❌ No safe message scanning technology exists.
⚠️ These powers would force a cybersecurity weakness onto apps like WhatsApp and Signal.
‼️ Hackers, predators and spies could crowbar their way into everything you send.
✍️ Tell Ofcom: End-to-end Encryption Means Online Safety ➡️ https://action.openrightsgroup.org/48-hours-tell-ofcom-practice-safe-text
⏰ CLOSES Monday 10 March at 5pm.
🚨 Time is Running Out to Save Encryption 🔐
Ofcom is consulting on implementing message scanning powers in the UK Online Safety Act.
This would break end-to-end encryption on the messaging apps we all use!
⏰ CLOSES Monday 10 March, 5pm.
Use our tool to tell Ofcom #PracticeSafeText 💬
ACT NOW ⬇️
https://action.openrightsgroup.org/48-hours-tell-ofcom-practice-safe-text
Well, that was quick!
I wrote about about my disappointment with @mozillaofficial changes:
https://mastodon.social/@BjornW/114032743031437841
Seems they were just starting 🙄
Read
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-terms-of-use/
Check
- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#notice
Consider other Open Source apps you may use: aren't you sad that these lack ToS & Privacy legalese?
My advise: move away from Mozilla.
They have lost my trust.
1/N
Read this:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates
👀 at this:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership
I'm baffled about the myriad of @mozillaofficial structures, amount of directors / C-level people & how to rhyme 'investing in privacy-respecting advertising; with 'draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run.'
As a long time Mozilla supporter, I was already unhappy about the direction of the last years & this does certainly not bode well for the future. 😞 😩
France is about to pass the worst surveillance law in the EU.
Here's how you can stop them: 👉 https://tuta.com/blog/france-surveillance-nacrotrafic-law
🇳🇿 I've had quite a few outrageous responses to my alerts, this is another one of those, sent by teammateapp.com CEO.
After my initial alert and follow up email, I get a reply lying about the severity of the exposure and telling me to stop harassing the company.
This CEO also didn't know what Proton is and thought I work for them and threatened to report me to them in case I didn't stop. :blobshrug:
Read about it here: https://jltee.substack.com/p/new-zealand-companys-impossible-to-hack-security
If you’re a Windows user, I can help you switch to Linux. Please stop supporting an insecure and privacy-intrusive operating system. What’s stopping you from switching to Linux/macOS? Ask all your questions, and I’ll answer everything.
This is *the most malicious, brutal* malicious compliance I've seen in quite some time, possibly ever, and I am HERE FOR IT. Thank you, @jwz
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
The UK is rogue in trying to order a backdoor to Apple encryption.
US lawmakers slam the UK's secretive order, calling it what it is:
🔥 'Dangerous' for global cybersecurity
🔥 'Effectively a foreign cyberattack'
The Home Office must back off ✋
#encryption #surveillance #e2ee #cybersecurity #ukpolitics #ukpol #Apple #privacy
Any device that needs to be off because it can't be trusted with your conversations should not exist in the first place.
I'm closing several accounts and deleting any customizations and personalizations like profile pics, etc.
I hate how every frikkin' service is hoovering up my data. I'm also closing accounts like LinkedIn that train their #AI on my data with poor visibility and limited controls.
Location data collected by over a hundred Dutch apps are for sale online.
It appears that the owner of popular weather app Buienalarm (Rain Alarm, in rough translation) does not know how the location data of its users ended up at this data broker. The app has 5 million users, a quarter of all people in The Netherlands. (Yes, it’s a rainy country.)
Let's just be clear: #Telegram has proven that they'll gladly accommodate nation states and probably has been doing so for years.
To think that it is secure when all the content, all the messages, are actually available to the company - albeit dispersed across nation states - is false.
#Privacy is #security, full stop. You've got #Signal for IM, #Session as well, not to mention #Matrix for group chats and servers. All have actual, factual peer-to-peer encryption and obvious key systems.
Android-knowledgeable folks: has the code for turning mic access off been audited to a comfortable point?
It's one of the things I like most about Android, but also as it's a software and not hardware toggle, I am skeptical that it means much.
Latest comic. A British consumer rights group examined unnecessary data harvesting by “smart” devices, including air fryers connected to phone apps. While these devices may not pose the greatest privacy risk in our everyday lives, they are part of a growing Internet of Things capable of collecting data when and where we least expect it.
