A dedicated place to share all of our wins! Welcome to our 61st 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!
Henry will be going live for last week’s wins at 2025-08-01T21:00:00Z
I just helped my brother installing Ubuntu on his low-spec laptop, and he likes the experience so far! The main reason is that, even though his laptop is compatible with Windows 11, the Windows experience on this laptop is kind of subpar (I would say it’s meh). Now, his laptop has a solid performance, thanks to Linux!
Planning to make a video essay due to the Online Safety Act of the UK being the cherry on top for me.
I’ve been on a 3 week streak now with having 2 separate phones, one intended for commute and communication and the other for uninterrupted entertainment. My commute and communicate is now the Pixel 7 running GrapheneOS and the iPhone 16 Pro Max is the entertainment device, I’ve also relocated my Authenticators and email to it (entertainment device), the iPhone 16 Pro Max is a really decent phone for gaming, watching videos and stuff like that, while also being good enough or okay for privacy and on par with the pixel for security.
Continuing above, I am now going to enhance this digital relationship by also bringing an e-sim smartwatch to the mix, where I can/could leave both phones at home if I want to because as I will document (write a blog, see Number 4), I have found myself enabling the vanadium browser when I get bored and I am elsewhere on my commute and communicate but on the bright side it has had a significant impact on my life, more on there. The problem with the smartwatch is the limited WearOS Apps and so I will be forced to have WhatsApp(but only exclusive between me and my friend and I used a burner number) and Google Maps which uh yikes but I don’t think I will mind if it returns a way better result on my digital habit. (Fun Fact: I have tried asking the community related to this)
With 2. and 3., I will try to write a blog on my experience before or after the video essay, which may be the 4th week after that.
Not a privacy and security win yet but I thought I’d mention in case I go forward with this, I’ve been considering an SPN lately to replace ProtonVPN as I feel there is significant privacy benefits to offloading different traffic to different countries over just something like Plain VPN or Proton Secure Core, would it be worth it? would Mullvad with DAITA be better instead or NymVPN? what do you think?
Very small win but I’ve verified my Mom and my friend’s safety numbers on Signal, obviously to ensure that I’m talking to the person I intend to and they’re not compromised, I’m slowly hoping to get more verified like my uncle, specialized psychologist etc.
Speaking of, A small win I can think of is that in finding the alternative to Microsoft To Do, unfortunately they have an apple watch and the filters I’ve set specifically mentioned 2 freemium proprietary apps (which reinforces the state of the smartwatch market), on the bright side though, my uncle accepted to use the Progressive Web App with the Browser that has the uBlock Origin Lite, however I need to process how can I go about convincing them to switch to Brave Browser as they use chrome, the process is easy thanks to also being able to easily import data, however due to work time constraints, it’s getting tough to go there I guess…
I have started using @smspool recently for a way to not share my actual phone number nor the prepaid one when necessary and I’m really liking what I’m seeing, first they don’t ask for email or actual phone number just a username and password is possible, super cool, finally they do support Monero which is a privacy win here, and with many numbers not being successful and refund later, WhatsApp which I mentioned in the ladder, Viber and my Public Signal are all verified under different phone numbers, making it actually a way where if all people wanted to exchange through these apps, they wouldn’t know my actual phone number.
I started encrypting my work files on the cloud with Cryptomator, and explained my boss as such for it since we were storing them in the cloud in plain text and I remember them asking for a solution once so here we go! They seem to not like it at first but knowing them they’ll get used to it and they’ll execute on their own vault too! It is a shared folder so sharing the vault is necessary but it syncs just fine and the fact that the password can be remembered makes it even better for quickly unlocking the vault (and without him needing to know the password). I am pleasantly surprised with Cryptomator!
I’ve recently gone ahead and switched most, if not all, of my writing from fragmented tools (like novelWriter [a Free Software bookwriting software using a Markdown variant], Standard Notes, Story Architect [made by the KIT Scenarist developer] and LibreOffice) to Obsidian MD (using a local-first setup without an account).
