A dedicated place to share all of our wins! Welcome to our 43rd week of privacy & security wins
Now, this only works if you all want it to work. That means:
Don’t be shy! Even the smallest win is something you can share. The more of you who contribute the better it is for everyone
Be positive. Remember we’re all in different places of our journey. Someone enabling 2FA on their first account can be just as excited as someone who figured out how to install Qubes on their new system. Give each other some love!
Join The Weekly Stream
Each 2025-02-28T22:00:00Z@Henry will be streaming on YouTube & PeerTube to share your wins on the Techlore channels. Don’t miss the stream, it’s a great way to live-engage with others and see your comments be featured
Just migrated to uBlue’s Aurora Linux and makes secureboot with nvidia , containerization , TPM and virtualization really easy. So I see no need to distrohop anymore
Been taking advantage user profiles on Android. Compartmentalization is slowly bringing me to sanity
The win I want to share this week has been my successful simplification of my browsing setup, as I have switched to using mostly Zen Browser now that it has moved from alpha to beta. I have previously been moving between Firefox + Arkenfox, Brave, and Mullvad Browser or using some combination of them, but this never worked too well for me, and I was constantly switching between them.
The key feature that made me switch was the nice integration between workspaces and containers to separate my browsing. I have never really liked switching between different browser profiles or windows, so getting everything done within the same browser window is just great! Other than that, I think Zen has the best UI / UX I have ever had on any browser and some other great features include vertical tabs, split view, and compact mode. I have also noticed that running Zen doesn’t take as many system resources as running two different browsers simultaneously would. One cool thing I spotted from Zen’s homepage was that Tuta is currently donating to Zen, so it’s great to see how different privacy projects can help with others.
While Zen Browser may not be as private as something like Firefox + Arkenfox or Mullvad Browser, I feel like it offers a great balance between privacy and usability. Compared to Mullvad Browser, I really like that I can customize my browser a bit more and use uBlock Origin’s medium mode, which for me is more important than advanced fingerprinting protection.
So managed to ween myself off of various services and decouple stuff, it’s been a long time coming and I’m very happy with the results.
Bought a nice domain and email hosting, switched everything important to it. It’s a normal IMAP mailbox so I’m not locked in with email clients like in the case of other secure clients. I’ll set up email backup via my Synology box after I transfer existing emails over to it. The hosting provider in question is reputable and cheap, and is based from my country, so support in case of issuesis a non issue.
Ditched all proprietary/device tied MFA. For TOTP codes I use a local KeepassXC which I can sync through my devices and safely back up. I love the total control with it, having the peace of mind that a lost/bricked device will not mean losing access to anything.
Degoogled my Android phone to the bare minimum of what is needed to run the apps needed (banking and such). Noticed better battery life and less heat from the device.
Ditched Windows completely from all my devices, switched over to Bazzite (fedora based immutable linux) which works for me without issues and covers all my needs.
Cancelled my Microsoft 365 subscription because of price hikes and constand worsening of the Office package. Switched over my files to the local Synology I own for quite some time.
Detoxified myself from all mainstream social media, deleted all Meta and X accounts, life is better without the doomscroll.
I recommend Ente Photos and Proton Drive as the backup. I understand Filen gives you 10 GB for free and if that’s more than enough, it’s hard to pass up on the free option but Ente is more purpose built for photos and videos and would be better long term. But if you can use Filen instead as a backup option with Ente being the primary app you use for it.
That’s completely fair, but I have 30GB of photos. Filen gives me that with referral codes and a monthly subscription is not viable for me at the moment.
I am curious as to the stability you mention as that sounds like valuable insight.
As for features, if I can find a way to view it in a gallery app, since it appears in my files app, then I should be fine.
Well, with Filen based on my last experience with it:
The photos did not back up automatically even with all the right settings. The view within the app for photos was small and there were other UI/UX issues/discrepencies when viewing and managing photos on Filen on iOS. And there were other small features and functionality missing in Filen for photos management.
But if you just want backup for free without any of the bells and whistles - you should be okay.
Also, Filen data/docs/photos don’t show in the Files app. FYI.
Looking into upgrading my PC to Win11 (ugh) and stripping the telemetry. Then setting up a dual boot with Mint.
Trying to get friends onto Signal.
Looming into robots.Txt and ai traps for my new website.
Got https set up on new website.
Welcome to our 43rd week of privacy & security wins 
) to OVHcloud (
); and I moved a domain I own from NameCheap (
).