websites that are a service) and then putting them out there as a .onion website using OnionShare. I think it would be a good idea to create sites that are lists of .onion sites or add them to Ahmia (http://juhanurmihxlp77nkq76byazcldy2hlmovfu2epvl5ankdibsot4csyd.onion/) for people to find.

We might not be able to build a web that looks like the web of today but we can build one that's on par or better than what existed in the 1990's. In a lot of ways, that could be a very good thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am not so worried. Metaphysical reasons aside, why can't a proxy do what needs to be done?

There is 0.0 things that can stop an edge proxy that appears trusted from the proxy on out, and but is doing what the end-user wants from the proxy on in. At some level, network traffic is physical...once data enters the physical realm, it is the end-user's data.

The irony is...if the information was that important & valuable, it could be printed and purchased by consumers, you know, like...it used to. lol.

[–] Darth_Vader__ 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How can you trust the proxy? Also it's still giving in to chrome' s monopoly

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

ahh...the proxy you run? I hope you can trust it.

That is how ad blocking worked before plugins :)

I am not sure what kind of monopoly they have. I guess on Android?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If people who are smarter and more capable than me really care about communal privacy and respect, I think the best thing that could happen is for all relevant non-user friendly apps, services, OSs, etc. to have their benefits ported into new applications that are as pleasing and easy to use as Windows and Mac. I love Linux and Debian tools, but trying to do anything on one of those systems feels like being forced to learn Chinese; therefore I can't recommend them to my friends and family. Which, after going down the rabbit hole, is depressing to say the least.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

How can the privacy alt web correlate with the content of data itself and the ability to access the data? How might private storage compete with corporate super hardrives for websites?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The problem really isn't the internet, the problem is how big techs, which have the necessary resources to build complex infrastructures, are dealing with it trying to costantlyincreaseing their profit, and that is son of our broken economical system.

I'm a strong believer that for changing the internet we'll first need to think about a new and different economic system, where there aren't central institutions printing money for nothing, and that, as always happened in history, has to start again by switching back to a deflatory system.

Now if i think about a deflatory economic system on which software can be built on i cannot think something else of Bitcoin, if lightning network is the layer granting micropayments on it, software built on lightning network can be what makes us detatch from this shitty web based on ads and unrestricted profilation.

It's still on its infancy but honestly i don't think a decentralized network more trusted than bitcoin exists worldwide. Installing a full node/lightning node with every internet modem ineveruy home would make the infrastructure for a completely different internet.

I've been seeing some projects built on lightning network like the impervious browser, it kinda vanished, much more work is still needed.

In my opinion that's what we would need to work for, we can't exclude the economic model from the internet because that's just how our society works and always worked, collaboration is needed to build something better togheter, and that most of the times requires and is facilitated by some form of economical incentive. But we need a different type of incentive.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes its true. Privacy through a VPN doesnt work often as sites secretly block the proxies. You are no longer anonymous, or you need to use your own server and thats fingerprintable.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Threema for messaging. More private and secure than Signal. I use it for 10 years with no issues.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They had some serious cryptography issues (including no perfect forwards secrecy!!!) but they have promised to fix that. I've not yet seen any paper analyzing the new protocol. But maybe it could be good?

Edit: Here's a paper with some of the issues: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/623004/main.pdf

They conclude that:

The seven attacks we have presented highlight fundamental weaknesses in the design of Threema. Indeed, the Threema protocols lack basic properties that are nowadays considered de rigueur for a messenger app to be regarded as secure: forward secrecy with respect to a malicious server, and protection against replay, reflection, and reordering attacks. We believe that the cryptography in Threema has design flaws that need to be addressed in order to meet the security expectations of its users

They have redesigned their protocol since then but again i have yet to see a third party look at it but TBH i haven't looked into it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

perfect forward secrecy was added some time ago and is the default now.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm building a protocol that's lies on top of IP; secure, anonymous, and takedown safe.

You can use it to make a website, or a chat program (I've got crude but working examples), and not Xi nor Putin can take it down as long as there are people using it.

I have a working version but I'd need a community trying it out, use it, give feedback etc.

Any recommendation greatly appreciated!

Cheers

[–] Darth_Vader__ 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was thinking about an alternative internet infrastructure that's built from ground up with privacy in mind. For utopians ofc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting, mine is basically a layer on top of IP, and can be used as a "new web".

Got any more info?

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›