privacy

I saw Wire get mentioned a bit, and now I'm curious.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/c/pcgaming/p/592341/rip-discord-self-hosted-discord-alternatives-tested-teamspeak-stoat-fluxer-matrix-more

• Invidious
• Youtube

Disclaimer: This is not technically a privacy matter for the reader, but I believe it is adjacent and important enough for this community.

Around January 11, 2026, archive.today (aka archive.is, archive.md, etc) started using its users as proxies to conduct a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against Gyrovague, my personal blog. All users encountering archive.today's CAPTCHA page currently load and execute the following Javascript: setInterval(function() { fetch("https://gyrovague.com/?s" + Math.random().toString(36).substring(2, 3 + Math.random() * 8), { referrerPolicy: "no-referrer",…

Far too many netizens still try to ignore this or even come up with reasons why gyrovague is the bad guy here.

Alternative archive pages:

archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archivebox.io (self-hosted)

But how else to bypass a paywall?

I've read relevant articles and clicked old links - they all seem to be history. The only ones that still work just look for the article in various archives - the subject of this post always amongst them. The same applies to this article, but there's still some good tips.

Here is the original article from 2023: https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-of-the-mysterious-guerrilla-archivist-of-the-internet/ and what Patakallio has to say about it today:

The post mentions three names/aliases linked to the site, but all of them had been dug up by previous sleuths and the blog post also concludes that they are all most likely aliases, so as far as “doxxing” goes, this wasn’t terribly effective.

Here is a relevant ArsTechnica article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-archive-today-after-site-executed-ddos-and-altered-web-captures/

Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS.

archive.today (.ph, .is, .md, .fo, .li, .vn) also loads a pixel and javascript from mail.ru. The script mentions lamoda.ru, kommersant.ru, dzen.ru, ad.mail.ru, vk.com, vkontakte.ru, ok.ru, odnoklasseniki.ru. I haven't researched this further, but I think one can assume that your IP address will be spread across all relevant Russian websites. 10 years ago I would have said "so what? The Russians have social media too" but today you can safely assume that all this data is available to the government itself and is actively contributing to the hybrid war.

All in all, archive.today has always been in the "too good to be true" category. Call me suspicious.

And once again because it's important:

The Wikipedia guidance points out that the Internet Archive and its website, Archive.org, are “uninvolved with and entirely separate from archive.today.”

Youtube automatically adds a tracking code called an SI to most links generated through their app and webpage. It's a unique identifier used to track video sharers. If Alice shares a video with her SI in it and Bob clicks the link, Bob's browser will send Alice's SI to youtube, and now Google knows that Alice and Bob are friends. It's a way of spying on people's interactions outside of youtube. You can install browser extensions and alternate apps that strip away your SI, to prevent Google from spying on you.

So I'm wondering if we can use SIs to hack the youtube algorithm. For example, let's say we took note of a left wing youtuber's SI, someone nice like hbomberguy, and a million people installed a browser extension that adds hmbomberguy's si to all their youtube links. And then they just go along sharing links as normal. Would the algorithm notice that tons of people are looking at videos seemingly shared by hbomberguy, and boost his videos? Or is there anything else we could do with SIs to manipulate Google's analytics in a way that spoils their data and achieves some useful and prosocial end we believe in?

It's important to be clear that this is not the same company that made the Motorola brand famous.

"Motorola Mobility is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong based Chinese technology giant Lenovo"

I use X, Instagram, and Pinterest for thirst content. Sadly, the former two are unsafe (unsure about Pinterest but it is American and not FOSS so I’d assume the same).

I’d really like to shift off these platforms, but I’m having trouble finding anything with a reliable search and algo that isn’t a dry well.

https://imgbox.com/qlaBvJVW

The moderators of lemmy.ml show an unwillingness to accept rational discussion and demonstrate a flawed understanding of mutual respect.

Discussion continues here

Surveillance protects people from terrorism, and sacrificing some privacy makes us safer.

