U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman barred the Department of Education (DOE), Department of the Treasury and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from disclosing the personal identifying information of about 2 million plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging DOGE’s access to any of the advisory board’s affiliates.

I've been digging into the rabbit hole for a few months. Been switching to Linux, FOSS everything I can, trying to go to smaller sites, the least dubious social media, VPN, trusted mail, etc etc

But lately I've been in a rough state mentally (I say lately but it's always been with me) and having GPT guide me and being able to just dictate what I think helps me a lot on various levels, for various reasons.
But at this point, using ChatGPT with a mic, isn't this basically cancelling every effort I've made? (using it in the first place anyway) I'm weak and it helps me, should I just throw my efforts out of the window and just say I don't care about privacy anymore and use whatever everyone uses? (on one hand, I've found alternatives for almost everything, so I could keep on using those, but also, again, if I keep on using GPT on a regular basis, this is probably the worst threat the future has to offer in termes of privacy, so...I'm lost)

• The access is limited to immigrants with final removal orders
• This breaks decades of IRS promise of tax data confidentiality
• The deal follows leadership changes at IRS that favored cooperation

Using mullvad VPN. Keeps giving me the bad https status 403 message no matter which server I switch to. Anybody else having this issue or has workarounds?

I have a friend who uses an electronic key fob to enter and exit his apartment building. The fob isn't metal, but it grants access electronically.

He occasionally engages in private activities.

My question is: Does this key fob log every entry/exit? He's cautious with cell phones and leaves them at home, but wonders if the key fob could potentially cause problems.

I opened a few accounts out of curiosity and didn't personally would not like to see it again. Cleared cache and reset settings from settings and re installed the app. But everytime I type a letter in the search bar it suggests the same accounts. I've tried clicking on accounts with similar spellings for the suggestions to go away but so far nothing works. Help would be appreciated

I signed up to be notified if/when ObscuraVPN becomes available for my platform. They looked up my PGP key. Niiice

Note: I am a US Citizen, so this isn't advice for me.

But hypothetically, if I met someone who is a refugee currently in the US, who would probably be jailed or executed if deported to their home country, what are some advice I could give as to their digital OPSEC?

Should they completely ditch using phones, but at the cost of not having constant communications tool to potentially receive notification I.C.E. activities?

What are your advice?

(Just want to gather the knowledge so one day I might be able to help someone)

SearXNG does, I think...any others? Looking around for other engines that aren't US-based, though I guess DDG is still considered acceptable for LibreWolf's default engine. Bangs are incredibly useful!

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/stopping-waste-fraud-and-abuse-by-eliminating-information-silos/

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. Removing unnecessary barriers to Federal employees accessing Government data and promoting inter‑agency data sharing are important steps toward eliminating bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency while enhancing the Government’s ability to detect overpayments and fraud.

Sec. 2. Definitions. (a) “Agency” has the meaning given to it in section 3502 of title 44, United States Code, except that such term does not include the Executive Office of the President or any components thereof.

(b) “Agency Head” means the highest-ranking official of an agency, such as the Secretary, Administrator, or Director. With respect to multimember agencies, “Agency Head” means the Chairman or equivalent official.

Sec. 3. Eliminating Information Silos. (a) Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure Federal officials designated by the President or Agency Heads (or their designees) have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems — or their equivalents if providing access to an equivalent dataset does not delay access — for purposes of pursuing Administration priorities related to the identification and elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse. This includes authorizing and facilitating both the intra- and inter-agency sharing and consolidation of unclassified agency records.

(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, Agency Heads shall, to the maximum extent consistent with law, rescind or modify all agency guidance that serves as a barrier to the inter- or intra-agency sharing of unclassified information specified in subsection (a) of this section. Agency Heads shall also review agency regulations governing unclassified data access, including system of records notices, and, within 30 days of the date of this order, submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget cataloging those regulations and recommending whether any should be eliminated or modified to achieve the goals set forth in this order. Regulatory modifications pursuant to this order are exempt from Executive Order 14192.