Congress Pushes #Apple to Remove #Deepfake Apps After 404 Media Investigation
https://www.404media.co/congress-pushes-apple-to-remove-deepfake-apps-after-404-media-investigation/
Remember Friends:
You cannot both have secure end-to-end encryption to protect your communication AND also have a backdoor/key/access only for "the good guys."
This is not possible.
Do not believe anyone telling you otherwise.
End-to-end encryption protects us all,
we must fight to keep it ✊🔒
So a crazy thing happened. In a crime thriller film called Les chambres rouges (Red Rooms, 2023) there is a scene where the hacker protagonist is attempting to purchase a snuff film in online auction. The auction happens via IRC or IRC-like chatting environment and to my surprise there's actually me @rolle and my wife @mustikkasoppa who are one of the bidders.
1) The nickname of my wife is mistakenly written as "mustikasoppa" (with one k) but if I recall correctly she has used a mistakenly written nickname in the past
2) We are both operators and on the same IRC channel as we've been for the past 17 years
This is not a coincidence. One nickname can be made up by accident but not two with these features and definitely not in a French movie. My wife's nick "mustikkasoppa" is Finnish and means "blueberry soup".
Our IRC logs are more or less public because of open source and statistics so I presume the scene has been made with chatgpt which has scraped our nicks from the Internet so that they ended up in the movie. We still chat via IRC every day together.
The era of AI... Do your background check, folks. I'm glad this wasn't a dramatized documentary film but a complete fiction. However my wife and I are real. Mixed feelings.
To everyone when they see horrible privacy news about Microsoft replying with:
"I don't care, I use Linux"
Sure, you do. But does your medical clinic do? Does your therapist do? Does your family member typing a personal email to you in Word before sending it do too?
This is a systemic problem.
You cannot protect your own data only by using Linux yourself. You must also demand stronger regulations and enforcement to obligate organizations around to protect your data as well.
"Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.
If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.
I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:
On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”: File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”"
https://medium.com/illumination/ms-word-is-using-you-to-train-ai-86d6a4d87021
Hawk Tuah recently went viral for her rant about the benefits of using XMPP over centralized chat networks.
"XMPP is an open, decentralized, and secure messaging protocol. Unlike proprietary services, XMPP lets users choose their own servers, ensuring privacy and control."
She adds, "By adopting XMPP, we can foster a more open and secure internet, free from corporate surveillance and data mining."
Is there an ongoing attack on the Tor network right now?
My relay was doing some weird stuff.
I got abuse reports even though I am not running an Exit relay.
Wild ass day in the Tor node operator world. Got an email from my VPS, forwarding a complaint from WatchDog CyberSecurity saying that my box was scanning SSH ports!
> Oh no, oh no, I knew I should have set up fail2ban, oh god why was I so lackadaisical!
So I remote in to the machine: no unusual network activity, no unusual processes, users, logins, command history, no sign that anything is doing anything I didn't tell it to do.
So what's up? Turns out there's been a widespread campaign where some actor is spoofing IPs to make it look like systems running Tor are scanning port 22: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-relays-tor-relays-source-ips-spoofed-to-mass-scan-port-22/15498/14
Operators from all over are saying they're getting nastygrams from their VPS providers because WatchDog is fingering their source IPs (which are being spoofed and NOT part of a global portscanning botnet).
@delroth did an amazing writeup of the whole thing here: https://delroth.net/posts/spoofed-mass-scan-abuse/
All Qtriots in control #QAnon #Conspiracy #photography #dogs #nature #camping #anime #music #BSD #cycling #DOS #fedi22 #fitness #FOSS #GNU #infosec #Lego #linux #MOC #MSDOS #OpenSource #OpSec #OSINT #pinball #privacy #RightToRepair #security #StarTrek #Unix #believeinfilm #fedi22 #photography #filmphotography #35mm #filmisnotdead #Politics #Fediblock #Trump #Caturday #Dutch #English #LGBTQIA #Minecraft #Programming
Good shortread by Goodin on the clandestine tracking platform Location X. Sold to government agencies, it supposedly exploits the unique 'advertising ID' accessible to the app layer on all Android phones, and (with optional user input) on iOS. The article has a brief mitigation walkthrough for phone owners.
Thanks to @Christina for the share
The craziness about private businesses collecting biometric data very unnecessarily for basic identification purposes needs to stop.
Say NO to biometrics collection everywhere you can 🚫✋
Privacy is a human right.