It’s time to get a new phone and I want to start fresh and get something with privacy in mind. I can’t afford any high end privacy cells but looking for something that maybe has an advantage. Like android vs apple products type guidance.

I don’t plan on adding any apps that I don’t absolutely need and want to keep this one as clear as possible. Would also love suggestions on this as well on what to avoid.

Regrettably, I haven't been very concerned about my data and privacy until recently. I've gotten rid of all Meta apps on my phone (deleted my Instagram account & app because I didn't care about them anyways, but only deleted my FB and Messenger apps). I am planning on using the Brave browser instead of Google but I rely on my Google accounts a bit too much. It'll be hard to make the transition.

Any other ways I can limit the data I provide to these massive tech companies?

Hi everyone. I would like to choose a browser for daily drive. I have used firefox, but it has telemetry and on android it is doutful that it can be disabled regardless of setting without about://config, which you can not access on android. librewolf is for pc. brave i have hered is based on chromium and it is not safe. what do you all use and arguments for that or another browser? ideally it should be opensource and private. Excuse me for wrong flare, i could not choose because of accessibility on reddit, so chose the first one that appeared.

Pretty much my title and I know this gets asked a lot. But I have a few more specific questions as well and I'm not particularly tech savvy unfortunately. I'm just curious what are the things you would suggest to a newbie, what are the low hanging fruit? What would you tell a complete beginner to do?

I have been hanging out on here and am aware of a couple of videos from tech lore and thehatedone that have beginners guides from a few years ago. The only things I have doen (which isn't much) is I have switched over to using Firefox and duckduckgo on my phone and antennapod for podcasts, but that's really it. Also I guess one good thing I have going is that I've never used any social media outside reddit of course, I've never had an interest in it (no Facebook, twitter, insta).

• I was wondering what steps do I need to take when deleting my Google account? Like before I outright delete it?
• And the same thing for reddit as well, I plan to get rid of reddit and spend less time online in general. Would I just delete individual comments and posts and then delete the account?

I do understand that info is out there regardless of what we do, and there's no fix-all solution, but I would still rather just take care of the things to the best of my ability. Better than nothing I guess. Thanks all!

I installed gemini app from play store and then switched to this from google assistant.But later on when I uninstalled the gemini app it is showing as not installed on play store but coming up as installed on the device.Did this happen with someone else as well?

i've never put anything personal on social media so i have no idea how they have it

So, I do everything I can to keep private. I don't have Facebook or Instagram or anything, I hardened my browser, I give preference to open source apps, etc, etc. But I can't get rid of Whatsapp, it's impossible. Where I live Whatsapp is the fabric of space and time itself. I need it to work, I need it to talk with my friends and family, I need it even to keep in touch with my physician. Basically every message communication is dependent on Whatsapp. If I talk about Signal people laugh at me like I'm some kind of paranoid weirdo with a tin foil hat on my head. So, what I can do to minimize the damage? Should I only use Whatsapp web on browser on PC? Is there a tracker blocker that minimizes the problem on Android? Or I'm basically doomed? I hate Meta with all my might and I'd like to keep 'em as far as possible from my data. Any advice? Thanks in advance!

So I got this spam email from a website called “mylife.com” it sent an email to my personal email (I don’t have any idea how they got my email) but I don’t ever remember myself signing up for their website so someone might’ve used my email to sign up on their website. I was just curious because I did sent a code to my email and did reset my password through the email but as I clicked the link it sent me to their website where it started loading where it says checking “criminal records” “emails” “numbers” it basically says that it’s checking for those information that I have on their website. Now I was just curious if they got any information from me by just me doing that. Anyways I was trying to delete the account but it looks like it just created one when I tried to reset the password. Their main motive was to get me to sign up for the membership but I did not do all that and I did not enter any personal information of mine. All I did was click the password reset link and it probably created a new profile. I want to know if I should worry about it or not. (Edit) So basically it did the reputation and background check because apparently they were saying someone viewed my profile on mylife with a totally different first and last name so someone might’ve actually used my email. I have 2FA and changed my email passwords already I’m just worried that it could get any more information from me just because I did a password reset to that account and used their website.

as the title says. lots of people keep saying, for example, "don't use opera GX, the Chinese will steal your data!" or "that game uses anti-cheat 'X'! that'll steal your data!"

... but even surveys don't want my data, lmao. so what would I be harmed by?

So, I’ve got a temporary phone number that’s all mine for a while, and I’m wondering how I can actually use it to my advantage. A lot of stuff needs a phone number for verification or whatever, so… what would you do if you had one?

I’m thinking there’s gotta be some interesting or useful ways to put this to work—signing up for things, organizing accounts, maybe something I haven’t thought of yet.

I recently completed an online defensive driving course through Traffic School by Improv to get a discount on my insurance premium. While exploring the site after completing the course, I discovered they have a strange built-in social network platform.

To my shock, I found that by default, profiles on this platform—including course payment receipt certificates—are made public. These certificates contain extremely sensitive information, including full names, dates of birth, current addresses, and driver’s license numbers.

This essentially provides all the details someone would need to create a counterfeit ID or commit identity theft. Most users likely have no idea their information is exposed in this way.

