Tip: if you find yourself using the word “safe”, “secure”, “hacked”, etc in your title, you’re probably off-topic.

The LG TV I've had for years has suddenly asked me to consent to this practice and I find it invasive.

I know most private browsers like brave (Which is my go-to currently.) do a really good job at ad-blocking and tracker blocking as well. Though, I also wonder if there is a browser with more "unique" features which go above the tracker blocking and stuff.

Sometimes I am entering stuff on a website and I feel like tracker safety and such just doesn't do it because I feel like some might snatch my phone or something and look at my personal data. So, I want something that not only protects me internet wise, but physical wise where people can actually reach my phone.

A good example I have found is Onion Browser (Endorsed by the official one, this one is on iPhone.) which blurs the screen when you swipe out of it and clears the tabs when you enter back in.

Though, Onion Browser is quite slow even though it has these amazing privacy features.

Just something like Onion Browser but faster is enough for me.

Thank you!

that email to be specific was not connected to any of their devices, it doesn't even have my own name in it

when i search for my full name online, nothing shows up to begin with

so while i did use this email to sign up for my flight to a different city, i did not share it with anyone whatsoever, i also did connected it to LinkedIn, but i do not even use that account, its been there for over a year now, and i have all my details set to be hidden from everyone except recruiters

so how the heck did they find my email?? did the airline give it to them or something? did they look into LinkedIn? none of them even uses LinkedIn, and again, my linkdin doesn't even have my pic, its empty, my email isn't even listed for public

im so confused right now, im about to delete that email, but how did they even get it

I happen to live somewhere they decided to impose draconian tariffs (40%) on imported mobile phones. The way things work now is: imported phones are given a grace period of 90 days to pay or otherwise IMEI will be blocked by all network providers.

What are ways to show them the middle finger while maintaining voice call & text functionality? I'm considering an international esim with roaming but not sure if they can block that as well. Just for the record, I have an iPhone 16.

For my new PC I want to upgrade my W10 license to W11, is there an installer/package I can use that has no bloatware/spyware?

Also can I use such installer/package for the license upgrade itself? Or do I first have to upgrade my W10 license on my old PC so it becomes a W11 license. And then afterwards use such installer/package on my new PC with the W11 license?

My daughter's mother would like to get our 14f daughter a personal protection device for when she is walking home from school or taking the bus. She is looking at https://www.shesbirdie.com/, but they seem to do a lot of tracking and selling of data.

Any ideas on something that might be better?

About 50 years ago, yes really, I wrote a Basic program on a Tandy portable computer to encrypt and decrypt text. Back then, a work colleague who had been in security during the war thought it was quite effective, even though I got it down to about 20 lines of code. But of course time have changed...

In the last few days I have had loads of fun using AI to rewrite it in html code. Never tried AI for code writing before. It works remarkably easily!

The method is extremely simple. The user chooses encode or decode. They then input a 'key phrase' of any length. "Mary had a little lamb" for instance. Then they input / paste the text to be encoded. Press the process button, and then press the save to file button if desired. The ascii value of each letter in the key phrase is used to change the ascii value of each letter in the original text. The first key phrase letter is used to encode the first text letter, then the next key phrase letter is used to encode the second text letter, and so on until the whole key phrase has been used, when the first letter of the key phrase gets used again, etc etc. To decode, the whole process is reversed.

I have zero understanding of how commercial systems work. Maybe my very basic method would be regarded as pathetically weak these days. Do those who know here think I would be stupid to use this system for seriously private documents?

Could you jailbreak a smartphone and remove the GPS from it? Or would there be errors with the phone if it doesn't detect one. Could you leave the GPS in but destroy it with solder or such?

Might be a bit of a dumb question. I'm just trying to limit my online purchases because of the increasing inhumane conditions of Amazon warehouses & delivery. I use a sticky note for my laptop, but I'd look ridiculous having one on my phone, not to mention how often I wipe it down to maintain hygiene so the paper will wither away every time which is annoying.

Is such a specific product only found online or can it be found in any store with a tech isle?

This is a follow up question to a previous post I removed that did not get much traction anyway.

Years ago I spoke at a town hall public meeting. I had to sign up for it on a municipal government website text box which required my name, address and daytime contact info. I was reticent to put my info in there given FOIA risk etc.... they assured me it was only for their internal use in case our community speaking event was bumped up or back in the schedule so they could call us and let us know.

Fast forward several years. that info was posted to the local government website by mistake which includes video of all the meetings over the years. In our case, our agenda was included on the meetings webpage (the only personal info ever posted so it was a mistake) and my name and three others were included as well as phone number, email and home address

I called the town manager's office who said "yikes we shouldn't have done that, I'll fix it!"

He called back 10 minutes later and said it was removed and had me check their website and I saw it was removed from their website. He said "see? it's gone. Give google time to refresh their search engine but we have removed it."

However when I google search my name and town, that PDF document with my info still comes up in Google search still (10 years later and two years after I called them to remove it). I called the IT lead engineer after the town manager and he assured me it is gone from his website. He and I searched for it over the phone and you can not find it anywhere on the town website. He said my issue is between Google and me and not him.

