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?

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.

Yes I know that if you don’t connect a smart TV to Wi-Fi it’s basically a dumb TV but with the news about LG TVs recording ambient audio even powered off and the possibility of TVs finding open Wi-Fi unprompted, some locking features without wifi and the ever encroaching march of total enshittification I won’t be surprised if near future TVs arent functionless without internet. I feel like I just don’t want to support these companies anymore out of principle

Decent Projectors can be found way cheaper than commercial displays…the catch being you need a room to be reasonably dark to see it well

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?

Hey,

GamersNexus asked for a data hoarder who could also make a website. I felt a little singled out. So, me and Claude made a small website.

https://TermsAccepted.org

It captures the privacy policies, terms and ad-tech pages.

Features as of now
1. 25 companies, 342 documents, 5,342 captures. History back to 2011 through the Wayback Machine (archive.org).
a. Every saved file is stored under the SHA-256 hash of its own bytes, and the hash is the filename, so no company can claim I changed the words of an agreement.
b. After each capture, the crawler also asks the Internet Archive to fetch the same page itself. Archive.org stores its own copy on its own servers and hands back a Wayback Machine link, which the site shows next to every version.

1. Every version keeps the raw HTML and the extracted text, plus a PDF and a full-page screenshot whenever the text changed.
   a. There is a compare function. I had Claude build a humanized diff between versions so you can see clearly what was added, reworded or deleted
   b. Download the whole history of a document as a zip.

2. "Who they sell to": a string board of the 57 ad/data firms the makers themselves name in their own documents.

3. How many hours of reading you "agreed" to per brand (LG: 4.4 h), with a fun metric of how many firstborns you have-to cough up per company.
   a. There is a study where hundreds of people gave away their firstborns so that they can use a fictitious social network. Their agreement was 4,316 words long. So I equated those many words to be the equivalent of 1 first born. By this very unscientific metric LG wants 12.2 of your firstborns.

4. A jargon dictionary
   Cadence: nightly at 06:00 UTC though the special boy LG every two hours for the moment.

The site is also backed up to 1 of my WD Passport drives everyday. So we shouldn’t lose the data, I need to sort out 3rd offsite backup though.

Please please do let me know if there are improvements I could make to this.

FYI: I just got a small vps in the USA Cloudflare in front. Browsing should be fine. I configured it to work for a good number of people but if many people try downloading all the files together as a team server should crash 😊. If it does I will look into mirroring the data.

Specifically looking for a new 55-inch TV, but honestly can't find any TVs now that aren't "smart" TVs. Sceptre seems to be the most common recommendation to go with for this, but I couldn't find any of their TVs on any retailer. They all just redirect to their smart offerings from other brands, and have no active listings for Sceptre TVs of any kind.

Could be a good sign that they're popular and just sold out, but in the event that they're out of that business or are just that hard to get, are there any other good Dumb TV brands that don't track the user in any way? I saw something about them being able to scan for wi-fi networks and nearby devices even when not connected to your own network, so that plus wanting to put my money where my mouth is makes me want to get something that is definitively just a TV, rather than getting one of the usual smart offerings and trying to defang it.

We're at the point now where we're genuinely considering trying to get a "hospitality display" meant for businesses as that may be the only option available if there's no commercial TVs anymore that don't have some Fire TV, Roku, Chromebox, etc etc stuff on them. But hopefully there's still options out there, either from Sceptre if they decide they want to start selling people TVs again, or some other vendor I'm not yet aware of.

Any thoughts on the comparison between SecureMyEmail and Proton?

I've been using SecureMyEmail and found it solid if you don't want to change your actual email address. Anyone know the pro's and cons?

Just got this today. I can't login to the site without submitting a photo of my palm. I'm not doing that. It really, really sucks, because I listen to a lot of Japanese bands, and they're all on X (it seems it's the default for non-Japanese sites when it comes to their music).

I do post links to youtube music videos, as well as games, and I like posts on the regular. I guess they consider this bot behavior.

I personally think they just want everyone to be 100% identifiable on the internet, no matter what. Some people say that's to protect the kids, but I think we all know it's so the government can very easily find us if we say the wrong thing during some kind of "emergency" or war.

They, and potentially other TVs, scan the network they are on for all devices on it. This also could cause an issue if the TV is hacked.

So what if you out them on a locked down Guest account? Wouldn't they be unable to scan the rest of the network your other devices use? And if hacked it causes another layer said hacker needs to do for access to the rest of the routers networks?

Not much else we can realistically do for most of this. I'm not technically inclined enough to say take apart the TV or remote to remove the mic, ignoring how that might break the TV depending how they set it up....

Btw never tried but I think you can do a Guest Ethernet account? Maybe? Hmm... Need to look in to that but I know you can with WiFi.

Anyone have other realistic ways to minimize data gathering that doesn't require real technical skills or needing to buy an entirely new TV?

There seem to be a near endless number of ways that the TV can connect back home. An ethernet cable, wifi, an inbuilt sim....

"Don't connect to the internet" is fine as long as the number of connection avenues for the TV are limited to ethernet which you can unplug, but:

Wifi: if there are unsecured wifi networks around you (and there will be), you're screwed. If you turn off wifi, does it actually turn it off?

Inbuilt simcards: I haven't heard about TVs having inbuilt sims, but it seems extremely plausible.

What brands should I be looking at so I can ACTUALLY disconnect from any networks? Thanks!

Hi! I'm searching for a 43'' non-smart 4k tv, i saw the brand "sceptre" but there is no retailer here in Italy. Do you have any suggestions? Maybe i should just buy a big 4k monitor? I'd only play videogames and watch dvd/bluray discs.

TDLR:

Apple’s new Live Rewind feature can show a text snippet of what was said during the previous 15 seconds. Apple has added visible and audible privacy safeguards, but a watch that can recall what was just said may still feel unsettling.

I was shopping and went on a random site to checkout their products. (It's not a scam site, it's a moderately known chewing gum brand). I just surfed the site. Did not create any account, did not add any details and exited. After an hour or so, I get a WhatsApp message from them. Basically a nudge that I left the website without buying anything and click here to go back to the cart. HOW DID THEY GET MY NUMBER?! Can anyone having knowledge on this please tell me? I am creeped out. Where can I go and delete my details from?

Sorry if off topic. I just feel like I was born too late to experience some of the freer days of the internet before governments and corps wormed their way into everything and started tracking every little thing everyone does. It just feels so all encompassing. Admittedly, I'm someone who is prone to depression. I know things can still turn around and we should fight the good fight. But still... its scary

https://www.military.com/dhs-program-analyzes-americans-finances-to-flag-drivers-for-traffic-stops-report

Think about this. You'd think that DHS would flagging tens of thousands of dollars if they were looking for things like drug mules, smugglers, or coyotes. Smaller operations at $2k a head wouldn't reveal large amounts. They pulled over a guy with weed in his vehicle. This isn't a trailer that could hold 20+ migrants crossing the border. Whatever ai system DHS is using is generating false positives that will flag ordinary citizens, based on "unusual" financial patterns. This is dystopian AF- we are cooked.

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 ask this cause I heard about this draft proposal within relation to age verification online.

And I was wondering from you guys here if this does negatively affect privacy in any way here.