Hi everyone,
I’ve been following discussions here for a while, and its great to see how many topics are covered. I’m curious about the specific tools you rely on most in your daily digital life for privacy and security.
For example :
Do you use any specific browser extensions (uBlock, trackers blockers, etc.)?
What do you prefer for private messaging or email?
Anything you used to use but stopped because it didn’t meet your privacy expectations?
I’m interested in practical recommendations based on real experience, and what made you settle on those tools.
Thanks! Looking forward to your thoughts.
Ideally you should only be using uBlock, but I need more than that: Dark Reader Bypass Paywalls Clean Snowflake Bitwarden Password Manager
I main drive Brave for personal stuff and Chrome is strictly for work.
Email is not really private. I use Signal for privacy.
I recently stopped self-hosting everything except for Home Assistant and stopped using UnifiedPush. It’s a bit of a tinfoil hat move as I didn’t like the reduction of my network-level anonymity as a self-hosted and other super niche servers could make me stand out as I’d either be a unique user, or a part of a tiny group of worldwide users, to make requests to such URLs/IPs.
I use a number of extensions, uBlock (for ad-blocking), Proton Pass (for passkeys), floccus (for bookmarks), LanguageTool (for spell check). On my laptop, I use ProtonVPN. I still use WhatsApp because all of my contacts are on there. I use Proton and Tuta equally for e-mails.
I stopped using cloud password managers. I prefer KeePass + Syncthing, seems like the most secure option. I tried self-hosting Bitwarden, but it was a headache to resolve when the instance stopped working for me.
I stopped using Librewolf because once you use Arkenfox, Librewolf seems redundant, but for everyone else, Librewolf is the best version of Firefox (though I prefer Zen browser personally). I also stopped using Proton Calendar once I started self-hosting Nextcloud and I realized I don’t need to use Proton for everything, though I could easily switch back since I’m only hosting Nextcloud for myself.
What might be practical for me might not be practical for you. If you’re like me and you need multiple browser extensions, I would set-up a Firefox profile for most frequently visited websites, and use Mullvad (or even Tor) for anti-fingerprinting. But I’ve seen some people who prefer to just use one browser (with or without multiple profiles) rather than multiple browsers.
It’s also not practical for me to switch to Signal since I will be lonely on there, but maybe one day I will. And switching e-mail providers has not made any difference for me since I only use e-mails for registering new accounts, except I get a mailbox with no ads. For others, they might have many accounts or e-mail contacts that would make it harder for them to switch away from their current provider.
I have always used KeePass, but about 6 months ago, I got a NAS and set-up Syncthing to sync my passwords, so unless one is content with storing passwords locally, using a cloud provider will be more convenient for most people. I’ve tried Proton Pass and Bitwarden and they’re both great.
It’s not the most straightforward tool to adopt, but I suppose GrapheneOS is my most ‘everyday tool’. The RethinkDNS app is a close second, helps me identify & block trackers, runs my mobile VPN & firewall. These two are running constantly in my pocket to protect my mobile privacy.
After that, it’s probably a big tie for third between tools that get used daily to weekly: Proton, Tuta, SimpleLogin, Bitwarden, Aegis, Molly.im, Tor, HomeAssistant
No browser extensions, each one contributes to a more unique fingerprint. I adblock with a DNS filter & find other ways to perform whatever task a hypothetical extension would be needed for
I used to use Signal. And it works just fine as an E2EE messenger. But I did notice a number of annoying outbound connections to Google that couldnt be disabled - stuff like crash logs & attempts to use FCM for notifications. Hence, Molly.im
This was my recent experience too. The regular Signal app is absolutely meant for users that rely on Google. The notable breakage for me was that you could no longer send your location over Signal without Google Play services and I assume it also applies for receiving locations too.
Molly fixed everything for me. In addition, its DB encryption feature is a nice extra although it’s not helpful for every day use imo. It can be a useful additional layer of protection if you’re worried about your phone being seized.
Would be curious to know more about this one because I am not sure to understand what is the issue if you do use a VPN hosted at your home. How are you not blending it? I mean, how is it even relevant here?
Everything you while being connected to the VPN is nobody’s business and I am not sure to see how they can see the traffic there. Or is it more of a cloudflared problem overall?
edit: below I’m talking about connecting to a VPN at home from my phone when I’m away from home.
Who’s going to connect to a VPN at my home? Just me? Then what’s the point if I’m trying to crowd blend, but this type of connection is still a 1-of-1 unique connection. Even cloudflare tunnels are better imo as at least they don’t expose my home network’s IP - only cloudflare would know (still not great).
I’m generally against VPN usage and it really doesn’t make sense for me as a resident of Canada. I do realize that it still makes a lot of sense for US or UK residents, as an example. VPNs cost money, slow your connection down, add an extra party to trust and are also a network-level fingerprint as their IP ranges are well known and the vast majority of people don’t use them. Using a VPN is a flag that you’re trying to hide something.
