On my TCL TV, it’s impossible to disconnect the wifi after you connect it. The button just doesn’t exist. I had to make a new network, connect to that, and shut down the new network.
I do not understand the downvotes. I mentioned desolder in case some TVs have wiring that cannot be detached easily. People seem to have taken me to be a paranoid agent of sorts (my working assumption) just because of one word. Is this really the privacy community, or a place to discourage people from taking privacy into their own by (sometimes) doing the slightly difficult-to-do work?
Well, if you didn’t take all the precautions you took, over a 1000 data brokers could’ve had access to your address, and so much more about you.
And while I most certainly don’t like it, I know that I’m still stopping them from learning even more about me, and my search results are still secure.
Everyone I get to talk to me on Signal is having a secure conversation with me.
Everything to an extent is a win, so don’t give up king.
Here you bear all the risk, and the counterparty, the internet company for example, bears no risk.
If and when you create the risk for the counterparty, where no risk has existed before, then and only then do you have a right to call it a war. In other words you have to in some way threaten the counterparty and make good on those threats to be at war.
Fairphone is known to have several hardware related problems, but they usually ignore or do not acknowledge them. Recently they tried to argue a hardware problem (ghost inputs) can be solved via firmware update, but of course it couldn’t. Additionally you lose support for device when using custom roms (even /e/os). They only support google Android. You could buy from Murena but they can not help with hardware or firmware issues. Fairphone is very to patch their devices in terms of security.
But google is google. I would never give them money.
I’ve always bought used phones anyway. With eBay/kijiji/others you can request the seller to enable OEM unlocking so you know it can be done and you don’t even need to boot it into android before installing GrapeneOS.
My experience, not many people are willing to do that for you. YMMV.
eu is slightly better, also you should force anyone who wants you’re ip to sign a contract to not allow them to give ur ip to data brokers but i dunno about the contract part
I have a friend who (just like me) has had a FP3, we were both very happy with it. Not sure why but he needed to replace it, got the FP5 but it was to clunky for him. Replaced it with a Pixel with Graphene likes it a lot.
I’d still still perfectly happy with my FP3 running Lineage/MicroG but my SD-card slot seems to be broken and I’m running out of space. I’m getting a FP5 in about a week, let’s see if it’s too clunky for me as well ^__^
I don’t trust e (that name 🤦♀️) not sure why but they pulled some weird stuff in the beginning that I can’t remember and at least back when I checked years ago they shipped a weird store that got it’s apps from shady apk sites which is a strange move to push on everyday consumers. I hope they changed but …
Got mine connected to the network so I can take advantage of a local install of Emby, but blocked from Internet access, and every time it makes a DNS request (still blocked, but logged), it’s added to a personal hosts file for the entire network just in case the kill switch doesn’t work for some anomalous reason
Super pro tip: Do the same for any device that does not absolutely need internet access. Don’t buy IoT garbage that needs to connect to some cloud server. Use local solutions like Jellyfin for media streaming, Navidrome for music, Home Assistant for home automation, etc.
There are so many other things you can self host, Nextcloud for your files, calendars, notes and other stuff, Immich or PhotoPrism for your photos, FreshRSS for news articles and other sources that support RSS feeds, Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home for DNS. Definitely check out !selfhosted.
This ^ I start by blocking any new device to the network, even if it needs internet access (e.g. a new mini PC or something) and monitor for odd activity. If the device needs internet activity and has shown no signs of trying to phone going to something suspicious, I grant it from there (note my devices are under constant monitoring though). If it doesn’t need access (tv, home automation, printer, vacuum, etc) it stays where it’s at.
But yeah agreed completely. I avoid all IoT that won’t work without a third party cloud or internet access. Using Nextcloud (which does my rss feeds too), HA, pihole, and Emby (also blocked from internet access via firewall rules) for me. Also a few apps I created for myself for things where there weren’t any useful or good FOSS alternatives for.
That’s great. It’s nice to see that there are other people who care about self-hosting. Any particular reason why you are still using Emby instead of Jellyfin?
I tried Jellyfin so that I could move away from Emby, but the deal breakers for me were:
No way to view my music library in folders (I organize all my music by genres)
Terrible performance on Samsung Tizen (my primary tv)
Can’t stream custom music radio stations by their m3u files
Other things that I didn’t like:
Doesn’t save the filters I selected when viewing the library previously
Doesn’t have as much working plugins on home assistant (this may have changed by now?)
