LinkedIn is requesting to verify with Persona, which uses NFC enabled govt ID. I know that nobody here will recommend it, but can you give information on what it is?

I don't really know if this is the right subreddit to ask this, but here it goes.
basically I'm trying to send an anonymous text to someone, but I can't for the life of me think of how.
I know their facebook account, instagram account, and even their phone number, but I can't use any and here is why:

- first, the person already knows me irl, so texting them using my own accounts would defeat the purpose.- for facebook, I can't make a new account since it asks for a selfie and I'm not doing that. (tried making an account using ai face generators and by cropping someone's face from a completely random video, but it doesn't work)
- for instagram, their account is private so even if I made a new anonymous account, they'll have to accept me before i can msg them. And i know for a fact that they don't just accept anyone.
- Also, I can't use my own number to msg them since they have it saved, and I don't have any spare numbers (also don't suggest getting a new one cause that's too much work for just this)

Any ideas are welcome!

I'm very worried about the recent DeepSeek breach, where an unsecured ClickHouse database exposed over 1 million records—including chat logs and API keys. I have a few questions:

1. Full Download Risk? How likely is it that malicious actors downloaded every record, including all my chat history? The database was discovered so easily, so is it plausible that all data was harvested (including chats from days before the leak)?

2. Public Data Dump Risk? If all the data was downloaded, how likely is it that someone will eventually post the entire dataset online? Have similar breaches led to full public dumps that are searchable, and what has been the typical outcome?

3. Data Remediation? If my data—including personal identifiers—is part of the leak and gets posted publicly, is there any realistic way to hide or wipe it from search results? Could governments or the companies involved take action to stifle or remove the data?

I'm looking for insights from anyone who has experienced or studied similar breaches—or someone who just understands the internet better than I do—and any advice on what measures can be taken to protect or mitigate these risks. Thank you in advance for your help!

I don't know if this is reasonable or allowed but my phone number was banned on my old Discord account because of stupid AI moderation so now I need a way to verify my phone number for servers. Any recommendations? I was going to ask if anybody was willing to receive my verification code for me but writing this it sounds stupid.

The garmin GPS in question does not connect to wifi (nor bluetooth I believe), so in order to update it, an application called Garmin express must be downloaded on a computer, a usb cord is used to connect the GPS to the computer.

What information does garmin collect during the update?

Also, does garmin collect location and saved locations from the GPS?

I have one cookie from Reddit that keeps reappearing a few seconds after I have deleted all browsing data (except passwords, download history & autofil) and have no Reddit windows open. Restarting after clearing doesn't work either.

I have one of these in Firefox as well, no matter what I do they just re-spawn. It's driving me bonkers. I feel like this is a very unethical practice and would REALLY love to know how to kill this mofo once and for all.

Sometimes I like to browse subreddits anonymously without logging in but this zombie cookie makes that impossible.

Anyone else out there have this issue and found a solution?

I already verified with my dob full name ssn and then after that they made me link my debit card and bank account.

But that’s not all they also want me to show back and front of id and then take a picture of me with me id and then after all that they want my DEBIT CARD FRONT AND BACK PICTURE

I’m just not going to use this anymore a couple years ago u needed last 4 digits ssn and ur name that’s it I feel like there getting everybody biometrics and data for 2030

I only have my face verified 1 time and that’s on Roblox I wish I never did and kalshi betting app

What other apps that don’t require all this information to send money?

Hello, i am a student interested in privacy, but also maximizing my chances to get a job in the tech industry.

I was accepted to deans list, but I am wondering if there is any benefit to it. When I search up old friends from high school, or just random colleagues, I can usually find a deans list with their name on it (if they were on it).

Obviously I am not sure how much a name being out there matters, but I can image that it would be nearly impossible to remove yourself from this record after it gets put out there.

I am asking this because, although I have a linkedin (with privacy enhanced settings) and plan to put deans list on there, I always have the chance to delete my account and maybe change the data making it kind of hard for the average person to find information about me on the deep sea of data on the web.

Contrarily, if a third party like my school posts my name, I feel like anybody in the future would be able to do a quick google search and find where i went to school potentially leading to more info than I would like for somebody to know.

Am I tripping, or should I just allow a website to celebrate my name.

(sorry if i sound very ignorant or uneducated... its because I am. Nonetheless, I would like to take care of my privacy. Thanks!)

I’ve seen different reviews with different opinions so I was curious what you think about privacy guides, I was looking for a website that could teach me about privacy and privacy guides looks good but idk.

M

Title need it for sign up just like temp email

Today, out of curiosity I filtered my main Gmail account inbox using welcome keyword to see how many accounts did I signed up for over the years. It showed 400 mails that contained similar words including "welcome to". Then, went to my secondary email and did same thing. Wellp, it showed 675 mails with this word (dead inside)…

I thought I was doing well, with account deletion. I deleted like 100 if not more this January, but then saw the numbers on both Gmail. I need serious help. I might really have OCD.

