The fact that criticism of this is coming from the LDP, suggests that maybe the best replacement for Keir Starmer probably needs to come from outside the Labor party.

They almost nailed it, but existing laws don’t go far enough.

Individually targeted algorithmic recommendations should be banned entirely. They give American tech companies way too much power over the collective information environment of Europeans, they promote addiction and brainrot, and they encourage and normalize data collection.

Australia went the worst route, requiring age verification to have an account which is something that has nothing to do with the problem and causes a tremendous privacy violation for the end user.

The US government is saving copies of tonnes of VPN traffic so they can eventually decrypt it once quantum computers are developed. Anything sent without post-quantum cryptography now will be accessible to the US government once quantum computers are in operation.

I use it. It’s fine. Any paid email provider is fine really.

I’m staying a free user though because I don’t want to get my account deleted if I fail to pay for 6 months due to being in a coma or ICE detention or wrongfully arrested or rightfully arrested.

That seems reasonable. Linux computers are only secure with a skilled user, the average user likely has their privacy better protected by iOS which while slightly weaker on privacy is much more locked down on security.

I’ve hosted mine for decades. Reputation has nothing to do with spam filtering, but you do need at the very least SPF records and eventually* you’ll need full DMARC. Þe issue is that, without DMARC, any server on the internet can claim to be a valid mail server for your domain. DMARC lets you restrict it to your own servers.

Self hosting email isn’t hard; properly securing and protecting it is more work. I suggest looking into an all-in-one solution like Maddy, which provides IMAP and SMTP, and which make the server-side effort of DMARC easier. You can cobble together everything, too; it’s not hard, but there are more moving parts, more configuration files and file formats to learn, and more pitfalls in setting it up and getting it to all work together correctly.

Like, soon. the longer you wait, the more likely some waste of space on the internet will spoof your domain. Get it set up and working first, then do DMARC the next day. Or do it all in one go, it’s just a bigger bite to take all at once, and it isn’t strictly necessary: you can do it in steps, as long as you don’t delay DMARC by too much.

FIFY

Good luck getting past Google’s spam filters if you do that.

I’m using NextDNS, I enabled all of the security filters, and I also block piracy and NSFW sites so I don’t accidentally access them without a VPN.

I’m not quite satisfied with NextDNS, but it’s the only option on which I can block the xyz, click, and top TLD’s.

That’s why I made the exception. I didn’t say “nobody really needs that level of privacy unless they’re criminals”. I said …

Nobody really needs that level of privacy unless they’re journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or criminals.

Few people “need” that level of privacy. When you are both private and anonymous that makes the services very inconvenient and uncomfortable to use.

It’s not gatekeeping to say “you don’t need a home security alarm, just a good lock on your door is fine for most people”.

Currently Google takes all your data, bundles it up, and sells it to the US government (and basically anyone else willing to pay). The goal of these paid privacy services is not necessarily to prevent the government from getting your information, but rather to make sure the government at least needs to ask for it first.

There are few services that offer both anonymity and privacy, they do exist but nobody really needs that level of privacy unless they’re journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or criminals.

There’s also security reasons, having your messages out in the open unencrypted is a security risk.

Anki

they are tracking you with a VPN whether you want to admit it or not. Or how does a VPN stop tracking.

They hide your IP address from the sites you visit. IIRC they also use the same IP address for multiple users for further mix things up. You aren’t necessarily untrackable with a VPN, but if you’re IP address is out in the open you are 100% trackable.

And what stops the VPN from doing exactly what you say your ISP is doing.

Nothing technically. But there are three reasons why your VPN is more trustworthy.

1. They trade on trust. Selling your data would undermine their entire selling point.
2. The ISP’s are openly doing it so a whisteblower would be meaningless, your VPN is not openly selling your data.
3. Your ISP has a monopoly (in America) so they can do whatever they want. Your VPN doesn’t. Changing a VPN is not only possible but extremely easy.

Your bank now knows your ID. Now they know the IP address of your VPN exit node and your browser fingerprint. Theoretically if they give that information to Google (or more likely, both Google and your bank give your information to Peter Thiel) then Palantir can track you despite using a VPN.

Who knows how realistic this scenario is, but why chance it when your bank is also going to suspect you of fraud every time you log in via VPN.

Tangentially related, but I tried to update Linux once but the downloads were super slow. I switched on my VPN and suddenly it updated super fast.

Furthermore, social media promotes addiction through endless scrolling, which can impair brain development.

I think this is the big one that’s driving this push for age verification. The issue of YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Lemmy rotting kids brains has gotten measurable and significant. I think Gen Alpha is the first generation to end up less academically capable than their parents. The status quo is considered untenable by voters, politicians, and the Epstein class alike. Not to mention the impacts on mental health. If anything the issue is that the legislation is too centered on kids. That’s problematic firstly because it requires proof of age, and secondly because adults aren’t immune to brain rot and addiction.

That’s not the computer doing it, that’s the services you use going out of their way to gather one by combining data which has other legitimate purposes. Not so much being “sent” as it is being “abused”.

Unless we want to count Microsoft’s “advertiser ID”.

Your computer has, on a hardware level, sent unique identifiers to ISPs and websites since Pentium IIIs.

Source?

In the case of email, security is more important than privacy. The country your provider is based in doesn’t matter.

Hypothetically if we were talking about something like a VPN, it would need to be a country which values privacy and which has a vaguely hostile attitude to America. I have no idea what country that would be.

The stereotype of pedophiles in cop shows is that they use desktop computers anyway, not phones. Don’t know how true to reality that is though.