Please write me a dummies guide to staying out of gizmo. I have a VPN, but that's it rn.

  • RandyLahey [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    i just want to note that the australian police are currently gloating about having caught a whole bunch of organised crime people because they were all using some "secure" communication app that was actually made by the fbi and all their "secure" communication was going straight to the feds

    i think always just assume that all your communications have the potential to be monitored, no matter how careful your setup is, so be accordingly mindful of what you say

    ps to the agent reading my message history on here, everything i wrote is all satire, sike ;)

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      communication app that was actually made by the fbi

      So I want to say "FOSS or bust" but tbh I have no way of knowing that any given open source app is safe either.

      I think the safest method of communication right now might be a courier on horseback.

      • crime [she/her, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Inside of you there are two wolves: one doesn't trust the government, the other knows that you shouldn't hand-roll your own crypto

    • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      "Secure" communication like Tor is arguably riskier than just a good old VPN or incognito mode and flushing your browser and always logging out. It's a Honeypot for "criminals", and the Feds/NSA have always had backdoors into a large part of "secure" tech (that's why Huawei beating them on 5G makes them so pissed, they're losing their edge)

      And if you do have advanced techniques that you're more confident aren't compromised, please do not share them on public forums like this.

      • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It’s a Honeypot for “criminals”

        Please let us know when everyone using Tor gets rounded up by the cops. I want to ask one of them if they wish they'd just used incognito mode and deleted their browser history.

          • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Sure, there's no guarantee that anything will preserve your anonymity, especially if you're targeted by a state actor. But you shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. At least make the feds work for it.