“Yup, that’s me. You might be wondering how I got here…”

They commented on a social media post

Firstly, it depends on how illegal it is. Is it illegal like you shouldn’t do it and we will try to block you? Or is it illegal like if we catch you do it, you can get arrested or worse?

Scenario A:

• just try shit out, try different VPNs. Some of them provide certain obfuscation. You can see if they work. If they don’t work, you’ve got some more dedicated VPNs such as Tor with all kinds of Tor bridges (obfs4, snowflake, etc) Or psiphon

Scenario B:

• The risk is real and you might consider not doing it at all, but if you do, obfs4 is the only thing I can recommend, Psiphon is easily detectable (it’s just good at bypassing blocks)

Considering the high overlap between Lemmy users and internet savvy people, I would say that we are not a good representation.

Simple answer is no but…

Stock android, like all commercial OS is inherently spyware. Google does have access to it and in theory could do anything, but that is only “in theory” because as far as we know stock android does not come with keyloggers and data exfiltration tools, it spies on you in the way of “telemetry” meaning that Google decided that certain data is useful and so they “anonymize” it and collect it, this data can be: wifi networks, location, phone usage, and more.

So in theory it is possible that stock android either already has spyware to collect personal app data that no one ever noticed (very unlikely) or that google will push an update with such software (somewhat unlikely)

Now if you use other Google apps, especially gboard and google assistant, you are definitely sharing SOME amount of peesonal text with google.

The reality is that you should consider your threat model, which means to consider what kind of risk you are willing to take and what kind you are willing to make a change to avoid. It is perfectly reasonable to say that you are not willing to use gboard or google assistant, but you are willing to use the stock android, understanding that you are sharing some data with Google, but most likely no app data (such as your texts in Signal)

Same thing about choosing a messenger. WhatsApp is made and managed by Meta, a company that lives off of user data. So even though WhatsApp claims (and seems to really be) end to end encrypted, you can still be sure that Meta is collecting everything they can, which probably means: who you are texting, how much, at what time, how much you use the app, location, and much more. Signal is open source and managed by a non-profit that does have a good track record, and because ut is open source you can also choose a different client (like Molly) which further reduces the Signal Foundation’s hold on your chats (if you fear that) So you could say that because all of your friends use WhatsApp you are willing to accept that Meta will collect a bunch of data on you, or you could decide that you are not okay with that data collection and therefore choose Signal. It is up to you. In any case, E2EE is a must as it protects you from unauthorized access from hackers.

For relationships: “Is what i’m about to say/do benifical to me, this person, or the relationship?”

If not, maybe it is me ego or hurt feelings, and so I should ignore it for now and if I feel the need to, I can later analyse it and decide again.

Also, never go hungry or emotional to the grocery store.

Either a bat or a hyper-evolved lesbian

He still hasn’t totally retracted his claim.

The causal association between Tylenol given in pregnancy in the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism, However, it is very suggestive.

Trickle truthing vibes, maybe in a year he will retract it.

Maybe, show me a fashionable ghost, I might believe in it.

So many ways, it’s almost unbelievable that it still works

Just the fact that it costs means that most people won’t even consider it, making it very hard to recommend.

It is not as good as a decentralized system, and even though the server is open source, it isn’t self hostable (technically in an intranet you could but not easily)

But the signal foundation is a non profit with external audits and a proven track record with law enforced requesting data and getting basically nothing (If i remember correctly they only have your user to phone number relation and the last time you were online)

So although it is imperfect, it is an amazing solution that is almost the only 1:1 competitor to whatsapp/messenger/imessage that is privacy respecting, so I am very grateful for it’s existence.

Just like any foss project, there some level of trust if you are going with the main distribution. In theory you are correct that not much is stopping them from releasing a malicious update, but because it is open source, soon enough people would notice that either they released new code that is malicious, or that the new version does not match the source code. That kind of scenario is known as a supply chain attack.

Since the code is open, you can literally read it for yourself to see exactly what the apk does. You can also fork it and modify it however you like, just like the creator of Molly did (Molly is a fork of the Signal client that adds some security features)

Wow, that took so long! But good on them for finally doing it!

Thanks!

Kinux

Wait… Pissing IS letting it go, how would I let go of letting my piss go?

Happiness is a distraction from perfection, let it go!

Just why?? Nature has made H₂O perfect the way it is! I don’t want an H_xO! How would that even work?? Would it be ionized? I will literally commit murder if I see one of those.

Are you urine? Cuz pee my heart