this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
314 points (97.9% liked)

Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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I fucking hate the modern web

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[–] [email protected] 124 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
  • This website needs JavaScript to display the most basic content, have fun with a blank page otherwise
[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Also, we load the JavaScript from five different CDNs, some of which are horrifically slow today. We also make sure to only load some of the scripts after others have been successfully loaded so uMatrix users have to refresh the page a dozen times.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

out dated and abandoned. use LocalCDN instead (although it's kinda useless as well from a tracking perspective)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks! I didn't knew that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

What makes you say it’s abandoned? The last release was about a month ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That last one fucking kills me

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i run with scripts disabled unless explicitly whitelisted. this one is annoying af,. so many sites use client scripts to display static content and navigation elements that absolutely didn't need to--at all. right underneath these idiots is the morons that load the entirety of jquery in a bazillion different external files.. and for what? a fucking hover effect over their menus or links or something equally ridiculous.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh, but they don’t just load jquery themselves… for each site “feature” they pull dynamically from a different CDN, loading the same code over and over again to call different functions.

And all it takes is for ONE of their CDNs to get poisoned and suddenly they’re serving malware.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The worst is when they redirect you to some /nojs page or similar that doesn't even have scripts from whatever source was required for it to run so I can't just tell noscript to allow whatever seems relevant, I have to blanket allow scripts temporarily.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

RIP Unofficial NYTimes paywall bypass by disabling JavaScript :(

[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's that? Our website is unusable on mobile? Lucky for you we have a handy dandy little app!

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

…that just needs your location, address book, camera and access to your photos in order to run.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Aaaand their website is unusable, inconvenient to use or lacks features exactly because they want you to use their app instead.

Not like it was impossible or even too hard for Instagram or TikTok to create a proper web UI for desktop, so that you can actually enlarge the videos to full screen (I'm talking about you, horizontal videos uploaded to vertical video host, displayed on horizontal screens, making it a video for ants that takes up <12% of the screen) or set the volume. They just want you to install their app where you can do those, but also provide location info, personal files, camera and microphone.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The price of a cup of coffee yeah maybe, but with how many paid online services there are, how many cups of coffee a day y'all think I'm having?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What? Can't you afford to drink a Fruitty Pumpkin Spice Kombucha Latte Macchiato Frapuccino with Extra Cream and Sprinkled Caramelized Candybites™ at your local $overpricedHipsterFranchise everyday?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

*every five minutes.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You frogot "Sign up for spam to continue"

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You joke, but I've been so desensitised by what feels like every website doing this shit, I really did forget how fucked up it actually is.

Also, the subscribe to our newsletter checkbox ticked by default. I swear on my life, I ALWAYS make sure to untick it, but sure enough, my inbox still somehow looks like I engraved my email address on the front door of every marketing department.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are even services that send you newsletter shit although you made sure you're opted out.
Also there's newsletter with a link to opt out but the link is just fake. I hate it so much.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Bandsintown did this to me, and when I unsubscribed it said it would take 48 hours, and in that time I think they sent 15 emails.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I just put them straight on my blocked list, why risk clicking a random link in an email

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The cookie wizard is the most annoying thing that I’ll continue to do on principle.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Firefox has a setting to automatically delete all cookies on shutdown. You can keep a whitelist of sites that are excluded from this (the ones where you want to stay logged in). Works great, and no more worrying about cookies, as long as you shut down your browser now and then

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The cookie autodelete extension can do that too, but also adds delete when you close the tab/leave the site.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't they already have what they need once you accept even if you delete them after?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's not a lot to track in a single browser session. The privacy violation of tracking cookies is that they track what you're doing. If you set the privacyguides.org recommended settings in Firefox, Mullvad or Brave, the cross-site tracking should be blocked, but deleting them completely means the site will even have to do some advanced fingerprinting to even know "it's you" on the same site (if not using the same public IP, for example by using VPN, otherwise the IP will be recognised)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank's for sharing your knowledge! I'm in the beginning stages if this stuff, so it's helpful to have people like you & a community like this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Thank you for commenting and asking the questions! You're never the only one wondering about these things but someone needs to actually dare to ask instead of just scrolling past!

https://privacyguides.org is an amazing resource, often with links to further explanations of concepts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Block all cookies by default and use Easylist Fanboy Cookielist in ubo to hide the accept cookies popup on a majority of pages.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

My kids beg me to disable our network ad blockers so they get perks of mobile app ads.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This is worse..

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

The thing about walled gardens, is there terrible places to live. Inside the garden it's okay, but walking around the society filled with wall gardens, so hostile, there's no walking space, you feel like you're in prison

And then there's open communities, open lawns, open trees, a beautiful place to exist, a community you can interact with.

Example

I know where I'd rather live day to day

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Those both look like a living hell to my rural ass

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I get the context, but in case of neighborhoods (and internet communities) the quality of people residing is also important. I'd rather have quiet neighbors saying hello instead of some drug peddlers blasting loud music every night.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

both look like a dystopian open air prison

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Kinda like being an iPhone user

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Consent O matic and bypass paywalls clean ;)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/pq7NLMwynYg?si=_qMCfRJrL_HAJ5eq

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago