This seems like a win for “civil society”. Putting a dent in NSO’s secrecy so software makers can patch against it would be a win as long as Whatsapp (Meta) publish their findings publicly and not keep it for themselves to be the next biggest threat to “civil society”. As if they haven’t done enough civil damage and spying themselves already.

This article is disingenuous at best and either fueled by ignorance or malice. Another comment suggested it wasn’t officially sponsored, but it still could’ve been bought. Having said, I have to agree with some of the sentiment. I’ve seen advertising on public TV from the likes of NordVPN that is downright fraudulent. Their claims are deceptive and unfounded. Then there’s the recent acquisition of Express and PIA by an old school scammer/spammer. Additionally, many free VPNs are actually surveillance malware and SHOULD be avoided. Any encryption offered publicly by large corporate data-stealing privacy-abusing parasites should be avoided in any form.

For anyone reading this that is hesitant to using VPN because of the article, be encouraged that VPNs are extremely effective at securing your data during transit. They are NOT an outright privacy tool, but can be used as part of your privacy plan. VPNs do NOT make you anonymous! A truthful VPN service provider will say this openly. Like IVPN (Bottom of front page) and Mullvad , both of which attempt to educate customers .

If you’re someone who finds it hard to trust any company whatsoever, then you can host VPN yourself. Admittedly a learning curve to hurdle, but regardless of which method you choose, if your provider is genuine then I see it as a necessity in the effort to keep loved ones safer.

So yeah, I’ve heard it was a good movie too. Like, totally an Oscar worthy performance for sure! ;)

We`re never going to escape it, but I hope it’s not as prevalent as it is on Facebook and twitter etc. Last time I heard anything about the topic regarding those platforms it was some surprisingly unimaginable number of corporate accounts. Like 75%. What I mean by that is people being hired by corporations to join social media platforms and pretend to be legit users interacting with others while pushing agendas, attending to damage control or recommending product.

I totally agree with the title’s sentiment. I don’t mind some free open source rough edges. Lemmy functions great. There’s also a good deal of what looks like genuine interaction. However, I would like to point out that I think there’s a LOT of corporate shills pushing agendas. Some notable ones might be pharmaceutical propaganda and corporate banking with cashless solutions.

Google’s modus operandi - business as usual. Deploying their dirty tricks on their mass of servers to edge out and destroy competition. When caught out they apologize all surprised Pikachu style, then do it again differently. This is likely in response to news about Firefox mobile finally allowing extensions to work. People are probably trying it out, but their Youtube experience will be crap, so they’ll go back to chrome.

Sounds great and really secure, because Microsoft has such a good record of security, privacy and keeping private keys private. I’m being facetious of course. It is my hope that governments quit looking for convenience by outsourcing to third party private corporations.

Not saying good, bad, right or wrong - We need to understand what this all means. Here’s a good start. https://brettscott.substack.com/p/casino-chip-cashless-society

I can see it. I t looks like some kind of corporate advertising shill site pushing an agenda.

Lol, well there’s no way I can “prove” it not having taken screenshots and archived them. It’s been well over five years since the last time. I’ll save you the humble boast, but no user error here regarding verifying ISOs.

I’ve tested over 40 Linux distributions over a long span of time, but I’ve never tried Mint. The reason being that all three times I’ve read something nice that inspired me to try it again the download hashes don’t match, and we find out their servers were compromised. How’s that going?

lmao. Nice!

Block those communities and subjects you don’t want in your feed.

Yep.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/

Agreed! What would be amazing though, is a manufacturer who could make a modern safe bare-bones vehicle that didn’t have the tech installed at all. If you want tech you could BYO.

It can’t be illegal because you agree to allow them when you purchase the new vehicle. It’s all there in the T&C and PP, which no one ever reads. Don’t like it? Don’t buy new cars. I won’t.