Your Weekly Privacy & Security Wins 🏆 (Week 51 - Apr 18 2025)

Privacy and Security Weekly Privacy Wins
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A dedicated place to share all of our wins! :trophy: Welcome to our 51st week of privacy & security wins :slight_smile:

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 :slight_smile:
  • 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
At 2025-04-18T21:00:00Z I’ll be streaming last week’s wins on YouTube. Don’t miss the stream, it’s a great way to live-engage with others and see your comments be featured :fire:

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Someone beat me to it.
Anyways I’ll let know if I have ones by then!

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Hello here’s the rest of my wins
1 I Already Got using Chromium Without Logging Into Personal Accounts after distrusting chrome with my work ones
2 I used Source filmmaker on a separate user profile on my laptop and I plan to share my animations regarding tech in the upcoming months

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Well, I debloated my new phone to remove some pre-installed unuseful apps. Most of these apps are uninstalled/disabled but I still have some apps to remove but there aren’t many.

I’m actually about to get another win so stay tuned haha!

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The ongoing sega of my perfume infused used Thinkpad T470s laptop improved a little. The laptop no longer stinks of perfume but the charger continues to smell. I’ll be order another charger from Amazon tomorrow. By Wednesday or Thursday I should be running Fedora Silverblue and ditching my Samsung tablet. This will be the biggest win for me since I switched to GrapheneOS over 2 years ago.

Edit: delivery delayed by a couple of days so I haven’t switch to Linux. Continued in week 52 :tada: :tada:

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  1. Started using RSS for my news this week.
  2. Installed wireguard on my server to safely connect to it instead of having to port forward which I was doing before this (I was getting random connections from Russian VPN servers; yikes).
  3. Deleted my last remaining Google account.
  4. Set up Raid 1 on my server.
  5. Started using a diceware password on my phone.
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Curious, why’d you go with Raid 1?

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This was a pretty good week.

  1. Last night remembered that I have a old Google account with my real name so deleted it in the midnight
  2. Adopted a kitten :slightly_smiling_face:
  3. Left Reddit for Lemmy
  4. And I just saw that I can add clayxOS fdroid repo. Installed their dialer app.
  5. Stopped using SIM card on my main phone
    It’s midnight so :sleeping_face:
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I only recommend deleting abandoned emails that nobody uses to contact you. It’s better to let people know that you are no longer using them. I believe it is better to only delete the data but keep the address so no one can impersonate you, specially if it’s in your real name.

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Its not a problem.

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:shield: Privacy-Focused Actions Taken

:fire: Account Deletion & Cleanup

  • Deleted 50+ accounts from various websites and services.
  • Deleted 3 Instagram accounts.
  • Deleted Microsoft account.
  • Planning to eliminate 6 Google accounts (signed up on many websites with them).

:mobile_phone: Phone & App Privacy

  • Switched from mainstream apps to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) alternatives.
  • Ditched most Google apps from the phone.
  • Using Proton Pass for secure password management.
  • Using 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) on every account.

:globe_with_meridians: Web & Network Privacy

  • Been using Brave Browser for 1–2 years (privacy-respecting browser).
  • Been using NextDNS for around 1 year to block trackers, ads, and malicious content.
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  1. Setup Futo Keyboard on all of my family members devices
  2. Started using Netguard on my device
  3. Downloaded Quacky extension , loving it so far
  4. Uninstalled Onedrive from my laptop ( yet to move to another provider )
  5. Started using Thunderbird myself ( i dont have that much of a use of emails except official work related )

I’m looking for a privacy-focused voice typing tool for Windows (since the default option is from microsoft ). Is there a way to use Futo Voice Input on Windows until they potentially release a Windows-compatible version?

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I was inspired by Izzy’s win from last week and started to tone down my drive for privacy perfectionism in an area I feel like my soul is most hungry for right now: more authenticity about my emotions and personal quarrels on non-private platforms.

I have a friendgroup that I feel like is very relateable and kind. But I’ve been growing apart from them partly because when it comes to online hangout, they only do that on their Discord server. In text channels they share their struggles, joys and interests, that I fear Discord doesn’t treat with adequate privacy precautions like Signal does.

But I took a hard look at what privacy actually does to me compared to what it keeps me from doing. And so I decided to go completely unsensored about my interests and emotions on this Discord group from now on. I am more myself around those friends now.

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The win this week, I’ll let you judge…:

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Did you start reading or finish reading it?

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Just bought it, I’ll read it soon I guess…
Taking a look at techlore, a little PG and I’ll start reading it…

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That’s a very long book. It took me a couple of months of to finish it but could take several months.

The book is also a little involved so it may take longer to fully fathom all that’s written and said.

That’s just some context and advice on the book - FYI.

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I finally got my partner on Signal! Previously we alternated back-and-forth between WhatsApp, Discord, and rarely Instagram (which I always try to avoid because Instagram messages are terrible to begin with)

I convinced him to use Signal with the idea of it being our space for more private/intimate conversations, and he’s been digging it. He said he’s also open to trying out more alternative platforms like it.

Hoping to get more of my messaging with friends off of Discord and Instagram completely, preferably to Signal (or at least WhatsApp, anything E2EE is already better than Discord and Instagram)

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Installed SpeechNote.

There are many models that you can choose from. Everything happens locally .It is a flatpak application meaning you can install it in any Linux distribution. You can use it to create subtitles for your videos easily.I haven’t tried it yet. But there is also a translation feature.

If you have a Nvidia GPU, there is the option to install the CUDA and use that for hardware acceleration. If you have a AMD, you can use the built in Vulkan driver and no need to install the AMD driver separately.

Since the New Linux kernel added support for AMD NPUs in Laptops, Hopefully in the future, they could use that to run those models more efficiently.

Try it, if you like the software, you can promote it and even contribute to it .If you have spare money, make a small donation.

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