Your Weekly Privacy & Security Wins 🏆 (Week 57-60 - May 30 2025)

Privacy and Security Weekly Privacy Wins
36

This is my first post and because it’s gonna be pretty extensive I’ll actually match it with the rest of Monero I have on my Cake Wallet as I don’t think it’d be reasonable to just throw my experience and not support Techlore in any way. I wanted to get more, but the min Monero you can buy on changenow is for 20 dollars and I’m missing 5, so other services gotta wait.
I agree with Henry on what he said about tipping services you use. I’m gonna talk about it later. First the overall up-until-this-point wins:

  • I recently purchased Google Pixel and threw GrapheneOS on it
  • I only use FOSS apps (and everything in my life is FOSS whatever it is. If it’s not FOSS, not using it. I don’t care what it is) The only non-FOSS apps are two banking apps, that luckily work with GrapheneOS Google Play compatibility layer. All of the other apps are FOSS
  • I use numerous profiles. Some of them use Orbot, some ProtonVPN and now considering Mullvad, because it supports Monero payments (also waiting for Proton) as it has the DAIDA function (dummy packets and more resistant to AI analysis. The Hated One on inv.nadeko.net (youtube private frontend) has a new video about the VPN and how the AI stuff and packets work. Recommend checking out.)
    • I have “Owner” profile, which is only for config
    • “Web browsing”, which has, no one would guess, web browsers (Brave and Tor, where I have one question what’s a good private-window only browser for Android. Has to be FOSS and updatable thru Obtainium/F-Droid, like an alternative to Mullvad. I heard Firefox Focus, but could find a downloadable .apk and I also saw IronFox), and openers for stuff like PDF, etc. downloaded from the web and sharing things like Localsend and OnionShare.
    • “Messaging” with Molly (Signal fork), Session, SimpleX, altho I’m only now using Molly as I have no one to comm thru the other ones
    • “Banking” with banking apps
    • “Crypto” with Cake Wallet as my banking app has the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission and I don’t want my bank to see anything else then itself and the other app
    • “Media” with VLC, Aves and others (the Aves gallery does not have internet permission, which is used for fetching GPS info from the image metadata)
    • “Navigation” with Organic Maps and OsmAnd
  • I have Arch Linux on my desktop with Portmaster and always-on ProtonVPN. It also features full-disk encryption. I’m also going to full-disk encrypt my external 4TB SSD
  • My new laptop I’ll buy will also be Arch Linux with dedicated 12G VRAM laptop for local AI stuff and I’m thinking about physically removing the camera and microphone
  • I have Molly (Signal fork), Session and SimpleX for comm
  • I have moved to Proton and have the Ultimate plan
  • Every site has an hide-my-email alias and my family has a dedicated, what Proton calls additional, email address, so the true, real, official email address knows only Proton (hopefully)
  • I have moved our family to Signal from Viber (I refused to install the non-FOSS ad-filled Viber app)
  • Majority of my family also have Proton and am trying to get them to use it more
  • I deleted my Google account and every other account except for Instagram as I couldn’t get an alt acc not suspended and for those that are wondering, if you request your data from Instagram you’ll see that even if you removed you data it might still be there. I could see my phone number and all changes to the email address in a personal information changs file
  • Am going to try EasyOptOuts for a big. Did a lot of manual work some time ago for my @gmail and previous Proton Acc. I wanted to create a new one as the previous used +subaddressing, thus revealing my real address instead of hide-my-email
  • I managed to, without KYC, get Monero and am going to tip the services I use, that means
  • Also trying to mine Monero with XMRig
  • Thinking about purchasing BusKill. They accept Monero, which is good
  • After hearing about GrapheneOS having issues with porting Android 16 due to Google not providing device tree and binaries I decided to give them $10 from my Monero wallet to help at least some way as how Henry said. I’d make a major diff if people gave all these services just a little bit like $5 every few months. But I wanna use Monero for donations and for as many online purchases/transactions as possible instead of a credit card.
  • After getting my Pixel, I, after moving important data away, formatted my old device. Left the SIM in it, for reasons explained in a video from “The Hated One” about SIMs and why he doesn’t use them, which I’d fully enroll into my life, but my family wanna use the legacy and outdated SMS and calls for “always accessible” reason. I uninstalled around 250 packages using adb from my old device. The phone is now incapable of doing anything except SMS, calls and internet (doesn’t have browser, tho) as I needed internet for WiFi calling, because of the privacy risk of triangulation. As you can see my thread model is pretty high and people I know call me paranoid.
  • When about to use a new service I read the Privacy Policy and thanks to Henry I now know about tosdr.org. Thank you.
  • Found monerica.com with a lot of stuff you can do with Monero. I Used juicesms.com to get valid Instagram code, but don’t need it now, so kinda wasted $5 :smile:
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