Despite trying my best to persuade my friends that we should all stop giving away our information to big tech companies, I’ve mostly failed to get them to take meaningful steps to protect their privacy. I believe that when I have IRL conversations with them, these conversations being recorded by various apps on their phones that are always listening.
Although I don’t want to stop being their friend, I’m interested in developing IRL friendships with people who are already privacy conscious. For IRL friendships, I need to find people who live near my area. The problem is that most privacy conscious people justifiably don’t want to reveal even the general area where they live online. For example, I can’t tell if there are any other PG members who live near me.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might meet other privacy conscious people in my area? I tried Mastadon, but the only local server had only about 75 members, maybe 4 of whom were active, and covered a geographical area that’s bigger than many countries.
The idealized terminology you are looking for is called a cryptoparty, but those are not common, so other adjacent movements are LUGs and DWeb nodes:
If you want to bring the party to the people instead, here is a step-by-step guide from the Tor Project:
I have a strong security background, so I can intermingle in various cybersecurity communities such as OWASP and my local DEF CON chapter, but still remain distant due to my own discipline and practices. Privacy is not a subject I promote to others due to different threat models, use cases, and/or workflows, even on Internet forums. I usually bridge the two concepts by referring to topics such as database dumps/leaks, data exfiltration, misappropriated third-party trust surfaces, and other industry regulatory compliance concerns.
This might indicate that your behavior is off-putting to normies. It’s one thing to get someone to switch to Signal or even start acknowledging privacy problems. People don’t want to leave their comfort zone. If you’re starting or including in conversations stuff like this it could make people very defensive.
Obviously I’m extrapolating and I could be totally wrong and I don’t mean any offense.
It’s just highly unlikely that this is happening or compromising your privacy on iPhones or Android even with any voice assistant.
Friendship is a strong word. Connection sounds a bit more realistic to me. If you’re a specialist in a certain field then a local professional community is an obvious choice. There is a high chance of finding a couple folks who you can relate with.
Personally, I’m really intrigued by the so-called Vtubers scene and their professional community growth over time. A lot of them take privacy seriously - practical utilization of voice changers, llm’s, thorough IRL meeting organization etc. So basic opsec knowledge is definitely there with some notable cases of advanced practices application. A perfect example of finding them gems in unexpected places.
Other than that, you can attend any of your home country based events (defcons, seccons, hackathons, Tor community events, Linux devcons, you name it).
If you’re not trying to influence anyone but share your experience then you’ll easily get yourself a connection or two.
VTubers are still performers at the end of the day, as they provide financial payout information to Twitch or YouTube, so they are still highly susceptible to database leaks.
I’m turning my existing friends into privacy minded ones with Jedi mind tricks . I managed to get three people around me to start using password managers, switch to better browsers, use DNS filtering, and use Proton mail. So far im calling it a victory.
Reading the first post it appears OP is looking for IRL friendships and not just professional/community connections.
Privacy/security/crypto events are good for making professional/community connections, and those may lead to some friendships, but making/maintaining good IRL friendships in a surveillance world while maintaining privacy is a big challenge considering the friction surveillance and countermeasures add.
As someone who sees everyone around me carrying phones but doesn’t carry one myself, I have wondered how likely/realistic this threat is. I assume it has become impossible to have confidential discussions unless one takes “extreme” measures like demand every party to either leave behind or hand over their phones. Hanging around journalists, human rights defenders, activists etc (surveillance tech targets) would elevate the likelihood, and anyone can covertly open a voice recorder app, but I’m unsure how often things get recorded in practice.
Consider non directly privacy related groups. FOSS software groups tend to lean privacy preserving. Unsure the size of your city or town, but check online or even bulletin boards for said groups.
. I managed to get three people around me to start using password managers, switch to better browsers, use DNS filtering, and use Proton mail. So far im calling it a victory.