TheProtagonist

No one is being forced to use Chrome.

I had no idea that this is a global phenomenon.

Although I doubt that Signal would leave the EU (or that this dangerous regulation would even become something that could ever be applied in practice), SimpleX looks very promising as a possible alternative.

However, it would also mean that you have to convince all your contacts to make the move, too - which was already difficult when I told them to install Signal additionally to WhatsApp, which is virtually on almost every device.

AI is the solution to all our problems… /s

I use Piped, too. But recently it became really slow and unreliable for me. I am using it through Yattee with the default API.

“Privacy-focused YouTube channels” - sounds like a contradiction…

This is why I disconnect my machines from the network while in sleep mode (I use only wired connections). For me it’s perfectly sufficient if they update the apps while I use them.

So Google will not let me log in to my account unless I provide them my phone number? But at the same time they require a regular log in (at least once a year or every two years), so your account doesn’t get deleted?

I have an old Gmail account, I don’t use anymore, but it’s tied to my name, so I wouldn’t want someone else to use it at some point. I thinks there’s one email client that regularly connects to that account. I hope that will be sufficient to preserve it, but I would not feel comfortable giving them my phone number, when I have no other links to Google services (this may be different, if you use an Android phone anyway).

That’s no surprise to me. Ads are Google’s core business. Why should they support technologies that potentially limit their profits?

I guess I use the default one (piped.kavin.rocks).

I’m a big fan of Piped / Yattee, but I had a lot of problems recently, because most videos won’t load. Also privacy redirectors that redirect YouTube URLs to Piped don’t work anymore, because the video won’t load. So I had to watch a couple of videos directly on YT recently.

Possible that YT pushed some API changes or such, which makes it difficult for the privacy proxies to work. Don’t know, but IMHO it used to work much better in the past.

That’s what I meant to say, that your scenario is unlikely in my case.

Thanks for pointing me to this setting. There are two profiles, one is my personal VPN, which I use for device-wide ad-blocking (AdGuard Pro), another one is the MDM management profile. The latter one consists of a list of managed Microsoft apps (e.g. Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, etc.) and various (device) certificates. I guess nothing to be concerned about.

I am actually running AdGuard Pro with a custom DNS on that device.

That could be possible, I don’t know. I am not visiting any adult or otherwise inappropriate sites on that phone, but I do a lot of Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon stuff in my free time. But it was this way for the past 10 years and I never had any problems. Sometimes I think about buying i private phone, but it seems kinda stupid to have two of these devices.

That could be possible, I don’t know. I am not visiting any adult or otherwise inappropriate sites on that phone, but I do a lot of Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon stuff in my free time. But it was this way for the past 10 years and I never had any problems. Sometimes I think about buying i private phone, but it seems kinda stupid to have two of these devices.

How is this with mobile devices from your employer. I have a company iPhone and understand that there is a certain “space” on the phone which is controlled by the company, mostly all the Microsoft 365 apps (so, for example it is not possible to copy/paste stuff between MS and non-MS apps).

However, for the rest I would assume that all the other traffic does not go through company servers (probably no traffic at all, as I usually have a local IP), and that they can’t see what I am doing in my other apps. Otherwise they could spy on all my transactions I do in my banking apps for example. But AFAIK iOS apps are pretty much sandboxed anyway.

This might be different on my company PC / Laptop, though.

I sometimes believe that this kind of sudo touch approval is a scam. Quite often when I update some app that comes with an installer (like nextcloud or Edge browser), I am offered to approve the installation / update via touch ID, but it almost never works, but instead I have to type in the admin account and password. So I wonder why they even offer this option, when it has no effect?!

I use duck.com randomized alias emails for some random accounts that require email. Works similar to simplelogin, I guess.

What are you trying to do?