Yes, it’s by design. You should probably read this https://mullvad.net/en/browser/mullvad-browser

being shaken down by Proton to pay even more money

Obviously you’re free to do as you please and its not an airport, you don’t have to announce your departure. But there’s no such thing as free service. Posting angry tirades seems counter productive.

I’d recommend self-hosting. Then you don’t have to worry about privacy, getting data hijacked or getting ripped off by sudden cost increases.

A strange game. Only winning move is not to play.

You are correct about the awareness part. Sometimes I forget that people make tech choices a big part of their identities (like being an “Apple user”) and fixing problems becomes a social cost, more than a technical or privacy choice.

While I always love a good privacy tantrum and throwing your toys out of the pram, I don’t really get why there has to be a public announcement of ”switching”.

But I guess it’s his blog, so whatever. Wish him the best of luck with the new HP 2-in-1. Hope he remembered to turn off all the tracking features in his Ubuntu.

It’s a fool’s errand unfortunately. Users stay in spaces because their friends and social circles are there. It doesn’t really matter how shitty the platform becomes. The social cost of moving is just too high.

The solution is interoperability and some regulation. Unfortunately we have neither. All you can do is inform your mom about the dangers and teach her to recognise propaganda and abuse.

Would recommend reading Cory Doctorow’s book ”Enshittification”

They will begin so, but the regulation means the authorities can backdoor your device way easier than they can today. It doesn’t mean your custom ROM device will be free of the scanning software forever.

It also means that you need to know that the receiving device you’re communicating with is clean custom ROM device, otherwise your messages will be scanned on the receiving side.

The regulation is a complete shitshow privacy nightmare hiding under CSAM trenchcoat. We’d do well to organize and fight against it, instead of trying to back down to the perceived safety of esoteric custom ROMs.

Just a matter of time as soon as it gets passed. https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/

assuming the baddies don’t already have full access to your phone data

That’s the whole point of Chat Control 2.0

It’s great as long as you can guarantee that the person you’re communicating on the receiving side does the same. Otherwise it’s useless as your messages will be read on the receiving device. In practice it will make private communication extremely cumbersome and niche.

Also, the authorities can backdoor your custom ROM device at will, when seized.

ChatControl 2.0, if passed means your entire device is backdoored so it doesn’t matter what apps you installl, they can get your info pre-encryption

Getting really positive reviews from techbro YouTubers though

Their clients feed them with data. Given that Peter Thiel is behind Palantir, you can also pretty much count on all the big social media companies cooperating with them.

Brave (the company) has a long history of doing dodgy stuff. They are just trying to do what Google did (directing clicks to their own shit), but they’re using privacy as their marketing spiel.

Depends on your threat model, as always. If you require absolute anonymity, it’s tricky, because it uses phone number during the onboarding process, so get an anonymous pre-paid number and discard it after registration. After onboarding you don’t need the number.

For the rest, it’s about as “private” as you make it. It supports group messaing, calls and video, so obviously you need to be careful while using it. Everything is e2e encrypted and stays on your local device, the source is available and has been extensively audited. The company itself is non-profit and has sensible privacy policy.

But yeah, your threat model is the key answer to your question

I guess they’d argue that none of those pesky little data protection laws apply to competent authorities like the police and they’re probably justifying it with the criminal prosecution clause.

Great.

If and when you send or receive e-mail encrypted by PGP, the body (contents) of the message is indeed encrypted and you’re safe from snooping and data collection, which is great. However, privacy-wise this might actually be a bad thing, because almost no one uses PGP and using it makes you stand out in a sea of normal e-mail users for someone who collects and analyzes lot of data. So if that’s your threat model, using PGP might actually be dangerous. Also, you have to remember and remind everyone to use PGP, which is cumbersome if you correspond with non-techie people. You don’t really know how they handle “their side” and PGP software is notoriously not very user friendly.

Whenever you send someone unencrypted e-mail from your Proton account, there’s a chance that the recipients e-mail provider (most likely Google or Microsoft) reads it. Same when they send it to you. It doesn’t actually matter that the message sits encrypted “at rest” in your Proton accounts Sent Items -, the contents have already been read, indexed and sold to a broker.

It’s very hard to do e-mail privacy because the protocol itself doesn’t have any built-in. It’s better to use other communication methods for sensitive transactions.

Then Proton should be fine. As far as I know, they don’t sell user data.

Of course as soon as you send an email or receive it from someone else, there’s a chance it will be mined, but while it’s ”at rest” on Proton servers it should fulfill your model just fine.

Depends on your threat model. What are you defending against?

At the protests? Surely the Palantir precog crime prevention analysts submerged in the cellar should have know this future crime was about to happen, well before the protest.