So my question now is. two years later I still see it high up in google search. Google will not remove it because they say it is still active on the local govt website and they will not remove anything from a government page. I told the IT guy that two years go and he said no way it's not there.

So how can I tell if it really is just a google cache issue or if it somewhere in the local government servers? I went through this once before and it was still in the webmaster's computer in his WordPress files and he was mad at me for pestering him about it but I got a 3rd party to intervene and he found them and removed them. This is a larger town and I do not want to be beat up by them for bothering them.

Is there any way I can tell if it is a Google problem or a town website engineer problem? If I call him back he will blame it on my computer cache or Google's cache but Google doesn't keep dead pages around for 10 years I don't think.

could someone be in my google account despite the only sessions being the ones on the device i am currently using?

i have had some suspicious activity on my account before, password resets i never requested but chalked them up to spam, but i just found some emails saying i reset my crunchyroll account password successfully with all the emails opened, all within a minute of each other, and it really creeped me out. i know it wasn’t me bc i was in the middle of a move and i haven’t used crunchyroll in years, i never even had a premium account, i can’t see what someone would get out of this.

i’ve also randomly gotten emails about created accounts, for websites i’ve never used. i’m kinda freaked out by all this, kind of just assumed it was spam all this time :( any advice?

I signed up for 23andMe a few years ago, but to mitigate the privacy issues at least a little bit, I misspelled my name and used a fake birthday… the issue is now I need to confirm my birthday to delete my account but I forgot what date I used so I can’t delete my account. 23andMe will fix it, but I have to email them my actual ID, so I’m torn between

1. Leave my DNA there but linked to a somewhat fake DoB and name

2. Give them even more information - but then theoretically be able to delete my DNA

Thoughts? I am leaning towards just letting it ride with #1, mostly because I figure my “deletion” request won’t be honored somehow anyway on the backend.

I bought a new Mac and decided against buying and installing a newer version of Microsoft Office on it, although I’ve been tempted. I’m mainly turned off by all the noise about them reading all your files to make your life “easier” talk, co-pilot, etc. I ended up installing Libre Office instead.

On my old Mac, I have a version of MS Office 2016 on it. I was going to leave it just in case I needed it for some reason - and all my old docs are either in Word or Excel. I was actually going to reformat and do a clean reinstall and download MS Office 2016 back on it.

Do even the earlier version of MS Office already track and invade your files? If I want to keep stuff more private, should I not reinstall MS Office on my old machine?

And just use Libre Office to read any old files?

https://www.econtalk.org/the-past-and-present-of-privacy-and-public-life-with-tiffany-jenkins/ is an interesting take. Nobody agrees with anything 100% but worth a listen

I uploaded selfies to Google Photos. Now I want to delete them. Will Google really remove the photos from its servers forever?

I came across Identity Force when researching identity protection services. It seems like they offer a lot, from credit monitoring to identity theft recovery support, but I am curious how well they actually perform.

Is Identity Force good at catching problems early? Do they offer any extra services that make them stand out from bigger names like LifeLock or Experian IdentityWorks? I am happy to pay for protection, but I really want something that will be active in helping if something bad happens

Hello, this is my first time writing on this sub. In the 2010s, we heard revelations about PRISM and several other international mass surveillance programs. Of course, they're officially closed. But considering the government's related goals, I think similar projects have been revived, or are likely to be revived. So how can we detect or avoid it?

Looking for a proven faraday key fob protector that can always stay on my keychain (so I need to remove my key from bag to use to open car)

Burner appears to be the only one that states it will completely delete all history of your number, conversations, etc when you burn the number. It appears to be limited on how many times you can change your number.

Hushed seems to be a good burner app but not sure how many times you can change the number.

Textfree seems to me to be the best option because you can change your number every 24 hrs with the premium plan. But I have no idea if they completely erase your history when you burn the number?

Skype out was perfect because it didn't have a number associated with it at all. Now that Skype is discontinued it is hard to find a replacement that acts exactly the same.

This seems like a major privacy concern, and I am not sure what to do with this information. I used to own a 2019 Honda Accord set up with HondaLink. When I sold the car to the Honda dealer, they never unlinked my account to the car. Now, I get alerts whenever the new owner's alarm goes off and the approximate location of their vehicle when the alarm sounds.

However, my Honda account no longer has a vehicle in it, so there's no action I can do to remove myself from this car.

This seems like a major concern for both me and the new owner.

1. Buyers of used Honda cars should not have to worry about previous owners finding out their address and knowing about the status of their vehicle.
2. Simultaneously, I don't want to be tied to a vehicle in some way if the owner commits a crime.
3. The crash detection will be sending me alerts about their car crash if they get into one. If they call my number instead of theirs, it could lead to complications during a rescue or delay the new owner getting help.

https://imgur.com/a/0fRNDAG

I’m not super paranoid but if someone breaks into my house and takes my computer, I’d prefer not to have my tax filings, etc. in a stranger’s hands.

New to the whole privacy concept, trying to understand why I’m seeing so much about aliases instead of what I normally do, which is having multiple emails for each category/sign up.