Note: This setup is both for my android and pc Edit: For those recommending paid services and selfhosting, I don’t have the money nor resources for either. Also it seams some people are confusing my android setup with my PC setup so I’ll write it down. Android: Brave(movies) + Ironfox, Search: Brave + DDG, VPN: Proton ( not always on), GPay = Cash, Auth= Aegis Auth, Pass: KeepassDX, PC: Firefox= Librewolf, VPN = No VPN (VERY slow internet), Search: Searxng + DDG, Pass: KeepassXC,
Would switch Organic Maps to its fork CoMaps. (See: this open letter)
And I would never recommend Brave as the first choice; it’s run by a shady corporation and reinforces Chromium’s hegemony.
I think it’d also be reasonable to add ProtonMail to email and Mullvad to VPN since you can have multiple.
How about OsmAnd? Is that still a decent project without world domination plans? I actually have CoMaps as well, but have sort of stuck to using OsmAnd.
Yeah, OsmAnd is really good; it’s what I use as my daily driver. CoMaps/Organic to me feel too limited, but some people may like that.
(I use Vespucci for editing on Android.)
Its installed in my android head unit in my car, and it just works, and there’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of stuff it can do, so I really enjoy it as my daily driver (ha! Get it?) in my car.
I think OsmAnd is great, but I personally prefer the cleaner feel of CoMaps. Just preference.
Something I’d suggest if OsmAnd feels too cluttered for you is to change the settings; OsmAnd lets you change a lot, but one of the ones I do is to change “Map Style” to Osm-Carto.
Carto, for context, is the vector map that you’d find by going to the OSM website. Much cleaner color scheme, imo.
My problem with OsmAnd is that it’s so very slow. Like, you zoom in and it takes seconds to display the map.
“Takes seconds” seems like a strange experience. I remember OsmAnd years ago performed like that for me – clearly, painfully loading in the individual tiles. But nowdays, it smoothly transitions between LoD and has no problem smoothly scrubbing over e.g. a major city.
I’m using offline vector maps, for context.
Edit: Trying online tiles again, I’m assuming your problem can be resolved by switching to offline. You can have the offline data update automatically such that you don’t have to worry about it. CoMaps and Organic only use offline maps, which is why they’re similarly snappy to offline OsmAnd.
This is under Configure Map > Map Source, and you only need to download for the region (usually e.g. a province) that you’re using.
Not everyone uses a powerful smartphone.
«Works for me» is seldom a good advice. OsmAnd is perfect on my Google Pixel 4a (2020), but can’t run decently on my father’s Sony Xperia L3 (2019).«Works for me» is seldom a good advice.
That wasn’t the advice; the advice was “try offline tiles and see if that helps.” In their case, it didn’t, but it’s just covering arguably the most likely potential cause. The fact it wasn’t their problem doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth asking.
dont use brave
Can you tell me why? I found out ddg was just repackage bing results so I’ve been trying brave for now.
It includes a lot of crypto bullshit, and I believe the founder is a right wing weirdo, but don’t quote me on that.
To also point out the good stuff: their browser has some pretty good anti-fingerprinting and privacy measures build in.
Thoughts on Vivaldi?
Still a proprietary black box you shouldn’t trust and chromium based so you reinforce the chromium monopoly
Why is vivaldi helping a chromium monopoly?
I understand it is based on chrome tech, and I guess that means it can use chrome extensions maybe? But how does it help chrome if people use it?
It uses Google’s browser
enginebase called Chromium, which Chrome is based on (the used engine is called “Blink”). A lot of websites are made to just function well on Chromium and maybe SafariA lot of websites are made to just function well on Chromium and maybe Safari
Isn’t that more on the site creators? I have a handful of sites and web apps I don’t have a choice to simply avoid because of job-related requirements. I’ve tried a bunch of other approaches, but keeping a Chromium browser installed has, so far, been the least painful way to get through my normal work days.
That’s on corporate sites just saving work or intentionally obstructing and restricting Firefox because Google basically a monopoly.
For me personally Firefox (and it’s engine Gecko) work fine for 99% of websites I visit.
Just use Firefox with uBlock Origin and PrivacyBadger.
uBlock and Privacy Badger should not be used together.
Arch BTW… 😎
Close to what I normally use. I prefer CoMaps instead of Organic, Mullvad VPN instead of Proton & Artix instead of Arch.
open source software ≠ privacy
though it is preferable. 3rd party verification of closed source can be accepted in some cases.
My recommendations:
Organic Maps -> CoMaps (they got forked because of some bad decisions.)
Brave -> Helium (has full uBlock Origin and Ungoogled Chromium patches, and no crypto bloat)
LibreTube -> PipePipe (has some nice features like live chat, and less buggy in my experience)
LibreOffice -> OnlyOffice (has better Microsoft Office compatibility, and easier to use in my experience)Disable your third-party DNS, that only works to make you more identifiable as you’re already using a VPN. You can also use Syncthing to sync your password vault etc. between your devices. I’d also recommend using Posteo instead of Tuta because it is cheaper and its privacy policy is kinda better.