Now, all four of the former are local-first options, but I wanted to get almost everything onto something that’s local-only without the need of a cloud-based backup to burn me in the caboose. I still use Standard Notes for certain things, but I’ve trimmed the notes I have on that service down (and am still learning what I’d want to remove from there).
My girlfriend filled up her iPhone to the brim with picture and videos of her trip to France and the UK, and couldn’t get them easily off to her PC; she’s not as tech savvy, like most people. I suggested her Synology Photos as a solution which I self-host and gets backed up. She’s loving it and will migrate other photos and video to it too so she doesn’t have it spread across multiple devices
I registered both our mobile numbers to a “Do not call” public registry our country has, which in effect prevents anyone to call you for marketing/sales purposes (link). If they actually ignore this registry and call you still, they can get hefty fines
Started my own blog, where I will write about things related to privacy and technology. I have already published my first introduction post but will probably create a separate post in the forum after I have published my first article that deals with this theme.
Moved most of my apps from Play Store and F-Droid to Obtainium to reduce my dependency on Google and receive faster updates.
Enabled 2FA for a few sites that I noticed had started to support it. No passkey / security key support though, which annoys me because email and TOTP 2FA don’t offer phishing resistance.
I hardened Signal, and in particular set chats to disappear after 1-2 weeks. I used to do that kind of stuff with snapchat, but that’s not secure compared to signal.
Deleted all social media (this was a long process that lasted about a month, but aside from youtube and reddit, I am not on social media)
Got proton unlimited - I’m very excited! The truth is I never liked surfsharks interface much, and it had kind of a lot of problems. I am hoping proton vpn works better. I am also thinking about moving my dropbox (once I can cull it) to my proton drive. Although I’ve read some negative reddit reviews of the drive, which of course, I should take with a grain of salt.
I have hardened my iPhone. I probably won’t have graphene as my primary phone, but may have it as a second phone. On my iPhone, I personally think the biggest improvement is getting rid of FaceID and changing it to a 6 digit pin. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.
Edit: I forgot to add this - I used the Privacy card today for the first time! Very excited about that.
To address that on Graphene you can set a 6 digit pin too, it’s not limited to 4 digits, also I’m curious why you would switch from graphene to iPhone exactly, just FaceID and 6 digit pin isn;t exactly a very good justification. Especially when my setup is opposite and I feel is much more reasonable that way.
Maybe I misspoke - I have an iPhone, I was considering switching to Graphene but felt I’d be giving up too much. I did not switch from graphene to iOS.
ah miscommunication I guess
I really don’t think you’re giving up anything unless you’re stuck in the apple ecosystem or something, I wonder what you think you’re giving up?
I own a phone/computer repair shop in St. Louis called Honest Repair, and something really interesting has been happening recently. I had 2 customers in one week that I’ve never met before with Linux installed on their computer! Not only that, in that same week, I installed Linux for 2 other customers!!
I’ve always suggested and encouraged my customers to try Linux, especially elderly folks who only go on Facebook. In fact, I even do a 50% off discount on all Linux installations because it’s easier and faster for me, and also better for the customer in my opinion. I’ve converted quite a few people to Linux, but 4 in one week was really awesome to see. This means we’re winning!
I even have a customer who came to me for privacy consultations, and I’ve been helping him regularly. We got him on Linux Mint, we made him an account with Proton using Brave browser, etc. I just think it’s cool that more and more average people are starting to understand that privacy is important, and I’m just glad I can use my niche knowledge to help my community.
None of this would have been possible without Techlore, you started my privacy journey almost 6 years ago! I don’t normally post this stuff, but I wanted the amazing folks at Techlore (hi Henry!) to actually see that they are making a real difference in the world. You, in a way, have helped hundreds of my customers over the last 3 years. You also inspired me to open a privacy-first repair shop that people could trust with their personal data. So, thank you!
Nice!
You should definetely advertise your place at https://endof10.org/ so you can get more customers to install Linux, since I checked and your repair shop was not there.
Ay it’s already been a week everyone and it’s time for the stream Showcasing @Burner journey on hardening Signal and more….great week lined up and I can’t wait to share them! Going live at 2025-08-08T21:00:00Z
Welcome to our 61st week of privacy & security wins 
Showcasing 