(c) Immediately upon execution of this order, Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure the Federal Government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all State programs that receive Federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases.

(d) Immediately upon execution of this order and without limiting the above directives, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary’s designees shall receive, to the maximum extent consistent with law, unfettered access to all unemployment data and related payment records, including all such data and records currently available to the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General.

(e) This order supersedes any prior Executive Orders and rules or regulations subject to direct Presidential rulemaking authority to the extent they serve as a barrier to the inter- or intra-agency sharing of unclassified information as specified in this order.

(f) Agency Heads shall conduct a review of classified information policies to determine whether they result in the classification of materials beyond what is necessary to protect critical national security interests and, within 45 days of the date of this order, submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget cataloguing those classified information policies and recommending whether any should be eliminated or modified to achieve the goals set forth in this order.

Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE, March 20, 2025.

Apologies if this doesn't quite fit in this community but its a follow up to my last post here: https://lemm.ee/post/56710241

After my last post I purchased a Pixel 8a which I have been using as my main phone for the last 2 weeks. I haven't yet decided if I will be permanantly switching but these are my thoughts so far. I will probably give it a couple more weeks before I make a decision.

The migration process itself:

It took me a few days before I could actually start using the pixel as my main phone, a large part of this delay was moving my photos from iCloud photos to Immich. So far Immich is fine, its not perfect and I have a few complaints, but now that I've got it set up it seems to work fairly seamlessly. However transferring the photos onto the new phone was a pain. I wanted them synced on the device rather than just on the server as I want to be able to view them when I'm away from home and I have no interest in setting up remote access to my server at this time, however there is no sync or mass download option in the Immich app. Thankfully it seems its clever enough that if you transfer the photos to the phone another way it works out they're the ones already in your library and correctly marks them as on your device in the app. I used KDE connect top transfer the photos over but the issue with doing it that way is that as far as all apps other than Immich are concerned all the photos were modified on the same day so they're no longer in date order. I transferred them a year at a time so they are somewhat grouped but its not perfect and a proper sync option would have solved everything. The app in general is also a bit laggy when scrolling. It probably sounds like I'm bashing on it a bit hard but overall I do quite like it and it definitely seems better than any of the alternatives, and its nice to not be reliant on a cloud provider. It was also incredibly easy to set up on the server side, especially since it was the first time I've ever used docker for anything. I think I will be sticking with Immich even if I go back to iOS.

Whatsapp is a pain in the arse, since I'm still not sure if I'll be sticking with the pixel yet I didn't actually transferred the data from my iPhone, instead I'm just using it as a linked device. However I've since discovered that the only way to transfer from an iPhone to Android is to do it during the initial phone setup process when it prompts you if you want to transfer any data from another device. I'm hoping I can get away with not resetting my phone by borrowing a phone from work and using the Samsung smart switch app, then back it up to my google account and sync that on the new phone, but I don't know why they make it so difficult.

Contacts and calendar were fairly easy to transfer, Apple make it surprisingly easy to export the data to a file from iCloud and then I could just import those into the respective apps on the pixel

I haven't transferred my whole music library as I mainly use Spotify, I just moved a few songs that aren't available on there. However it was incredibly easy to move them over with KDE connect. I did have an issue with some of them not showing the correct album artwork or artist, I'm not sure if that was an issue with GrapheneOS, Android in general or the Fossify music player however I was fairly easily able to fix that with an MP3 tagger.

I did need to install sandboxed Google play services for my banking app to work, I believe its also required for reliable notifications (at least for stuff like whatsapp). Because of this I've chosen to use the Google Play store to install most apps as that still seems to be the best option in terms of security, and it doesn't seem like I'm giving up much in terms of privacy since I already have to have Google play services installed anyway. However I'm trying to mostly use foss apps where possible so that if by some miracle I do manage to escape Google play services I can still mostly use the same apps. For the couple of apps not available on the Google play store I've used Obtainium with the respective project github pages as the source, and I've found that incredibly easy to use.

