Online privacy: how to protect it for normal people | Hacker News Reader

Online privacy: how to protect it for normal people

cyb3rsecurity.tips

17 pointsnunorbatista9 comments

I think a lot of measures mentioned in the article are not good recommendations, not only many are way harder than "low" or "low-medium" difficulty, IMHO, some recommendations have serious security tradeoffs that may not help protecting "privacy" at all.

> Be very careful of the browser extensions you use and install an Ad Blocker

In order to make an Ad Blocker extension work, usually you need to give it permission to inspect and manipulate all websites you visit. How could a normal people be careful about that?

> If you like Chrome, there’s an “un-googled” version of Chromium you can use

You need to either know how to build that thing from source (and vet the un-google patches), or learn to verify a pre-build binaries provided by some random dude on the internet.

> If you buy your own personal storage (NAS), you can also have your own personal cloud instance. It’s not that hard.

In order to have an ok-ish experience that does not suck, you need to expose it to the internet, setup certificates for TLS, do 3-2-1 backup, learn RAID ... oh, and before all these, good luck finding a consumer grade NAS system with good security.

>You need to either know how to build that thing from source (and vet the un-google patches), or learn to verify a pre-build binaries provided by some random dude on the internet.

Wouldn't Brave qualify?

Or Vanadium?

Vanadium is not available outside of GrapheneOS. I'm not sure if it ever will be.

Bromite would probably be a suitable if one is not running GrapheneOS.

Author here. Thanks for the comment.

The comment on the Ad Blocker is fair. I don't recommend any, but if you chose one from the top list of Extensions in Firefox or Chrome, you should be fine (I don't use one, btw).

Agree with your Chromium remark. It's there for people to know it's possible if they don't like Firefox.

I have a good experience with my QNAP without much effort. The Apps are ok and work well. The security is indeed a problem and you have to keep it constantly updated.

I've soured on the whole idea that protecting your privacy is solely an individual responsibility. Individual-level solutions can never fix what is a system problem with privacy-invading organizations and weak-to-nonexistent laws restraining them.

If you think corrupt governments are going to protect you, this may not be your guide.

"Set up your own personal cloud instance" is adamantly not what I'd expect a non-techie to ever have the bandwidth to do, let alone a novice techie who was getting comfortable with some of the other suggestions.

I appreciate the intent of this article (even thought about writing something similar but more for a 'resisting censorship for artists' angle). But this strikes me as naive at best as to what your average Joe can be expected to manage without shepherding. I had to teach my dad how to turn on a computer for crying out loud.

Author here. Thanks for the comment. I get your point, but if you have to teach someone how to turn on a computer, privacy is not exactly a topic that is important for that same person. It might be important to you, that will implement some of the measures under the hood.

Regarding the own cloud instance: you can easily buy a NAS and have your own instance of Nextcloud / QNAP cloud or Synology with a few clicks. These instances come with Native smartphone Apps that allow you to effectively host the data in your home.

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