• 0 Posts
  • 36 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
Cake day: April 4th, 2025
  • machiavellian@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Should I delete my existing bad social medias accounts or just let them die by stagnation?
    1·
    15 days ago

    A reasonable argument and I agree that impersonation is still possible without the scammer taking the excact username but it’ll still be easier to fool your contacts when you don’t have an active account.

    For example consider two worlds - in one you have an instagram account, in the other you don’t. The world in which you have the account, people who only know you through that account and don’t use other platforms where you’re on, are less likely to fall victim to scams because they can always verify that the scammers account isn’t your account. In the other world this isn’t possible and thus it is more likely people who don’t know you directly will believe the scammer.

    Also my point on the cost of the account still stands. I do admit that having an open account which gets scraped is an issue but if you have a “private” account, most of the 3rd parties lose access to it’s content. Although I’m sure three letter agencies and meta have a custom API which can query all accounts, public or private, the point you’re trying to make is moot, as if we’re talking about opsec, if you already have an (insta) account, all it’s data is logged somewhere and it likely won’t be deleted in the near future.

  • machiavellian@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Swiss messaging service Threema is being acquired by German investment company Comitis Capital
    4·
    15 days ago

    Unlike most other messengers, Delta Chat apps do not store any metadata about contacts or groups on servers, also not in encrypted form. Instead, all group metadata is end-to-end encrypted and stored on end-user devices, only. Servers can therefore only see:

    • the sender and receiver addresses and
    • the message size.

    By default, the addresses are randomly generated. All other message, contact and group metadata resides in the end-to-end encrypted part of messages.

    https://delta.chat/en/help#message-metadata

    > Doesn’t store any metadata on servers

    > Servers still see the sender and reciever and the message size

    Explain how this is not contradictory.

    Furthermore my original argument on protocol blocking still stands (if almost all communication platforms rely on a widely used protocol, the blocking of which is infeasble, then how is this a feature noone else besides deltachat has).

    And as the FAQ brilliantly illustrates, you don’t have to block the mail protocol to inhibit deltachat users from communicating. All you have to do, is just shut down the relays which are crucial to masking your metadata.

    Speaking of relays, all they do is transfer the trust. Without using relays you have to trust that normal mail servers wont’t log your activity (they do). With relays you have to trust that the relay operators won’t log your activity.

  • machiavellian@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Swiss messaging service Threema is being acquired by German investment company Comitis Capital
    6·
    15 days ago

    Deltachat can’t be considered as private as Signal, SimpleX, Briar, Threema or Cwtch due to the fact that it’s based on the mail protocol. The mail protocol will always leak metadata (who, to whom, where and when) because it could’t function otherwise. And because we live in a world of surveillence, metadata can be oftentimes more valuable than the message itself.

    Also saying that deltachat is unblockable because it is based on the mail protocol would be the same as saying that every app utilizing VOIP is unblockable because it uses the TCP/IP stack and blocking it would render the internet unusuable.

  • machiavellian@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Antiviruses?
    241·
    4 months ago

    DISCLAIMER
    I am not a computer security expert, merely a hobbyist having read some blogs from people who sounded smart. It is more than probable that I am mistaken in one or more parts of this post.

    Linux is not more secure than Windows. By default, it’s actually considerably more vulnerable than Windows. Source

    In my opinion an antivirus doesn’t really solve your problem. What you actually want is sandboxing, which means restricting user and program privileges. I recommend getting familiar with SELinux (or alternatively AppArmor, although it isn’t nearly as effective) and bubblewrap (or alernatively Firejail, which requires root privileges to run and is thus a bigger threat vector than bubblewrap).

    Aside from that just disable any service you aren’t using (like ssh), use a deny-all-allow-some firewall, and verify what you download. If the link says “100% REAL 1 MILLION FREE ROBUX DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE NOW”, then maybe don’t click there.

    Because even an antivirus won’t help you if you download malware, which isn’t compiled by skids who lifted the code from some darknet hacker forum. Antivirus isn’t some magical tool which makes your computer inherently more secure. Meaning you can’t offload your responsibilty to a program running with kernel level privileges. Your computer, your responsibilty.

    P.S: If you want a more secure computer, I’d recommend a minimal and/or rolling release distro (openSUSE, Arch, Void, Debian) or FreeBSD/OpenBSD (BSD variants mitigate many of Linux’s inherent flaws).