2fa was a bit of a pain, I use Microsoft authenticator on iOS as that allows cloud backups, however that backup was tied to my iCloud account so I couldn't actually restore it on my Pixel. As a result I just had to log in to each service and manually change the 2fa setup. If I stick with the Pixel I'm thinking of moving to Aegis authenticator as apparently that allows backing up to a file instead.

Notes was also a bit of a pain as there didn't seem to be a way to export these from iCloud or iOS. In the end I just had to copy and paste the text itself, thankfully I didn't have too many (and it was an excuse to tidy up old ones). I'm currently using Fossify notes which isn't quite as nice as the iOS notes app but it does the job.

The good:

More freedom, being able to install apps like Newpipe, and easily customise the OS with custom notification sounds etc.

Having a universal back gesture is great, technically iOS has something similar but only on the left edge of the screen which I find difficult to reach.

KDE connect, I already used this on iPhone as an easy way to transfer stuff to my PC, but its so much more functional on Android it feels like a completely different app. Especially on Linux where I can just browse the filesystem via Dolphin so long as both devices are on the same network.

Actual file management, I never really understood why people cared about that especially since iOS does have a files app, but yeah after trying it I can conclude its far superior to the way iOS just obfuscates all the storage.

The ability to transfer local music without fucking iTunes

Much easier to not use Google's cloud storage for photos etc than it is to avoid iCloud on iOS. Yeah sure you're not technically forced to use iCloud but trying to use anything else feels a bit janky in comparison

Cost, I managed to get a sealed Pixel 8a from ebay for £260 which seemed like a very good price. I still have my iPhone at the moment but looking at the current Ebay prices if I decide to stick with the pixel I may even be able to sell it at and make a slight "profit"!

I really like how there is absolutely no bloatware. It was also nice not to have to go through the settings app to disable a bunch of AI bullshit or telemetry crap.

The bad:

Battery life, how does Android get so little battery life out of such a big battery? Its not awful but I get less battery on my brand new Pixel than I currently do on my 3 year old iPhone despite the fact the battery is supposed to be ~1400mAh bigger. And according to the settings app my iPhone only has 83% of its original capacity left. Its still easily enough to make it through a day, but I'm nowhere near the 2 day battery life I got out of my iPhone when it was new. I have no idea if it would be better or worse on stock Android but it seems unlikely that its a GrapheneOS specific issue.

Notifications, I've heard people complain about the way iOS does notifications and that Android is much better but after trying both I can honestly say I much prefer the iOS method

I've also had an issue playing music in my car. My car doesn't have bluetooth so I use a lighhtning or USB-C to aux adapter, and it keeps disconnecting from the phone while I'm driving. Not physically falling out of the port, but the music stops and when I pull over and start it again it comes out of the phone speakers rather than the car speakers. I'm hoping its just the cheap crappy USB-C adapter I bought, I've purchased another one which I haven't had a chance to try yet. I'm pretty sure its not a software issue as its only done it in the car, I'm assuming the vibration is enough to shake it loose, but if its an issue with the phones port I will definitely be switching back as thats not something I can live with.

I really miss FaceID, I set that up once when I got my iPhone and again when they introduced face mask compatibility and then never had to touch it again, it recognised me nearly every time without fail. I have already had to re-register the fingerprint sensor many times in just the last couple of weeks as it keeps not recognising my fingers, and this isn't the fault of the pixels implementation as I used to have the same issue with the TouchID iPhones. It also just doesn't work at all for about 15 minutes after I get out of the shower, it seems like even the tiniest amount of moisture causes it to fail. I also miss how all notification content was hidden until I looked at the phone, having to manually reveal them with my fingerprint feels a bity more clunky

I kind of miss Apple pay, but this one is fairly minor as I almost always have my physical card on my anyway. It was also quite nice for online payments but again its not exactly difficult to use a different method

Slightly annoying to lose iMessage, I barely used it but my immediate family were slighly annoyed that there messages were now going through as standard texts

In general I've found widgets to be uglier and less useful than on iOS, I don't use them a whole bunch anyway and some of this is probably partly down to the specific apps I'm using, but considering Android has had widgets for far longer I was expecting much better

Auto-brightness doesn't seem as good as on iOS, I've had to adjust it manually a few times whereas I basically never had to change the brightness manually on iOS

Typing doesn't feel as good as on iOS, I find myself making a lot more mistakes. I didn't like the stock keyboard at all so I've been using the FUTO keyboard. Perhaps the FUTO keyboard is part of the problem but I think its more likely to be an Android thing as I've noticed similar when using other Android devices in the past.

