Pros:

• Websites can’t see your real IP and thus can’t figure out your real location that easily
  • You might also be able to blend in with other users who use the same VPN server
• Your ISP can’t see what you’re websites you’re connecting to
• Your Network operator (e.g. a coffee shop offering public wifi) and you’re ISP can’t see your unencrypted connections (e.g. HTTP, Telnet)
• You can bypass regional censorship or other forms of content unavailability

Cons:

• Your VPN provider can see everything you’re connecting to (but not the content if you use HTTPS, which thankfully has become very common), so you need to be able to trust them
• A good and trustworthy VPN usually costs money
• Slightly slower connection and higher latency

Things to look out for when choosing a VPN provider:

• No-log policy
• Regular security audits
• Open source client applications
• Private/anonymous payment options (crypto currency)
  • Monero is the best option if you want to stay fully anonymous
• Minimal information required for signing up, ideally none (some providers don’t even require an email address, they just give you a random generated Account ID)

Anna’s Archive allows new uploads though. From their website:

We have the full Sci-Hub collection, as well as new papers.

https://annas-archive.org/scidb

I’m seeding around 10TB of Anna’s Archive data

Doesn’t Anna’s Archive already include a full backup of Sci-Hub and distribute it via Torrent and IPFS in addition to their website and the providers and mirrors they usually use for uploading?

WordPress does have an ActivityPub plugin, and it works with Lemmy. https://dbzer0.com/blog/this-blog-is-now-federated-natively-to-lemmy/

A good example is dbzer0.com which is federated to !dbzer0.com@dbzer0.com

Happy cake day!

So basically Microsoft’s Recall if it was actually good. I’ve wanted that for a long time https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/12921637

To all the people downvoting this, look at this comment https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/15369807

@1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca @capital@lemmy.world @disconnectikacio@lemmy.world @MehBlah@lemmy.world

Is there an alternative that isn’t directly tied to an apartheid state committing genocide?

Yeah there are countless alternatives (at least here in Germany, but Germans are obsessed with sparkling water so YMMV depending on where you are). A soda maker ain’t some crazy technology, it’s a CO₂ cylinder, a valve, and something that holds the bottle, in fact, it’s so simple, other comments suggest to just build one yourself: https://lemmy.world/comment/13959890

Just make a couple of Google (or preferably DuckDuckGo) searches for “soda maker” or “sodastream alternative” and I’m sure you’ll find something that suits your needs.

So, Android 9 / 10?

In that case, no. I assumed we were talking about up-to-date devices.

If you aren’t wanted by three letter agencies

Keep in mind, you don’t have to be an activist or journalist to get targeted with sophisticated spyware. This very recent Lemmy post is a great example: https://slrpnk.net/post/15858999

What does this have to do with GrapheneOS (compared to Lineage)? Did you reply to the wrong comment?

We don’t know everything it can do

Neither do we know this about any other CPU on the market. All chipsets on the market are proprietary. All of them. And no, despite many people (who don’t know anything about what they are talking about) claiming this, RISC-V won’t actually solve any of these issues. Sure, the ISA is open source, but the ISA would be the worst place for malicious actors to introduce a backdoor. I can guarantee you that despite using the RISC-V ISA, the chips themselves will still be fully proprietary and the IP will be highly protected as trade secrets. You can build a fully RISC-V conformant chip with a backdoor, there’s absolutely nothing in place that could stop this, and it surely won’t change for the forseeable future.

Do you mind sharing which bank you use?

You can use this website to check if your banking app is supported: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

@HereIAm@lemmy.world

LineageOS itself drastically weakens security even compared to stock AOSP, for example by exposing root access or deploying insecure SELinux policies

Yup, it’s definitely worse https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/android.html#lineageos

Security-wise you’re better off using whatever OS comes with your device (as long as it gets updates) than downgrading to LineageOS. At least most smartphone vendors (except for Fairphone) manage to ship their Stock OS with a locked bootloader and somewhat working Verified Boot.

With out bloatware and proprietary Google stuff though

GrapheneOS > LineageOS, but unfortunately the list of supported devices is even smaller.