privacy

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01189998819991197253, in roku remote app showing ads now
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

Are you on Android?

If so: RoMote is pretty good. Here’s the releases page for the APK. It’s also F-Droid.

lemann, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

I’m not so sure about clients that are specifically focused on security and privacy, however my general FOSS mobile app suggestions would be Voyager for a polished UX, or Eternity for a more native Android experience.

Both are available on GitHub and F-Droid

xfts, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
@xfts@lemmy.world avatar

Thunder gets regular updates and is open source and ad free.

governorkeagan,

Second this. Thunder has been great

01189998819991197253, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

I use the webpage as a webapp. It’s adless.

nezrock, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

I use Connect for lemmy, it’s really great and ad-free.

HypnoticSheep,

I’ve tried all the other popular apps, and keep coming back to Connect.
The main features that pull me back are profile-specific settings so I can set up different accounts without having to reconfigure everything every time I switch instances, and the ability to customize post card quick actions, specifically the Mark As Read quick button combined with the persistent Hide All Read toggle. It’s just so convenient, I keep coming back even though it deletes my account info every time it logs me out.

itsnicodegallo,

Connect rarely makes it on these lists, but I think it’s fantastic.

Max_P, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
@Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me avatar

The ads come from an ad network where there is very little visibility into what’s going to be displayed in your app. And bad people also keep managing to get their ads published even though the ad network doesn’t allow them

And it all ties into the whole targeted advertising, where they also make sure very few people get the bad ad, and tries to target people they think may be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics. Depending on the amount of interactivity allowed, the ad can even display two different things if it deems you too savvy to fall for it.

It’s basically unescapable unless you only use apps without ads, or pay for the ad-free versions.

The whole advertising industry is sketchy, more news at 10.

Thermal_shocked,

Dns adblocking blocks these 100%

Darkassassin07,
@Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca avatar

Pi-hole blocks ads served by these networks just fine. Never seen an ad in Boost for Lemmy or for Reddit, though I tend to use Jerboa now that I’ve gotten used to it while I was waiting for Boost for Lemmy to release.

DNS based adblocking like Pihole or Adguard limits you to receiving advertising hosted by the app provider (youtube for example) which is usually better curated than third party advertising networks and less commonly found at all.

knobbysideup,
@knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works avatar

To be truly effective you must also block DoH and DoT. The first can only be done with endpoint lists, since it is https.

N0x0n,

Hey, could you elaborate or send some lecture? I have the upstream quad9 DoH address in adguard. It’s supposed to better encrypt my traffic right? Never saw any ads or strange DNS requests.

Never heard about ads being inject though DoH or DoT, or did I misunderstood your comment?

Darkassassin07,
@Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca avatar

Theoretically an app could use a custom DoH endpoint to retrieve ads instead of the standard dns provided by the system. As this uses purely https without a preceding dns request, pihole/adguard would fail to block it; but it’s just not something currently employed.

Darkassassin07,
@Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca avatar

Maybe in comming years, but I’ve never encountered an ad served explicitly through DoH/DoT. It’s certainly possible, just not actually in use yet.

You can also setup DoH front and back ends for pihole so traffic entering and leaving it is encrypted. When/if it becomes necessary I’ll probably look into https packet inspection using custom Root certs to force clients to use my local DoH services and block other traffic, or look into inspecting the SNI to apply blocking there; but again its just not needed yet and may not be for a long time. We’ll see. I’m sure the pihole/Adguard teams are also investigating solutions.

otter, (edited )

Yep, also the ads don’t get initialized at all if the user buys the ad-free version (going to top all in the Lemmy Boost community should bring up the post about it). It’s relatively cheap and the dev is very active with bugs and requests. The dev is developing for the Fediverse and I’m happy to support that (as well as devs for Sync, Connect, Lemmy, etc.)

I like Boost and paid for ad-Free, but a lot of other clients should work for your needs. While they might not be privacy focussed, many are open source so you can check what is going on.

My preference goes

  • Boost (not FOSS, one time payment to remove ads)
  • Connect (not FOSS, ad free)
  • Eternity (FOSS & ad free)

I uninstalled the other ones and haven’t kept up with them. There may be better ones out there, these are the ones I’m keeping up with

StereoTrespasser,

Love how the top comment is a rando saying it’s unavoidable but the dev literally says below that they fixed it.

brbposting,

The [exact ad from the] specific advertiser will never be seen again, so indeed the issue has been mitigated.

Other bad actors are still out there, though, hence the need for the report button the dev mentioned.

knobbysideup, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
@knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works avatar

This is why ad blockers should always be used. Small devs don’t have relationships with advertisers or control over what ad networks will do.

Or you can pay once and be done with them. I think the price of a burger is not a big ask for something you use every day.

I do both.

refurbishedrefurbisher,

Even the FBI recommends ad blockers for security.

kia, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

The title is a little disingenuous. Claiming this is a property of the Boost app isn’t correct… It’s just an ad network.

golden_zealot,
@golden_zealot@lemmy.ml avatar

I didn’t make the statement that it’s their property, I made the statement that it’s being displayed through their application.

AlpacaChariot,

Boost loads adds from a shitty network though. Most open source apps don’t do this stuff because nobody wants a Lemmy client to load ads; users only ever tolerate it in return for a more polished UI or whatever.

ouRKaoS, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

I paid $3.49 to support the developers and the ads go away as a bonus.

NoneYa, in Remove Modem/SimCard from a Car

I imagine you could do this by creating a Faraday Cage of some sort around the antenna that would phone home.

In my old car, the BMW i3, I was part of the Reddit sub there and many of us were upset because we had 3G radios in the car that were getting disconnected which meant our smart features would no longer work. But someone was able to replace the 3G modem for a 4G modem somehow. So it may be possible if you can find that component and rip it out or find a way to replace it with a defective part instead, for example.

ghostblackout, in roku remote app showing ads now

This is not new

deegeese, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

I like Voyager a lot but it might be iOS only.

refurbishedrefurbisher, (edited )

Voyager is on Android as well. It’s technically a webapp, so you can run it on any device that supports displaying a webpage.

Example: m.lemmy.world

Neato, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
@Neato@ttrpg.network avatar

Wait, Boost has ads? I’ve literally never seen an ad.

HumanPerson, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

Eternity. It was a FOSS Reddit client before the API stuff but they became a Lemmy client.

SatyrSack,

Maybe pedantic, but it’s a totally different developer that took the Infinity for Reddit source code and forked it into Eternity for Lemmy. The Infinity dev was not interested.

RyanUrq1328, in The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
steal_your_face,
@steal_your_face@lemmy.ml avatar

Voyager the 🐐no 🧢

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