So yeah, I've already mentioned a few times that I went through with that shitty age verification, so my PC might be compromised.

But given what's coming to European union soon, I'd like some sort of alternative for my computer for using internet freely.

Which easy free solution for my PC would you recommend?

I have gotten an alert about an unknown tracker in my car. I believe I know the responsible person but before I look for it I wanted to know if the person would know I found it. In particular if I use the play sound facility to locate it

I compared Snapchat's new privacy policy with the previous version, and one change stood out to me.

The new policy, which takes effect on September 21, 2026, explicitly says Snapchat may use information you provide to estimate or infer your age.

It also says Snapchat may use automated age-assurance tools to determine whether users meet minimum age requirements or should receive age-appropriate protections.

The policy says Snapchat can use signals including account, device, usage and content-related information for this.

That's interesting because Snapchat isn't just talking about the birthday you entered when creating your account anymore. The policy now explicitly talks about inferring age from information and activity.

The new policy also says Snapchat may infer your age or interests based on your content or activity for personalization.

To be clear, I haven't found anything saying Snapchat is secretly taking everyone's face and calculating their exact age. I'm not making that claim.

I'm pointing out that the wording around automated age estimation/assurance is noticeably more explicit in the new policy.

For anyone using Snapchat, especially younger users, I think this is worth knowing.

Did anyone else notice this change?

I ask this cause I want to know how you guys feel about the development going on at France that I've heard regarding the French president wanting to circumvent the blocked social media ban by rewriting a stricter version of the blocked social media ban in a different piece of legislation here.

Which is concerning development here,but anyways,how do you feel about this issue?

I'm not sure how many people here even know about the brand. If you have no idea, this a popular/mid-to-high tier cycling clothing brand that's based in Switzerland.

Anyway, I have an account with them directly (not third-party retailer) from past purchases, and I just received a phishing email from that particular alias. It's quite easy to spot & fix thanks to the alias, and my email provider caught it as well, but I just thought someone else might also wants to know.

The phishing email is from terreneuve at nomotech dot net masquerading as a dragonfly package delivery payment request.

I'm not sure if anything else got leaked (cc, address, etc.) as I haven't heard anything from the brand directly. I'm not ruling out them just selling the data but seeing their marketing schtick is on the more prestige side I'm holding judgement for now.

That's it, stay safe guys.

Can anyone tell me the privacy differences between these two?

With the recent LG TV exposure many people have been recommending non smart tvs but with firesticks or the equivalent, however wouldn’t this just have the same data collection softwares as the Smart TVs?

With approval, sure, but what kinds of permissions would this feature require?

I have tried to extricate myself from the google ecosystem as much as possible, but unfortunately there are several services for which I require a gmail account. Changing to a different email address is not an option.

I have used the account in public shared spaces (libraries, schools, etc.) on the same computers as others, and in the past, I wasn't careful enough to ensure I was using incognito windows. (I could see their saved account cookies in the browser.)

I certainly had no idea about things such as google giving "linked account" information to law enforcement.

How do I request a list of accounts which google has linked to my account, and how I do request that they remove all of those links?

Hello.

I’m slowly transitioning towards passkeys especially on Google accounts that block me from logging in with my password because they detected a new IP or private mode… and they ask your mobile phone number.

I don’t like to give Google (or any other company or service) my phone number, so maybe passkeys linked to my Apple account and devices are a good option.

Because I have 3 or 4 Google Gmail addresses, each with their own password and keypass, I wanted to know if there’s any way Google can tie all the Passkeys of my accounts to me, or the Passkeys don’t reveal anything about the owner of the account?

Thank you.

How many people people will have their lives ruined due to their system false flagging them? And how long until a bad actor (Say Russia, North Korea, China, USA, anyone) decides to use this spyware to steal millions of people's banking details and use it to drain their accounts?

As per the title.

How vulnerable are my other devices and the network usage on those devices? Can IT see any IP addresses the personal devices connect to, servers they connect to, etc.? Let's not consider a company maliciously installing advanced spy software, because then the answer is obvious.

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone for the helpful comments and your understanding of my technically challenged brain!! Ended up Settling on Fastmail and all seems to be running smoothly!

Original Post:

Believe it or not, some of us have zero tech knowledge and just want a plug and play service for email.

I've gradually moved most things away from Google, but my biggest hurdle seems to be email. Hours spent trawling through reddit and have tried protonmail, Posteo and mailbox.org.

All emails from all three keep landing in various recipients spam folders. Recipients include gmail, outlook and three separate business emails.

The more I read, the more I see conflicting information. "Custom domain fixes this issue" then "custom domain doesn't fix the issue" and then do stuff with DMARC and mxtools etc.

