Privacy

The UK Home Office demanded in early September that Apple create a means to allow officials access to encrypted cloud backups, but stipulated that the order applied only to British citizens’ data, according to people briefed on the matter.

Whenever people ask about ways to make their smartphones more private or which is the most privacy-respecting phone to get, there's always a few people confidently asserting "all smartphones are spy tools, get a dumbphone with no apps if you want to be private". Which is ridiculous advice for a few reasons

• Dumbphones usually run either proprietary operating systems or outdated forks of Android. They're almost never encrypted. They rarely get security updates. They're a lot more vulnerable than even a regular Android phone

• With dumbphones, you're usually limited to regular phone calls or SMS/MMS messaging. These are ancient communication standards with zero built-in privacy. Your ISP can read any text message you send and view metadata logs of any phone calls you make. In lots of places (like Australia where I live) ISPs are actually required to keep logs of your messages and phone calls

With even a regular Android phone you at least have access to encrypted messaging apps like Signal or Session so your conversations aren't fair game for anyone who wants to read them. Of course there are better options. iOS (not perfect but better than most bloatware-filled Android devices) and a pixel with GrapheneOS (probably the best imo) are much better options; but virtually anything out there is going to be better for privacy than a dumbphone

OC text by @freedickpics@lemmy.ml

DuckDuckGo is donating $1.1 million in 2025 to support organizations that share our vision of raising the standard of trust online.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/49951317

The United States is greatly expanding the use of a "biometric exit" program, whereby travelers have their photo taken on departure.

Nicholas: Once the system is in place you cannot go back. The ID card is an object that identifies you. You have to have it with you at all times. It makes police control much easier. If you can’t establish identity then they can take you to the police station without any other reason. Once they have the ID card in place then they can add other things- like biometric identification e.g. fingerprints. The base is the card and then they add things. The ID card is the beginning of a general file on everyone that regroups all other information they have to identify someone. They can have your whole life in this one file- your health, civil status etc.

The Dastardly Danes and Ursula are at it again.

https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner purchase kernel-level root access to your computer via purchase of Electronics Arts and their kernel anti-cheat

I'm just sharing here this app I use always on my phone, and I don't see many people talking about it.

It's similar to DuckDuckGo app feature that block trackers across all the device, but this one is focused only on that, it also allows you to add your custom tracker URLs to block and monitor every request being made.

It's open source and available on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.clombardo.dnsnet/
GitHub: https://github.com/t895/DNSNet

It enables a VPN to intercept requests, so it can block URLs of trackers across all your apps. The app provides a list of URLs as you open it for the first time, you can choose a few options between less or more aggressive.

Obs.: The app don't tell, but when you add a custom URL you need to disable and enable it again.

Lithuania-based Whitebridge AI sells “reputation reports” on everyone with an online presence. These reports compile large amounts of scraped personal information about unsuspecting people, which is then sold to anyone willing to pay for it. Some data is not factual, but AI generated and includes suggested conversation topics, a list of alleged personality traits and a background check to see if you have shared adult, political, or religious content. Despite the legal right of free access to your own data, Whitebridge.ai only sells “reports” to the affected people. It seems the business model is largely based on scared users that want to review their own data that was previously unlawfully compiled. noyb has now filed a complaint with the Lithuanian DPA.