I truly do want to go to Jellyfin, but the biggest deal breaker of them all is the lack of support getting it to work on the Samsung TVs efficiently. Perhaps someday it’ll change, but at the moment, I’ll probably stick to Emby but keep an eye out on updates :)
That probably won’t solve your issues, but I can tell you a little about my setup:
I use Navidrome for local Music streaming, it supports the Subsonic API so you will find a compatible client for it on every platform
I have an LG OLED “Smart” TV, but I never connect it to the network, instead I have an HTPC running Linux and Kodi that I use to access Jellyfin (that would solve your performance issue with the Jellyfin app on your “Smart” TV)
I really hope that your issues get solved soon, I wish you good guck
If you can remove the app from the TV, that may work. It’s probably polling for updates or trying to cache a picture or something for the login screen.
Just like every other app on your TV, Netflix probably has a running service that is collecting all of your viewing habits and piping it to Nexflix whether or not you have an account. (Smart TVs come with extensive terms and conditions that you probably agreed to.)
Smart TVs are cheaper these days mostly because the hardware costs are subsidized by having pre-installed apps like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. And yeah, they all want your data and they all want to participate in the advertising racket.
True. Would really help to get any form of storage medium of that into a real OS. But its probably built in, so removing might not work. This is the case for windows even
Is it a samsung? And is there an netflix app on the tv? Just having the app on the tv even without login inor account will, at least on one of my tvs, make those requests.
Delete the app from the tv should stop those requests.
Unlike most privacy concerned people. I don’t believe that privacy is very useful without anonymity. metadata is at the heart of surveillance and tracking. In this regard I was a little optimistic when tor came out and hoped that many technologies will be build around that. that didn’t happen because you can’t build a business and make a profit by providing anonymity. now half websites are systematically blocking tor exit nodes. it can’t be used safely with torrents. and even briar the messenger built to use tor has been compromised by its developers so that you can’t be anonymous on briar . All in all I share the same frustration and can’t see a brighter future for privacy and anonymity .
Briar shares your hardware’s Bluetooth MAC address with your contacts even if you haven’t added that contact or connected with that contact using Bluetooth. meaning all your briar contacts even those on groups are storing your MAC address ( a unique device identifier) which makes plausible deniability virtual impossible. I remember reading the devs themselves acknowledge that briar isn’t a anonymous chat app (somewhere in their git repo or the wiki or the blog, can’t remember where exactly), so beware of this aspect.
I never needed hardcore anonymity but I was always sceptical why people think Briar is anonymous when it uses Bluetooth. Now that I know that the MAC is shared even without using Bluetooth, I’m even more confused. Thanks for the info.
This is a myth that’s been addressed by the project. For starters, there are no disclosures about the amount of nodes owned by the Government/NSA/CIA/etc. You’re probably thinking how the project, in 2012, received 80% of its funding from the US Gov source.
You may make the argument of “follow the money”, or you could also make the argument that this type of tech this widely distributed benefits the government too (field agents for some agencies allegedly use Tor, as do foreign defectors) and compromising the network would lead to a potential vector to compromise their interests.
It’s also worth noting that Tor uses 3 hops (entry, relay, and exit nodes) and you can check the location/IP of your current route at any time to ensure geographic diversity. An actor would have to own all 3 to know what you were visiting and trace the traffic back to you.
Second, it’s not about winning; it’s about being the biggest pain in the ass possible for people making money off our privacy.
This. I don’t think I’m “fighting a war,” but I pay for my own email server, self host a number of services, and am waiting on my pixel 8 now to run Graphene OS on. I can’t be “off the grid” but I don’t have to fuel everyone’s data hoarding machines.
It puts Google Play/Services inside a sandbox so it doesn’t get any priorities and can have permissions revoked like any other app (internet access/storage scopes/etc)
If I may, might privacy be both a personal, individual endeavor and a collective endeavor?
On the personal level, can’t we foil the corporate intrusion by choosing apps in the Fediverse?
And on the collective level, can’t promotion of the Fediverse help?
I’m aware that city and county records often contain my street address and that doesn’t bother me. I’ve got to pay taxes and vote.
But I look at it this way: that’s my front facing public identity. Basically the one I use at work that gets a paycheck. Not private. And yes, that’s a pity and that war is lost, but I lose nothing because of that.
But then there’s my identity that shares the goals of global groups that chafe against injustice and oppression. All that work separated from my public identity by multiple barriers. Personably not perfect privacy — watch The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola for a discussion of perfect privacy.
Is this kind of approach practical and one that means we haven’t lost?
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