If you’ve taken a course with them, I strongly recommend checking your profile settings immediately. This is a massive privacy violation that needs to be addressed by the company, regulators, and consumer protection groups.

What’s the best way to escalate this?

I recently downloaded DuckDuckGo for tracking privacy. I searched some "Harry Potter" related stuff, which I never did before, ever. I don't have it on my feed, I'm not a fan of the series, nor did I verbally talk about it. Now I have related ads on YouTube. Am I seriously STILL being tracked?

The email looked legit, and her email was correct.

Is someone scamming? What gives?

I’ve always tried to maintain a small online footprint ,however it was just brought to my attention that lastpass was breached awhile back (a password manager I’ve used on and off over the years) and I had no idea. Is there a public repository of companies that got pwned so I can keep an eye on these companies that have my information?

I am looking for advice on my app usage and what I should be deleting.

I use Firefox as my main search browser, Signal for messaging, Norton VPN, But I also have apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, Life360, and YouTube. Which of these apps are safe, and should I delete any?

Thank you!

I know about cloud storage, encryption and web3 decentralisation stuff. But what do you think is the best? How do we adapt to it?

I need to be able to detect screenshots and prevent downloads.

Edited: You don't need to answer any further. Thanks to previous replies, I was finally able to find a service.

When it comes to privacy strictly (not politics) and what we already know, private companies and the government store in terms of user data.

KYC is required for online banking, credit reports, and other financial services. It is nearly impossible to avoid some form of KYC without severely limiting your access to finance.

I’m just confused about why headlines come out about porn when KYC is already attached to the most vital monetary systems people need to function in the economy.

Yet, headlines aren’t mentioning a thing about financial KYC or KYC via phone number and instead are worried about porn sites requiring KYC.

It feels like a smoke screen for the reality that the government and tech monopolies already have the information they’re asking for.

I keep receiving these weird calls every day around the evening time and they always have some letters and numbers in place of the city/location? It’s everyday and the calls are always from different numbers followed by different numbers and letters. I’m getting annoyed up to the point where I’m about to ask for a new phone. Anyone else?

Linkedin is important for my work as an academic. But in order to verify my account, they ask me to turn on my camera and show my face. While I can do it, it just feels like giving away too much. I keep the cameras on my phone and laptop taped up and keep my desktop webcam unplugged when not teaching.

How can I verify my Linkedin account without showing my face on camera?

I don't have a personal FB account, not interested, and prefer not to have one. However, you must have one in order to be an admin on a business page. Anyone know of a legal way around that or how to proceed? I attempted to create a new account with my business email, but it's asking for selfie verification, and I do not want to do that.

I uploaded sensitive files to gofile, wanting to share them with a friend. and Immediately upon making the files public, they instantly got 5 downloads which spooked me out to be honest, so I immediately set them back to private.

I would really like to know if I'm overthinking or people can actually log random files upon being uploaded/set to public.

I was trying to log into my Credit Karma app and my iPhone gave me roommate’s email address/ password as suggestion. At first I didn’t recognize the email address and thought it was weird. I tried to take a picture but didn’t let me (screenshot wouldn’t show their email address). I thought it was super sketchy showing me a diff email but went to search for my passwords on the iPhone’s new password app and saw different of their accounts appear on my list of passwords. It showed both their email address and different passwords!!!!!! I deleted both immediately but I have no clue how this happened. We share WiFi and I have used their laptop to check emails but logged out. Questions: Any idea how this happened? Are my passwords at risk too? Besides changing my passwords and never logging into other computers, what else can I do?

I want to delete FB messenger from my phone entirely but in my country it's basically the most used messaging app, so if i were to do that i'd be unable to communicate with many people. Literally the only place where i can communicate with my agent/intermediary so i can get shifts. So there is a 0% chance that i can delete it.

I recently came across a video that listed what messenger has access to on a phone and yeah, that just further solidified that i don't want it.

(Though i don't know the country of residence of the person whose video i watched. My country is in europe, it is part of the european union, do any privacy acts protect us here even just a little bit?)

What can i do in this situation? I have my old phone still, works well, should i just download messenger there and keept that phone on me too? Or is there a way i can isolate messenger on my current phone so it can't access anything?

I've noticed the app "Files" has a link to Google's privacy policy, and since "Files" is a product by Google, I speculated they may have access to my data. Is that true? Is there an alternative to "Files" app?

Maybe this is a known issue already, but it occurs to me that the location serices the various parking apps use to find the parking zone you're in to begin your session also immediately lets parking authorities know when someone parks and doesn't pay if the app is able to access data in the background. Am I wrong? Are these apps selling us out? I parked in a place I didn't even know was a pay area last year and got a ticket. Pretty out of the way place, never see the metermaid cars around there. Is anyone else noticing a strange increase in their efficiency lately that might be thanks to them knowing exactly where we are all the time?

The topic title basically says it all - if I wanted a CPU without Intel ME or AMD PSP, what's the most recent and most powerful CPU I could go with?

The only thing I can think of is Risc V (and I'm just assuming they have nothing similar to ME/PSP I don't actually know for sure) and those are still very much for devs and early adopters, buggy, iffy, and are weaker than an old Raspberry Pi. A pre-2007 Intel or AMD CPU from before they started adding ME/PSP might be more powerful, if harder to come by.

Any suggestions?