The neutral:

90% of Android feels the same as iOS now, both of them have become more and more similar over the years so you can pretty quickly adjust from one to the other

Every app I needed/wanted has either worked or had an equivalent. The main one I was concerned about not working was my banking app. We'll have to see how things play out with the play integrity bullshit (this has me mildly concerned: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18184-whatsapp-you-need-the-official-whatsapp-to-log-in/22) but as of right now I can do everything I need.

Vanadium vs Safari is a bit of a trade off, Vanadium seems much better in terms of the ad-blocking capabilty, and I'm assuming its better in terms of privacy. However I think Safari has a much bettter UI/UX than Chrome on Android (even the Chrome app on iOS feels better than Chrome on Android to me, I expected the Android version to be the same). I also miss reader mode, not sure if there is an extension that can replicate that?

The Pixel hardware seems quite nice, especially since I paid almost 1/4 of what I paid for my iPhone. Sure its not quite as nice in some places such as having a plastic shell instead of metal/glass, but it still feels premium rather than being the cheap nasty kind of plastic. I always use a case anyway so its not like you can even see most of it. I don't think the screen is quite as nice but its still 120Hz and again for the price I paid I'm not bothered. It certainly not terrible. I haven't used the camera enough to see how that compares either, but I'm not a massive camera user anyway so I'm not overly bothered if its a bit worse. I may also try the Google camera app and see if its any better than the stock GrapheneOS one.

Backing up with Seedvault is not perfect, every time I plug in the USB it fails after a few minutes and I have to manually trigger the backup again (which then runs without any issue the second time). I've tried a test restore and its fairly seamless for most stuff however since some apps don't allow backing up I then had to install them manually and reconfigure them. However I think this still beats iOS as the only viable options there are iCloud (which I'm trying to move away from) or iTunes (yuck).

Apps are a bit of a mixed bag. For some such as Mastodon the Android app feels better/smoother than the iOS app, others such as Immich don't feel as good as the iOS counterparts. Most of them feel pretty much the same on both platforms though, or I'm just using an alternative.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/25342439

I have been looking for a good calorie tracker on iOS for some time, but have never found one with the features I want while being either open source or privacy respecting (or both). Android has a few options but the UI is very dated to day the least.

In order to fill this gap, I am considering building one, but if someone can point me to an existing app to save me the time, I would be very thankful.

Long story short, my bank/credit-union doesn’t support debit-visa and the only way I can make online payments through my bank account is via PayPal.

PayPal is a pain in the ass to work with and I would like to use Privacy.com’s virtual debit/credit cards however, they lack support for banks/credit-unions outside the US.

Note: I like to use my CC as less as possible hence why I use my bank for majority of my online payments.

For example, one provider and client like proton mail only uses OpenPGP and apple mail client only supports s/mime. Why is that? Why can we not have Proton mail support both, end of the story. Ain’t it?

"The space researcher was allegedly randomly checked on arrival, during which his professional computer and personal telephone were allegedly searched. Similarly, messages about the Trump administration’s treatment of scientists have been found."

Here's my problem: every F(L)OSS and E2EE solution that I know of requires other people to download an app or log in.

I want to reduce the friction for others to communicate for me. I want to give a business card with a URL where people can go and immediately send messages to my Matrix or my email or something, and they don't need to log in at all.

They just open their browser, go to snek_boi.io or whatever and a chat appears.

