If you don’t know me, I make frequent write ups about privacy and security. I’ve covered some controversial topics in the past, such as whether or not Chromium is more secure than Firefox. Well, I will try my hand again at taking a look at some controversial topics.

I need ideas, though. So far, I would like to cover the controversy about Brave, controversy around Monero and other cryptocurrencies, and controversy around AI. These will be far easier to research and manage than Chromium vs. Firefox, for example. I’d like to know which ideas you have!

Which controversial privacy topics do you know of that you would like to see covered?

PLEASE DO NOT ARGUE ABOUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS!

Please save any debate for if/when I make a write up about the topic. Keep the comments clean, and simply upvote ideas you would like to see covered. I won’t be able to cover everything, so it helps bring attention!

Above all else, be kind, even if you don’t agree with an idea or topic :)

  • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
    2·
    1 month ago

    I use primarily DNS blocking myself, but it’s a custom solution that pulls in a ton of blocklists. I get tired of the “just use a browser extension” as the solution for everything, and any time I bring up IP/DNS-based solutions people say “but that doesn’t block everything” as if browser extensions do.

    • Zerush@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 month ago

      The biggest scam is with Browser VPN, they are simply proxies, good to watch country restricted movies but not for more. They don’t protect privacy, because they only can create the tunnel, after the browser is already connected to your ISP server. Bad in countries with dictatorship or teocracies with controlled servers, there only steganographic methods can help in comunications (Hidden messages in Photos, music, or even innocent text files)

      But normally 100% privacy isn’t possible, almost every actuation online can be tracked. You can only avoid the worst with your shitty PC against the server and AI power of big companies, goverments and secret services with their hacker squads. Tey can spy other goverments, they are swallowing this little geeks with their laptop and VPN in a breaktime if needed (China even employ savants (isle gifted autistic people) as hackers in their secret services)

      • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
        2·
        1 month ago

        Hard agree, except I do have an issue with the last paragraph in that I think it’s far dumber than you’ve described.

        Simply blocking (a shit ton of) domains can really get you 99% of the way there. I’m a web developer and it’s stupid dumb how third-party stuff is hosted. It’s either exactly that (third party hosted) or a CNAME or a third party which is easily blocked.

        Look, I know how complex tracking and fingerprinting can be. But from my experience, it’s really not hard to block. Of course, I’m not really speaking to first party tracking where blocking would destroy the entire experience. But for the most part, you can prevent a profile being built about you (at least for tracking and advertising) by blocking with DNS.

          • undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch
            1·
            30 days ago

            I’m using Quad9 as the upstream resolver too with TLS DNS. But before sending off my query I check my blocklist to return NXDOMAIN for tracking/advertising domains (I prefer doing that to using 0.0.0.0 as is common, it also blocks HTTPS queries which is nice.

        • chappedafloat@lemmy.wtfEnglish
          1·
          26 days ago

          Problem is first party tracking. Blocking is just against third parties. For first party tracking you are just going to have to use tor browser.