restoreprivacy.com

[Bootstrap]

This site reviews web browsers, VPN servers, ad blockers, secure email, secure messaging apps, search engines, and password managers, evaluating their security.

https://restoreprivacy.com/

Here is their recommended privacy setup:

Recommended Privacy Setup
1. Private and secure browser: Modified Firefox or Iridium
2. VPN: NordVPN with [68% Off Coupon] or Surfshark with [81% Off Coupon]
3. Ad blocker: uBlock Origin or AdGuard
4. Secure email: Tutanota or ProtonMail
5. Secure Messenger: Signal
6. Private search engine: MetaGer or Swisscows
7. Password manager: NordPass or Bitwarden

I use Signal for secure communication. I am just starting to look at some of these others. I generally avoid things that give access to the dark web or that are associated with political movements or promote them.

[Josh]

I would recommend Brave; it has built in access to Tor, and the iPhone version of Brave has a built in VPN (for a fee).

However, I don’t see a reason the average person needs a VPN.

I agree with #3-#7.

[Josh]

I use Signal for secure communication. I am just starting to look at some of these others. I generally avoid things that give access to the dark web or that are associated with political movements or promote them.

Well, I’m comfortable with whatever the EFF recommends / encourages, despite them being affiliated with left wing politics. I think it’s important to depoliticise this.

Any solution that respects privacy will enable access to the “dark web” where freedom of speech actually exists, which includes people speaking about political movements you or I disagree with. Solution: simply don’t go to this forums.

[temporal1]

Josh:
However, I don’t see a reason the average person needs a VPN.

thanks. now i feel ok to reject the offer. that was presented as tho i really needed VPN. it’s presented in an attractive, convincing, professional manner.

Well, I’m comfortable with whatever the EFF recommends / encourages, despite them being affiliated with left wing politics. I think it’s important to depoliticise this.

Any solution that respects privacy will enable access to the “dark web” where freedom of speech actually exists, which includes people speaking about political movements you or I disagree with.

Solution: simply don’t go to this forums.

thanks again.

Another helpful tech thread:
Brave/Dissenter
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3535

[Bootstrap]

Any solution that respects privacy will enable access to the “dark web” where freedom of speech actually exists, which includes people speaking about political movements you or I disagree with. Solution: simply don’t go to this forums.

I don't think that's true. For instance, here are two examples of search engines that respect privacy but do not grant access to the Dark Web:

https://swisscows.com/
https://startpage.com/

I can't think of any particular reason that I would need to access the dark web. I can't imagine why anyone who wants a blocker on their browser to block access to pornography needs to have access to the dark web. Except when I want to research what extremists of various ideologies say among themselves. Or if I had a job hunting down people involved in child pornography or things like that.

[Josh]

Any solution that respects privacy will enable access to the “dark web” where freedom of speech actually exists, which includes people speaking about political movements you or I disagree with. Solution: simply don’t go to this forums.

I don't think that's true. For instance, here are two examples of search engines that respect privacy but do not grant access to the Dark Web:

https://swisscows.com/
https://startpage.com/

I can't think of any particular reason that I would need to access the dark web. I can't imagine why anyone who wants a blocker on their browser to block access to pornography needs to have access to the dark web. Except when I want to research what extremists of various ideologies say among themselves. Or if I had a job hunting down people involved in child pornography or things like that.

My point is that a truly private solution will be private, which means censorship will be absent. One feature of the dark web is you won’t accidentally stumble across it unless you are actively looking for it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dark web site myself, unless you count Freenet 15 years ago.

Distributed anonymous systems like Bitcoin are similar; to be truly private and maintain integrity, there’s no way to legislate what kind of transactions are “allowed”. This kind of shift is inevitable, which poses major problems for societal rule of law and transparency that are built on an assumption of surveillance.

[temporal1]

Josh:
.. This kind of shift is inevitable, which poses major problems for societal rule of law and transparency that are built on an assumption of surveillance.