What privacy concerns are there with using your ISP DNS? (honest question, not judging)
In my country they implemented national wide surveillance in the network infrastructure and they keep track of everything Edit: that’s why internet is very slow
ISPs not only have a monopoly on connectivity and bandwidth prices - which they severely abuse by the way, considering the actual operational costs - but they also have everything to gain on analyzing your traffic, DNS queries being one of them. They already have a bunch of personally identifiable information (PII) on you (full name, date of birth, banking information and, in some countries, even social security number). Linking that PII to your DNS requests (read: what websites you visit) and selling that to data brokers is a pretty low effort sweet deal. Long are the days gone when ISPs only provided Internet service.
Texts on the topic:
- https://mullvad.net/en/help/all-about-dns-servers-and-privacy
- https://labs.ripe.net/author/babak_farrokhi/is-your-isp-hijacking-your-dns-traffic/
- https://www.howtogeek.com/why-dns-betrays-your-privacy-and-how-dnscrypt-stops-it/
Videos on the topic:
Your ISP can see what websites you visit. But even if you change DNS server it can still see that if you don’t use either a VPN or DoH/DoT.
So it’s a good idea to use DoH or DoT. It’s an improvement but it’s far from perfect because the DNS server you’ll pick will see what site you visit, you have to trust them. And your ISP still has other ways to see which site you visit.
They can still see what sites you visit even with Secure DNS though. That only blocks your ISP from seeing what domain names you’re connecting to, but they can still see the IP addresses. It’s useless, unless you’re using a VPN in which case it is worse for your privacy as it makes you more identifiable than just using your VPN’s DNS.
dns requests flowing through your ISP means they know where you (want to) go and 3rd parties can potentially determine identity based on certain aspects (date time of request, how many, etc) can matter to law enforcement, surveillance/state efforts, hackers and beyond) because ISP may not govern well or, hell, wven sell those requests or just 3rs party manages it without your knowledge etc )
it’s better to have a known good dns provider that can offer a little trust but realistically nothing is 100%…
Depends where you are, and what laws your ISP is required to follow with regards to blocking/tracking. Personally I like Quad9.
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Any chance you found a way to encrypt local app caches?
I would go with SimpleX instead of Signal since it is very secure and you can self-host the server. There are no user IDs. Here is the official website: https://simplex.chat/
the onboarding for family & friends on simplex is too much - Ive had much better luck with deltachat
That is true. I have only managed to convince my wife to use it but I had to set it up for her. Now we can chat about what to eat for dinner securely though 😄
For DNS I use Pi-hole with Unbound which is used to contact the DNS root servers directly and recursively find IP-addresses. The first lookup becomes a little bit slower than through say Google but the IP is then cached locally and then it actually becomes faster. This is also more private since it doesn’t require a third-party DNS resolver.
Arch’s recent stance on age verification, and specifically how they said it, has made me switch off of Arch for good, which is… Unfortunate, since it was the first distro I truly loved. Gentoo is what I use now, but that’s a bit farther down the line. I don’t know a good rolling release distro that’s not super inconvenient, unfortunately.
Brave is… Not great. Bad, even. I prefer Vivaldi for my Chromium fork. Mullvad browser for my Firefox fork (I also just. Refuse to use Firefox proper anymore because of their AUP). Note that one of Mullvad’s CEOs donated to a Swedish far right party, so… Make that decision how you will. It’s a free browser, so… Meh.
My default search engine is Wikipedia. When I want to use a general search engine, order of operations is Marginalia, then Startpage, but SearXNG is a good one. I just found it a bit more inconsistent.
Tuta’s a good provider, I just needed a client because I don’t check my email otherwise. I’m on mailbox.org now because of that. They’re cheaper, and private email is kind of a farce anyway. Also mailbox is cheaper, assuming Tuta doesn’t have a free plan now. Given you said you’re not using paid apps, they might?
I’m using CachyOS an optimised arch-based distro. I was searching for an alternative to brave on desktop, the top recommendations were Vivaldi and Helium, so i will try both. From experience, Mullvad is very good especially against fingerprinting. Tuta has their own app on android and for desktop I use the website, they’re the most secure option out there, they also have a good free plan.
Check out ente as an alternative to Google Photos. I’ve been using them since 2023 when Google announced they own your photos and they were going to be
insteadingested into AI.Edit: typo. Looks great BTW. Good progress.
I’m not using ente because they have a cloud storage, the only safe storage is the one you have
Self-hosting Immich as an alternative to Google Photos is amazing, I love it!
Pretty solid. Too solid in fact. How long ago did you start the process?
What alternative did you find for gmap?
2-3 months ago. Gmap has a lot of alternatives