A couple of years ago, I was suggested Cactus Comments. I suppose that works, but I was wondering if there are other solutions. I was wondering if now there was an even easier solution for my purposes.

Structures of surveillance have their roots within the infrastructure of our commercial sector and government. This is not new, but the government’s audacity has grown monstrous with the recent example of Mahmoud Khalil and the blatant disregard for the most basic rights of habeas corpus.

Hi, nowadays a lot of places online only accept payment via one of the three options mentioned. Privacy wise, which is my best option? My thread model is mainly based on surveillance capitalism.

long post alert; forgive my mistakes, not a native english speaker, also, this is my first post on Lemmy, I come from Reddit where I deleted my account >0-0<

some years ago, I stumbled upon digital privacy related forums and I started to realize the deep hole I was stuck in.

My digital life was totally reliant on Google and its multiple products: Google Photos, Gmail, Google Chrome, Chrome Passwords, Youtube, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Pay, Google Android, Google Sheets, Google Chat/Hangout, Google Keep, Google Maps, Google Search.

Just writing all these names makes me re-realize how a single advertising company holds so much control on our digital lives.

It has been a long 6 years journey to reach pretty close to complete deGoogling. This journey has been filled with lots of ups and down, philosophical questioning on what digital freedom is and whether it truly is important, and lots of despair also (questions such as "what is the point of it all?" that I am sure many of us ask ourselves).

I am a normal "average" human being whose intention of having digital privacy is to ward off advertising companies, and to not be a pawn in their big money game. My intention and requirement is NOT to become anonymous.

My digital system is as follows now:

Google Android: Used LineageOS for a long time on an OnePlus device. It worked fantastic, zero troubles at all. But when my phone died, I switched to an iPhone to avoid the long term hassle of flashing.

Google Chrome: Firefox with uBlock Origin on Mac. Safari private browsing on iPhone. App Limit of 1 hour per day to reduce my problematic time-consuming browsing habits.

Gmail: iCloud Email for banking/finance. Proton Mail for everything else. All existing emails from Gmail transferred to local folders using Thunderbird, backed up on external hard drive and Filen.io.

Google Photos: Direct transfer from phone to computer in year-month folders, encrypted rclone sync to work OneDrive (multiple TB free space), and regular backups to external hard drive. I am still looking to move away from the rclone encryption (which works perfectly btw) to a more simpler, less complicated, cloud service but I have not finalized on one yet.

Chrome Passwords: KeePass! It is amazing!

Google Drive: Combination of external hard drive, encrypted rclone remote in OneDrive, and Filen.io.

Google Docs: Word documents or text files backed up using encrypted cloud.

Google Sheets: Excel files backed up using encrypted cloud.

Google Chat/Hangout: WhatsApp, Signal. WhatsApp is almost impossible to get rid of despite how clunky and disgusting it has become.

Google Keep: Apple Notes and plain text files.

Google Maps: Use it logged out. Tried OSMand, but it is not as good as G Maps yet.

Google Search: Still use it without loggin in, and sometimes DuckDuckGo.

Youtube: Still use it in private window, without logging in. I use it as if it is Wikipedia. My Youtube usage is very low.

Music: Apple Music.

Hopefully this is helpful to some. Please feel free to provide suggestions and/or ask if you have questions on how I made any of the above transitions; I would be happy to help since I have learned so much from the broader privacy community.

Fastbackgroundcheck. com says there's info on me on truthfinder, spokeo, peoplefinders and instantcheckmate. When I try going through all four of those sites takes a super long time, including a few times in the past when I tried getting reports on myself.

The progress bars reach 100% and reset continously. If these sites are legimate like some reddit users claim, then why or be upfront about wanting me to pay? Right now I'm convinced that these sites are snake oil, maybe they work if you pay but the behavior of the free options turn me off. They act 100% like typical scam websites, the kind that asks you to complete three surveys on external sites with fake progress bars.

Basic info like my full name, address, age, and siblings can be found with search engines easily but I feel like there's no point in trying to wipe it if there aren't methods that could definitely work.