[Bootstrap]

My point is that a truly private solution will be private, which means censorship will be absent. One feature of the dark web is you won’t accidentally stumble across it unless you are actively looking for it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dark web site myself, unless you count Freenet 15 years ago.

Distributed anonymous systems like Bitcoin are similar; to be truly private and maintain integrity, there’s no way to legislate what kind of transactions are “allowed”. This kind of shift is inevitable, which poses major problems for societal rule of law and transparency that are built on an assumption of surveillance.

I disagree. I think there is a difference between:

1. Systems that do not track me, and
2. Systems that do not help me distinguish reliable sources from dangerous ones and do not filter out morally objectionable results

In a sea of misinformation and disinformation, what results do you want to see first when you do a web search on, say, "Jewish space lasers"? For many people, that will define their reality. If I search for "spanking", do I see discussions on appropriate ways to discipline children, or are those results mixed with things I don't want my teenager to see and don't want to see myself? The answer affects where my mind spends its time. And my mind does not need to spend its time on the dark web.

I am going to spend some time looking at search engines. I like the fact that swisscows.com wants to be family friendly.

[Soloist]

In a sea of misinformation and disinformation, what results do you want to see first when you do a web search on, say, "Jewish space lasers"?

Are you suggesting that you don't believe that space lasers can convert?

I've been to the dark web.... as websites get delisted they effectively vanish without a direct link. I've seen it a few times.

[JohnHurt]

Have a public identity and a private identity.

VPN, Tor, and Proton Mail is great, but if you really are the "Dread Pirate Roberts", you will get caught.

Here is an article about what Snowden said the NSA used to spy on Americans - over 10 years ago:

The real domestic surveillance tool was revealed in the summer of 2013 by Edward Snowden. NSA developed a massive array of domestic surveillance tools and it was used on Americans well before 2009. One of the most alarming is called XKEYSCORE. Snowden describes it at length in his autobiography:

“The program that enabled this access was called XKEYSCORE, which is perhaps best understood as a search engine that lets an analyst search through all the records of your life. Imagine a kind of Google that instead of showing pages from the public Internet returns results from your private email, your private chats, your private files, everything. Though I’d read enough about the program to understand how it worked, I hadn’t yet used it, and I realized I ought to know more about it. By pursuing XKEYSCORE, I was looking for a personal confirmation of the depths of the NSA’s surveillance intrusions—the kind of confirmation you don’t get from documents but only from direct experience.”

“The NSA described XKEYSCORE, in the documents I’d later pass on to journalists, as its “widest-ranging” tool, used to search “nearly everything a user does on the Internet.” The technical specs I studied went into more detail as to how exactly this was accomplished—by “packetizing” and “sessionizing,” or cutting up the data of a user’s online sessions into manageable packets for analysis—but nothing could prepare me for seeing it in action.

It was, simply put, the closest thing to science fiction I’ve ever seen in science fact: an interface that allows you to type in pretty much anyone’s address, telephone number, or IP address, and then basically go through the recent history of their online activity. In some cases you could even play back recordings of their online sessions, so that the screen you’d be looking at was their screen, whatever was on their desktop. You could read their emails, their browser history, their search history, their social media postings, everything. You could set up notifications that would pop up when some person or some device you were interested in became active on the Internet for the day. And you could look through the packets of Internet data to see a person’s search queries appear letter by letter, since so many sites transmitted each character as it was typed. It was like watching an autocomplete, as letters and words flashed across the screen. ”

Excerpt From: Edward Snowden. “Permanent Record.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/permane ... 1475055562

Goodbye 4th Amendment (secure in their papers and effects, etc.)

I don't think it matters what browser, VPN, or email you use. Using the Dark Web is a red flag - don't do it. Tor has had so many "updates" - probably to provide a good back door. The FBI puts the child porn on the dark web to find people to prosecute. No one needs to go to the dark web. It is a setup for most of us.

The only secure transmission is face to face, away from electronic eavesdropping devices.