Any advice/suggestions on how to clean up this mess? Any tools that help me check out what accounts do I have with that specific email address? Feeling shocked and overwhelmed.

However, I am surprised that only have 14 data breaches on my main Gmail despite the numbers of the accounts.

Required for telegram verification..

I was just poking around on HTTP requests for apps on my phone, and ALOT of them send EXACT GPS coordinates to advertisers. like Braze.com

Very disturbing.

About 20+ years ago, I was an avid Civilization game player. Today on Reddit, 20 years later, I'm being bombarded with ads for the new Civilization game. Different devices. Same Google account though. That's Google's 99 year cookie policy at work, I guess.

Last year I was messaging with a female friend of mine who had just returned from a solo-female trip around Bulgaria.i opened Reddit, first story on my feed was a female traveller in Bulgaria story on r/travel. A subreddit to which i wasnt subscribed. The interesting part? We'd been chatting on WhatsApp. Can't have been a coincidence? WA declare their messages are supposed to be end-to-end encrypted.

What's your weirdest ad tracking experience?

Hello!

What do you think about FolderSync? Do you use it? Do you think is safe? What do you suggest to sync local and cloud?

Thanks!

Is it possible? I don't particularly want to keep it and am otherwise deleting ALL meta associated things this Sunday but, curious little bastard I am, I thought someone might have a workaroud or github solution.

The alternatives out there no one is listening even though I'm saying STOP using these!!

Maybe if there were alternatives for making usage safer I could help..bridge the gap and keep my loved ones off the radar these insane coming months?

I know it's an out there question. Thanks y'all!

Hi all,

I have a NAS and use it a lot manly for photos and videos and old data from past academic courses etc.

Currently I have my secured data on a Cryptomator volume stored on Ondrive. That way I can access it on the go on any device. Its convenient as I can access the data on my phone and if I have a prolonged power cut etc, the data is available where the NAS would power off after 30 min.

My only thing is that I dont like Onedrive. its a resource hog and I would prefer to get rid of it.

Would moving the data to my NAS be safe enough? NAS is only accessible with tailscale. all port on my FW are closed.

What are your best practive for keeping your valued data?

I was wondering if it would be a worthy purcase to make, as I saw few people complaining about quality of few major brands (I think one of the mentioned was named 'quiet'), as there are barely any reviews on the internet I opted to ask more here. Thanks in advance!

Hi

About a decade ago I bought a domain. Lets called it "mydomain". I then bought a gsuite upgrade and made my main account called mydomain@mydomain.com with an alias called email@mydomain.com .
My main account is basically only used for signing in to gsuite and android services where I think I use my alias for most other services / websites.

Fast forward to today. I want to move away from Google to other providers. I know this is a major task as I basically use Google for everything:

• Email
• Android account
• Contacts in gmail and android
• Sheets & docs
• Google fotos
• Family calendar
• Drive for backup of non-personal files
• Maps
• Our smartdevices like Google nest (Yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy)
• Chromecast
• 270+ passwords affiliated with my google alias

What would happen if I bought a Proton account and moved my domain name there? Would everything break if mydomain@mydomain.com was linked up to Proton and not Google?

I use email@mydomain.com for signing in to my password manager and loosing access to that would cripple me :)

Like all my spreadsheets and cooking recipes are saved in Docs / sheets under my main account.

EDIT: Why the downvotes? Isn't the super relevant for r/privacy?

Thanks in advance

I do t know if I’m phrasing this right, but how can I start to scrub myself from the internet? Obviously, never going to get to 100% - but what are some of the biggest offenders of my data and how can I start to clean that up?

I’m beginning to clean my sloppy fingerprint. A long road ahead…

After deleting my instagram, I seen my contact list in my data I downloaded, which I never gave permission.

Which means anyone who has me saved to their contacts links me straight back into the circle of social media.

It’s an endless circle thus my question.

Or a city 2 hours drive away or the major city in the next state over. Never super far away. But not where I am.

My AppleID was hacked a couple months ago and an IPhone SE was added. I removed the unrecognized device, changed the password.

The last 2 times I’ve noticed my Facebook location was wrong. I’ve run into this guy that casually tries to run into me and is sorta weird in general. (But he’s also local, but I’m suspicious he’s using a VPN or idk?)

I usually just don’t use the Facebook app for this reason but occasionally re-download it, changed password change 2Fa and stillll location is pretty inaccurate

I know that there is stuff like LM studio for Windows to run AI models locally. But is there any android alternative that I can use to run it locally safely? Will it be powerful like deepseek or chatgpt?

is there a preferred extension out of all of them?