/qa/ - Question & Answer

if you're a lifeless NEET then you dont need to worry. otherwise when you apply for a job they will see that you said nigger and gooned to questionable girls

>Why is it a bad thing that some fed has my information? What are they gonna do anyway?
I wont convince you of that, but given you asked you're probably already convinced.
>If i wanted to be my info to be as private as possible, what should i do? Do i really need to put some ducktape on every camera that i have home?
I'll assume this: you wish to be private whilst spending no money and with low technical knowledge.
Your browser is 99% of your data leakage, accounts, websites you visit, et cetera.
Switch from chrome to Librewolf. People get mad when you say librewolf because technically you can just edit firefox to 99% of it, which is true, but assuming you want to do as little as possible on your end is say go for it, it even comes with uBlock, and is a well trusted fork of firefox. https://librewolf.net/installation/windows/
Minimize your use of accounts. Delete Google and other 'big tech' websites (Twitter, plebbit, etc). Anything that requires you phone number; avoid like the plague if you can. People mock things like Protonmail for being 'fed comprimised' but i guarantee its about 10x better than Gmail or Yahoo. Use either Protonmail or Tutanota. I have no preference, I've used both and they're both fine.

>>2548
Go through you emails and find accounts you've signed up for in the past and send as many delete requests as you can. Having old account data lying around is always bad. You should aim to have only the accounts that are absolutely necessary. Try to not always use one email for all accounts too, try and sign up with tempmails (gurrila mail) if you can to smaller forum like sites. but for sites you need email access to, try splitting them up (one email for shopping, one for gaming, etc).
Your operating system is partially an attack vector too. If you're on Windows, try looking for debloating scripts/privacy scripts (windows sends lots of data back by default) and dont use a microsoft account with your computer.
Of course, really i recommend linux. Specifically linux mint, its stable and a better version of ubuntu, its easy to use but still really good, even as a gentoo user i'd still be perfectly happy if i was stuck with mint.
If you have a phone, look into unlocking it. i'm not gonna ask you to buy a whole new phone or anything, but if you can unlock your phone you should. If you cant, try your best to restrict what permissions apps have, try putting telemetry to the lowest level, use Fossdroid to find open source alternatives to regular apps, turn onto airplane mode when you aren't using wifi or text and turn onto wifi off when only using text. There's also the aurora store IIRC where you can download apps anonymously. Sign out of google on your phone, and probably factory reset it too, and never log back into it.

>>2549
If you have a phone, look into unlocking it. i'm not gonna ask you to buy a whole new phone or anything, but if you can unlock your phone you should. If you cant, try your best to restrict what permissions apps have, try putting telemetry to the lowest level, use Fossdroid to find open source alternatives to regular apps, turn onto airplane mode when you aren't using wifi or text and turn onto wifi off when only using text. There's also the aurora store IIRC where you can download apps anonymously. Sign out of google on your phone, and probably factory reset it too, and never log back into it.
If you're willing to go the extra step, set Librewolf to auto-delete cookies and history on closing. And if you wanna go the extra-extra mile you can use Mullvad to be extra safe (Hides your location, also allows you to pirate stuff)
The camera thing may be a joke, but its futile on your phone since you'll end up using it anyway. as for laptops, maybe get a sliding cover, or on desktops just unplug the webcam when you arent using it. Though, this isn't as big a deal as people make it out to be.

This is a low-mid level privacy guide. you can go less or further if you wish, and there are millions of guides online. And one last thing, try not too stand out TOO much. It's called fingerprinting, and its how they can trivialize all efforts to be anonymous.

No arrow cause i look like picrel and said ALL of this

Also split into three posts award cause auto-janny thinks i'm automated, or something

>>2550
>>2548
>>2549
that's very interesting, i will try out some of the things that you've mentioned, like librewolf. Deleting old and unused accounts is also probably a good idea too. The rest I will try out in the future.

>I wont convince you of that, but given you asked you're probably already convinced.
Well, the only reason, i think, is that some people will use information in the past against you, altough I see this as relevant if you are going to be a politician or a politicle leader of some sort. I just wish to hear out other answers on that question. I'm a non-important individual. Why would I be interesting to anyone?

>>2575
youre interesting to me. delete your shit or ill find you

use grapheneOS for your phone and openBSD for laptops and a non retard Linux distro for desktop

the real and pragmatic answer is that ultimately it doesnt matter most of the time
there is a sweet spot for privacy where you're getting privacy gains without making your computing life a living hell. if you overdo it, you're sabotaging yourself
thus said, a lot of privacy friendly choices are also best for productivity. for instance GNU/Linux and free software are superior to their datamine-y alternatives even if you ignore the datamining aspect.