Let’s have a positive thread to break up the monotony of the privacy world. Feel free to share along something positive that’s happened to you recently that’s improved your privacy & security!
I’ll start: I have been testing out a NAS that Synology sent me to review, and it has absolutely transformed my entire workflow! Finally have all my documents and projects conveniently in a single place with little to no maintenance required. No more external hard drives with Veracrypt!
Not so much privacy as much security, but I recently started playing around with Tailscale which helped me completely eliminate the need for port forwarding on my home network.
Tailscale is a mesh VPN using Wireguard. Which essentially allows you to create a private network connecting devices over the internet. You simply configure the Tailscale client on each machine you want to include in the network.
Once the machine joins your Tailnet it receives a private IP that can be used to be accessed by any other machine inside it. Tailscale also provides an ACL feature which can be used for controlling which machine is allowed to access what.
Tailscale also has a feature that allows you to configure a machine on your network acting as an internet exit node for other devices that are configured to use it. Which allows me to route all my internet traffic from my phone through my home internet connection no matter where I am.
Not directly privacy and security related, but I’ve recently gotten around to pretty much eliminating all unnecessary uses of my phone. Before, I used to check email, watch YouTube, and do other “computer” tasks on my phone. This took up a lot of my mental space, so I’ve worked to minimize my phone usage.
Now, I mostly just use my phone with Signal (without notifications), take photos, and listen to music. Being able to disconnect from the digital world simply by stepping away from my computer has been freeing.
Hey! Well, I’ve managed to transfer all the people I talk to, on signal, and I’m really happy about it. Also, I don’t have meta apps installed on my phone and I only access instagram through DuckDuckGo. That has also helped me reduce the time and energy I used to spend online. Now, my screen time is reduced to ~2,5 hours a day and I’m very proud of it.
Plus, I bought a book called “My brain has too many tabs open" by Tania Goodin and I love it so far.
Last but not least, I turn my device off at night, I follow the no phone for 1 hour before & after bed rule and I feel very healthy. keep on improving the quality of your life, tech bros. 
Mine is a small privacy win as a result of a little experimentation. I harden my work install of Firefox as far as I do for my personal computer. Randomly I decided to go a little further by having Firefox automatically delete browser history when closed. I know that my employer probably has separate logs of everywhere I’ve visited, though maybe not. Regardless, I have all of my regular websites bookmarked so I don’t need to have a record of where I’ve been.
Once I turned it on, my browser felt so clean and almost foreign. It feels like I’m using a cold tool rather than an app that’s very personal to me. But to be honest, I’m kind of into that for my work browser. I know that it’s literally being used for just getting the sites I need and that’s it. Besides the bookmarks I have and some exceptions for cookies, there’s nothing else in the browser about me. Wouldn’t go that far on my personal computer, though. 
I’m am super aware of the security debate between Firefox and Chromium browsers. From what I see Firefox is reasonably secure for most threat models and it works for me. Just because Firefox is not the most secure doesn’t mean that it’s insecure.
I feel like I’m fairly as private as I can be using linux and mullvad and all that jazz.
But hopefully I’ll sort out my issues with youtube and finally make a channel. I have windows on my PC and linux on an external SSD one is a public OS and one is a private OS you can probably guess which, considering all the information I’ve heard it seems like my only option would be to use my public OS. But I have all my important files on linux and idk if using the same google account for both compartments would qualify as a breach hurting my privacy.
Once all this gets settled however maybe I can help other people become private, having my voice heard and understood is much more satisfying than any incremental gains I’ll be making in the years to come. What’s also extremely satisfying is converting a big tech apologist who uses google chrome, windows 11, and discord. To a chad privacy conscious user who uses Linux, TOR, and Matrix. People default to a privacy invasive way of surfing the internet so anything could be a gigantic improvement for them. I still might consider it a win if this so called “apologist” user is just aware of the data being shared they don’t even need to change the applications they use as long as they can justify the cost of their privacy being breached not everyone needs Snowden Threat Models.
Realized I can use a Cryptomator vault locally on an iPhone. Moved all the pictures of important documents (passport, vaccine card, etc) into a local vault as an extra layer of protection in the event my phone were to be stolen in an unlocked state.
Last weekend a friend needed some help. Her primary phone was turned off and locked by the carrier, caused by family issues in a family plan. She had an old phone out of contract maybe, but absolutely carrier locked. I had a unused mint SIM that I offered her to use in her old phone, it would not load up.
I decided to let her borrow an old Pixel 3XL running LineageOS 17, which has a bad USB port. She will have to charge it wirelessly. We popped in the SIM and changed a few settings to get set up.
Hopefully this small $60 contribution of cell service will allow her to get her life back together.
The time invested by myself working on privacy and security is worth more than a junk phone and $60. The ability to help others through advocacy, support, and anyway you can through gained knowledge is an accomplishment.
Privacy and security is the topic of discussion that supports resiliency, independence, and freedom.
I thought of this as well, but it would be pretty insane for this to happen to me, and many others; let me explain. My phone automatically locks itself after 1 minute, it’s an iPhone, and it has a privacy screen protector so it looks like it’s off from an angle. Lets say for some reason in a diner I forget my phone on the table and walk away from it, lets also say that I turned it on, unlocked it then walked away immediately. This is all highly unlikely mind you even if all this occurred the attacker would have a minute to take my phone. They would have to 1 notice that it’s off, and two make a move within a minute or less then proceed to tap the phone every few seconds to make sure it doesn’t turn off; like what they did with Ross Ulbricht, what your protecting yourself from is very similar to a sting operation. I never leave my phone unlocked anywhere so, maybe a biker comes by and snatches my phone out of my hand and takes it that way. Once again highly, highly unlikely; I might even have the chance to hit the power button and at that point they are SOL. I’m learning from other people on this forum that you have to pick your battles, and this one, at least for me, is almost never going to actually happen so I don’t worry about it and I think you shouldn’t either.
It is always appropriate to adjust your practices to meet your threat model. We all have to make choices and trade offs between security and usability. I travel frequently for work so am often in areas I am unfamiliar with and likely to be higher threat areas for thieves. Thus the extra layer of protection adds to my peace of mind.
But my use case is for me. For you this is an unnecessary and annoying precaution. Totally fine for you to use your device in the way best for you.
I have moved to using My family and friend to a new MySudo phone number VOIP to either Signal or Apple blue bubble Message’s. on a Personal Profile/phone number. From a “old Mobile Phone Number”
I have moved Coworkers/boss/Supervise to either SMS MySudo or MySudo E2EE system. On a Work profile. From a “old Mobile phone Number”
I am working on moving my “financial institutions” on to a Finacial profile/Phone number.
Regarding InternetGhost and his Firefox post: True, I do like Firefox in many respects. And there are hardened versions available. I’ve tests Mull for the last few weeks. Works nicely.
One of my recent privacy gains (and I hope it really is) was inspire by you video on how to combine VPN with NextDNS. I like NextDNS and found two appealing ways to use NextDNS.
That’s it. I personally liked these insights I gained playing around with options after I saw the Techlore video. Thanks…