A dedicated place to share all of our wins! Welcome to our 68th 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!
Recently, privacy has become more of a focus in Sweden, following a couple of unfortunate events. So it has become easier to talk about privacy with people, which is something I have taken advantage of. To much success I might add.
Background
The first of two unfortunate incidents, was when a high profile celebrity was stalked for six months. It is not as hard to do in Sweden, as all your personal information, is already on the web, accessible for all who know your name. This includes, resident, salary, birthday, owned cars, and sometimes email and phone numbers. So when the celebrity, Bianca Ingrosso, was stalked, this open system has seen more scrutiny than ever.
The second unfortunate occurrence, was when a party leader in parliament, left her post because of a fear of her life. She felt unsafe at work and home, and resigned after getting death threats to her home. This bundled with the first incident, has seriously made it easier to argue for privacy without looking like a foil hat person.
Actual win
I’ve now been able to talk more about privacy with almost everyone who I’m friends with now, without sounding obnoxious. And everyone agrees that privacy in Sweden, isn’t good enough. So this is my privacy win, talking more about privacy then ever before, helped by external events.
I finally pulled the trigger on Proton VPN after seeing their Black Friday sale. It’s now on all my devices. And thanks to Techlore’s video, I’m able to keep using NextDNS on my phone.
Also, bonus point for Proton VPN’s port forwarding capability. I finally have it setup for torrenting! (I didn’t feel comfortable messing with my router settings)
My biggest wins came a bit before joining this forum. Ditching Windows (using Debian) and hardening it with LUKS disk encryption and OpenSnitch against games that spy on me (FOSS usually does not spy). In the same move I got rid off Discord and using Matrix only, which I used for some years right now.
This week I got just a little, but also important improvement. I bought a new SSD and was setting up my old one as backup disk. While I used backups previously too, I created them manually. The new method is not just much more regular (set it up to 1x each day) and more robust, but is also an archive backup type. So I have a versioning of updates, which allows me to chose single files from a previous state. That is especially helpful on complex projects where a lot of file changes happen over time. From time to time I will also make a backup to an external device that keep a state when the whole PC becomes destroyed (fire etc). Who values disk encryption should also not forget to encrypt backup disks.
By all the danger from internet we should not forget such basic security things.
More wins. I got my parents to swap out their Ring camera system for a CCTV like system that uses a server I built for them as a DVR (Using Kerberos.io, which is something I discovered recently but is pretty cool).
I pretty much stopped using youtube. I open it up maybe once a month now - and even then through newpipe. I swapped it out largely for odysee, as I like their interface and the people on it as well as just the platform itself.
I joined the Techlore Forum! - That’s a big deal for me, because I can indulge in talking about privacy within an interested and quite enjoyable community.
I’m pretty far into my personal and professional (I work in IT) privacy journey. But I am mostly surrounded by non technical people who just don’t really care, so I can provide solutions (especially at work) but can’t really talk with people about these topics.
Here is some background where I am in my privacy journey:
Been using Linux for decades.
Been using AdBlockers for many years.
Been using a Password Manager and FIDO2-Keys for years now.
Been using Signal for years.
Degoogled my Phone and my life almost completely a view years ago. - I still use Youtube regularly.
I am using an end-to-end-encrypted E-Mail provider since degoogeling.
I am self hosting a lot of services, like Nextcloud.
I removed streaming services like Netflix and Spotify from my life some months ago and am still in the process of adjusting my relationship with media.
My most embarrassing and persistent week spot is Amazon. I’m still figuring out how to reduce my engagement with that company.
Hey Techlore community - happy to be here and share some early wins!
I’m here! It’s been a while since I was active on a forum (pre‑2010), and I’m excited to become a contributing member of this great community. Below are a few early wins and a big thank-you to you, @henry , for all the excellent content that I could use during my exploration phase.
Wins
Joined the forum
Decided on “Go Incognito” v2
My Incognito Roadmap (bird’s‑eye view):
Leaving Google Suite (email, Drive, Search) after 16+ years.
Cutting back on Meta related apps (after 15+ years).
Transition out of the Apple ecosystem (after 10+ years).
“Leftovers”
I’ve already made some moves, but I’ll leave that for the upcoming weekly wins.
My wins were doing some awesome interviews this week with Marc from F-Droid, and also an interview with Firefox’s CTO Can’t wait for you all to see them!
