I haven't used a SPOT for ten years, but at that time they were pretty limited in their comms. They weren't on if I didn't want them to be on, and even when in and supposedly with service, were flaky. Now, I use an InReach. It has more functionality than the devices in the past, but the connection isn't really any better. All of these devices were owned and managed under government contracts but I don't think they would be any different. I have never used them to track myself as I go, I use different equipment for that.
Long story short, you'll worry more about getting service when you need than you will about being tracked when you don't want to be. A tree canopy or tall canyon can prevent comms.
Download the ProtonMail apk from a trusted place such as APKMirror, and then use Revanced Manager to change the package name. Install the patched app and profit! You can do this over and over again.
I support what the others say, it’s cool if you can pay, but it’s not a must IMO. If you’re fine with the base tier, or can’t/don’t want to pay for more, there’s no shame in that.
Shelter works fine to keep two accounts, which should be enough hopefully, otherwise you will have to use the web client.
There was an experimental app that allowed you to have a potentially unlimited number of duplicate apps (twoyi), but it’s sadly discontinued, there’s also another called MultiApp, but there’s something yiffy about it I can’t quite put into words
There are various ways in which age verification can be done without sacrificing privacy. Sadly, that requires standardised digital ID combined with several privacy preserving technologies that I’ve only seen used experimentally (I think Yivi comes closest, but its protocol involves sending identifiers between their servers and the consuming service, and requires services to be registered rather than arbitrarily accessible).
In its core, these protocols use digitally signed attributes (could be “SSN” or “birthday”, but more practically this could also just be “is over 18”). With this system, you can simply transmit the token that says “I’m an adult”, the website verifies this, and you’re done. To prevent abuse through infinite reuse, these apps need to be verified occasionally, and the secrets must not be stored somewhere they can be copied from easily, but phones have solved that problem ages ago.
Unfortunately, I don’t think governments who support these restrictions will also invest into these technologies. Perhaps efforts such as eIDAS will allow for some kind of non-profit to create and generate these tokens based on your standard digital government ID, but as of now, there’s nothing.
Any technology can be bypassed by kids (just steal dad’s porn pass!), so there’s a limit to how effective age gates are. On the other hand, anything that requires stealing stealing devices protected with a PIN will be sufficient in most cases.
I find they’re a pain to use and I only have one out of social pressure, and privacy or not I’m constantly confused on why they’re so popular.
I just use a throwaway account and have the rule of not putting in any data that I don’t want to be read - which is barely anything any way because I do all my computing on my Linux laptop. I figure if they’re collecting location data and recording me then they’re just associating it with “random guy x” because I’ve never given it anything else. I should look in to one of the de-Googled Android distributions but I have so little interest and energy in anything to do with it, if it could be made totally private I would still rarely use it.
Lot of folks here making the “nothing to hide? Great show me your browsing history” type arguments.
I think this isn’t really arguing in good faith. There’s a big difference between a personal friend knowing something about you, and a faceless algorithm knowing something about you. The two cases are different; it’s fair to argue about how one is better or worse, but they are different.
privacy
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.