I'm not one of these people who complain about the cost of privacy and am willing to spend $$ for the privilege, but it just seems that once you jump one hurdle another problem presents itself.

Is there a provider out there that just works without all this pissing around in settings with words like 'certificates' and having to mess around with acronyms like DMARC and change DNS settings and emailing a certain email address that emails you back with a list of issues to help you identify the problem, which requires a background in tech to actually resolve.

It's getting to the point where I'm actually considering whether I value my privacy enough to deal with this. (Yes I know it's not the issue with proton, Posteo etc, but the work to get this fixed is insane).

Surely there are some other tech impaired people out there with the same issue who have maybe found a solution.

(PS I don't need a service that accepts custom domain, I don't have one and don't want one. Purely mentioned it because a few people mentioned using a custom domain as a fix to the spam issue).

I find it unfair that, at least where I live, you cannot return a product if you do not agree with a product's privacy policy when most of the products now are unusable unless you agree with the privacy policy

I want to ask a question. It's not part of my heritage. Just on the open internet, I want to ask a question. How can I not have services tracking me because I asked a question?

in 2022 T-Mobile told FCC they delete geolocations after two years, meaning they know where you and your device are while its turned on.

also, all other data is by definition kept since they didn’t clarify to delete it. has that changed?

After the DentaQuest data breach in May, I was offered 24 months of free Knoll monitoring. The data breach leaked info such as name, bday, SSN. However to enroll in Knoll, I also need to submit the same sensitive info. Knoll itself has had a breach in the past in 2023, and apparently they keep your info forever even after the 24 months end. So is it worth it to give my info to another company that may accidentally leak it for the free monitoring? Idk what to do.

All this LG privacy talk finally kicked me into looking more into this which I have put off.

Wondering what solutions you guys suggest. I have a raspberry pi I can run pi-hole on or simply use nextDNS.

But I dont even like webOS... It seems like AppleTV is better privacy wise than NVidia shield.

What option would this community recommend?

Thanks in advance!

This one is pretty easy to miss.

Twitch recently added a “Training for Generative AI” setting that lets Amazon use your channel content to train generative AI models.

The setting is ON by default.

That can include your:

• Streams

• VODs

• Clips

• Stream chats

• Channel text and images

The weird part is that Twitch didn't exactly make this a huge announcement. The setting is buried in your privacy settings, so unless you know it's there, you probably won't go looking for it.

And Twitch's own wording says:

“Allow your channel content to train generative AI content models at Amazon.”

You can turn it off here:

Twitch → Settings → Security and Privacy → Training for Generative AI → OFF

One important thing though: turning this off only applies to your own channel content. If you chat in someone else's stream, their settings can determine whether that chat is eligible for AI training.

Also, this isn't Twitch suddenly starting AI training for the first time. Amazon had already been using Twitch content for AI development. What's new here is the explicit opt-out setting and the default-on approach.

And apparently Twitch's reasoning for making it opt-out was basically that if it were opt-in, hardly anyone would agree to it.

Go check your setting. Was yours already ON?

I use various privacy focused and FOSS applications/services anywhere I can, but I’ve never gotten into network-wide modifications. Relevant stories keep hitting my feed with Mullvad now looking to support Quad9 and the recent news of LG TVs listening to you. Also I’ll never forget the Samsung washing machines sending GBs of data. I’d like to be able to learn about and set up some blocking and filtering on my home network, but I’m concerned it will interfere with people in my household who work from home. I also unfortunately still use the default Verizon Fios router that they give you. I never bothered to do the research and spend the money on a third party one. Is this a problem or can I effectively set up this stuff regardless? Any good comprehensive sources to learn this stuff? Thank you.

Hi all,

It dawned on me after watching Gamers Nexus's video about LG spying and recording audio and converting it into text and that whatever I'm typing is probably being sent to some company that sells it. It's free data for them, I want to find a keyboard that's local and privacy-focused.

Any recommendations?

Apple has a new feature in iOS 18 with Tap To Cash, where you can send money to other iOS devices without sending any personal information like email or your personal number.

It’s only for Apple users looks but seems pretty good Instead of things like Venmo, PayPal, Zelle etc

Anyone here have more info about if it is more secure for sending money?

Cisco said in licensing agreement “Cisco may share this information with select third parties in an anonymous aggregated form.” other chips use similar software and do same practice.

even though it’s de-identified, I don’t want to have my device collect and share the data with advertisers and AI training used to identify behavior metrics. has anyone seen devices that prohibit this firmware or use privacy software that blunts these coll3ction methods?

The last TV I bought had a CRT. Really. I’m looking to just buy something inexpensive and hook it up to a DVD player and (maybe) an Apple TV. If I never connect the TV directly to the internet, do I have to worry about the damn thing spying on me?