Other than that I guess it’s somewhat of a tech transition as I’ve been playing with the new Affinity app. I consider it a win that it has no massive problems so far, I guess we’ll see how much they’ll decide to enshittify it as time goes on (hopefully none at all!)
I had some last-minute family stuff come up these next few days so I will regrettably be delaying this stream to next week, but let’s keep the wins going in here. Only 8 so far— so let’s keep it going!
a. I’ll quote what I have before about Valve’s decision on the perspective of the future of linux and digital rights. This applies to the Steam Frame VR Headset currently but hoping to see Valve expand it!:
We know there will be ARM SteamOS, for the time being for the new VR headset Steam Frame but Man
Give ME STEAMOS ARM FOR EVERY ARM DEVICE (and I’m gonna get to the reason)
Valve is to be using the FEX open source compatibility layer which no joke.
Translates x86 Windows Code (You heard that right, x86 Windows Code) to ARM Linux so basically (so far it’s just VR games), Like Proton compatibility layer except Box86/64 like, sprinkled on top (That’s what FEX in a nutshell is)
Valve’s ARM SteamOS Can also run Android APKs (likely using a form of waydroid) NATIVELY, Meaning yes you could get your Favourite say FOSS Apps in it or you are a filthy pirate and if you know how to get the apks of the games from say Meta Quest and Pico, it is possible but don’t discuss this. Keep the ship to yourself.
Oh and In a Valve Win: Valve Index their oldest product is going EOL
But in a consumer friendly move, Valve Is Open to letting the community continue support not JUST For Software but also FOR Producing the Hardware
Oh and the Steam Frame has a MicroSD Card
b. Because of the noise we made in sideloading crackdown. Google has eased and is now working on a “flow” for “advanced users sideloading apps from unverified developers” (Google will allow installing apps from unverified developers) in which to say the least it’s more a step in the right direction than it is a win.
My wins:
Since my last wins:
I switched most of my stuff to nextcloud (contacts, calendar, notes, tasks and docs) and I use it also as an email client. I still rely on Proton Mail, VPN and Drive but it is a huge win to have things on premise.
Speaking of Nextcloud. I self host: Redlib (Reddit), Invidious (YouTube) and SearXNG, while I don’t always love the results on SearXNG, that is especially on more complicated searches (like how to, solve an issue etc.) often fallback to Brave Search. It is overall great and comforting (nextcloud and frontends is also comforting). Looking for other easy options worth self hosting when I have time but it’s just those.
Setup a Private DNS (Mullvad and ControlD Free DNS) with content filtering on the laptop at work that runs Windows 11 recently (thanks to it’s native DNS over HTTPS)
Just Security: on the work desktop PCs and my installation of Windows 10 I set them up for extended security update so the OS doesn’t go obsolete and I refuse to use windows 11 on my pc. can confirm it works! The enrollment was important for work PCs as they cannot be upgraded to Windows 11, “officially” that is and it was the fastest and safest method anyway.
I installed Linux on a 10+ year old laptop. (It was forced to stay on Windows 10 otherwise)
This is the laptop that my family will be using for viewing and sorting photos albums, and having Linux is just really nice for privacy! (And also easy to justify to them because of Windows’ EOL)
Because the laptop is old I went with Debian, as all of the software is well-tested, and non-security updates are only every 2 years. This way I lower the chance of hardware failure, while keeping things low-maintenance.
As for the desktop environment, I chose LXDE. It’s an amazing power-efficient desktop, while still being very customisable. It’s a pain for high PPI (Pixels Per Inch) screens, but luckily the laptop is only 1280x720, and seems to have an ideal PPI for LXDE.
Debian LXDE (and more) download page:
Although the ISO’s say amd64, it’s for Intel as well. They just call them amd64 as a naming convention, as shown here.
Question: Why not use the NetInstaller and Install LXDE in the setup process? And why not other distros in it over Debian (Idk Mint XFCE, Zorin OS Lite, Lubuntu, Arch/Fedora with XFCE/LXDE/LXQt etc.)
And it is common knowledge amd64 means 64-bit, the name only comes because AMD was the first to implement it, the standard amd64 is also known as x86-64
GREAT wins everyone, some awesome ones this time around, can’t wait to share on the stream
Catch this 68th week’s stream at 2025-11-14T21:00:00Z featuring @Cicero moving parents away from Ring. But definitely not the only major win here…excited for this one!
Next thread is already live and would love to see some of your updates over there:
Welcome to our 68th week of privacy & security wins 