Do you agree? If not, what is your counterargument?

Edit:

Among the meaningless comments made by people who are incapable of rational thinking, these few are actually meaningful and reasonable.

From @Ildsaye@hexbear.net

Surveillance gives terrorists like the US and its Zionist appendage a huge advantage, and the working class should not be surrendering its data to them without a fight.

From @artyom@piefed.social

https://gizmodo.com/reddit-meta-and-google-voluntarily-gave-dhs-info-of-anti-ice-users-report-says-2000722279

However those comments can only prove Surveillance are unacceptable in America and Zionist related countries, Can anyone provide a counterpoint for other countries like Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea...

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/c/pcgaming/p/526553/discord-s-disturbing-ties-to-global-surveillance-id-verification-palantir-thiel

• Invidious
• Youtube

I hope you read the title like one of those stupid infomercials. Lol Anyways...

I understand why GraphineOS is only functional on Pixels, because they're the only phone with an unlocked bootloader, right? How is there not a single other phone on the market that offers this? I don't need a high tier phone so it's hard to justify spending over a grand on one that, only needs to text, call, play media, and make posts like this to fulfil my needs. Any cheap Android would do. But no, I literally have to buy Google's bespoke phone to rid my phone OF them.

I hope this doesn't come off ignorant of all the hard work FLOSS devs put into their projects, but shouldn't Linux phones be a thing by now? Sure, I doubt it'd get mainstream adoption, but Linux isn't mainstream either and I can install it on any old potato. I guess I'd be reluctant to put in the work too if my OS would be incomparable with 90% of devices.

It's really sad. I got my boyfriend into Linux before he was used to Windows (he only had a Chromebook before), but he still uses a standard Android with Google services and stuff. Asking someone to buy an already overpriced device just to run a different OS is a hard sell, even if they have the money.

I'm not ungrateful to the effort poured in to projects like GraphineOS, but I'm sad that, unlike Linux, so many people don't even have the option to use it.

Set up a framework to fully man-in-the-middle my own browsers' networking and see what they're up to beyond just looking at their DNS queries and encrypted tcp packets. We force the browser to trust our mitmproxy cacert so we can peek inside cleartext traffic and made it conveniently reproducible and extensible.

It has containers for official Firefox, its Debian version, and some other FF derivatives that market a focus on privacy or security. Might add a few more of those or do the chromium family later - if you read the thing and want more then please let us know what you want to see under the lens in a future update!

Tests were run against a basic protocol for each of them and results are aggregated at the end of the post.

Posting with ambition that this can trigger some follow-ups sharing derived or similar things. Maybe someone could make a viral blog post by doing some deeper tests and making their results digestible ;)

I know it's unlikely to exist, but I'd be really grateful if it's out there. My partners use Life360 for the location tracking, just so they know the other is okay. I'd like to join in on this too, but no way am I installing a closed source GPS if I can help it. They're pretty knowledgeable about the risks of doing so, and are open to using an alternative service. Heck, I was the guy who got one of them in on Linux after ditching his Chromebook. lmao

For the record, they have all the data collection settings disabled, but how much is that worth, really? You'd have to trust the company's word and even still, closed source GPS shit. Ew.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Can Android apps use WebRTC, or is WebRTC only available in browsers?

If Android apps can use WebRTC, how can it be blocked per app or system-wide to prevent IP address leaks?

This could be a huge privacy risk, if you use android, VPN cannot help you to hide yourself from any app that use webrtc.

Heard good things about it, but I decided to ask here to have a second check.

Bro, just one more camera bro, one more camera and we will solve crime forever bro. Bro, please bro, trust me bro. No I wont sell your face bro, trust me bro. Why don't you want a camera bro? Do you have something to hide bro? Bro, think of the children, bro. There will be no more crime or terrorism bro. Trust me bro.

• Every government in the world (My city now has facial recognition cameras all around, the UK is implementing age verification, the EU with chat control and so on...)