Tag Archives: Privacy

People need privacy. Everybody has something to hide. In police states, lack of privacy can even endanger your life. Everybody should be able to control what others, companies and the government knows about them. Knowledge is power and in a digitally connected society some players acquire enormous amounts of knowledge.

The following articles touch the subject of Privacy and are hopefully interesting to you.

What is DNS Privacy and how to set it up for OpenWRT

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The Domain Name System (DNS) enables your computer to find the actual addresses of other computers. So when you type fsfe.org in your browser, the DNS tells you that 217.69.89.176 is the actual IP address for fsfe.org. It needs this real address to make a connection to that server and present the website hosted there to you. DNS requests leak a lot of data to anybody who can read your network traffic, because they are typically not encrypted. Every server/site you visit will be leaked in a DNS request. To solve this problem, there is DNS Privacy, a project dedicated … Continue reading →

Briar – Next Step of The Crypto Messenger Evolution

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Update: Há uma versão em português. Who still remembers ICQ, AIM and MSN? My first messenger was ICQ and I liked the fact that it was instant. In those days, I didn’t think much about security and was probably too young anyway. We can count ourselves lucky if those tools even used transport encryption. This means that our messages are encrypted on the way from our computer to the server, so nobody can see the content of the messages while they are in transit. Whoever has access to the server however can know the content since all messages get decrypted … Continue reading →

What to use instead of WhatsApp and Threema?

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WhatsApp is a messaging app for smartphones that allows you to send (text) messages free-of-charge. After WhatsApp’s recent acquisition by Facebook and in the face of the NSA revelations, many of the millions of WhatsApp users are looking for secure and trustworthy alternatives. Because this effects so many people, we at the Free Software Foundation Europe would like to be able to promote an alternative that respects your freedom and privacy. Therefore we decided to do some research and to hold a workshop on WhatsApp alternatives during our latest FSFE team meeting. While most tech-people really didn’t see the point … Continue reading →

CyanogenMod removes tracking opt-out, reverses decision, but still uses Google Analytics

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The most successful and best managed version of Android CyanogenMod is gathering data from users for statistical purposes. The statistics are public and users have the chance to opt-out of being counted. On March 31st this changed. The founder of the CyanogenMod initiative Steve Kondik removed the opt-out feature from the source code (commit). He explained his reasons in the commit message: Not having an accurate count of how many people are using CM is painful. I am making an executive decision to remove the opt-out and always turn stats on. The data is anonymized and there is nothing evil … Continue reading →

Brave New Skyping World Revisited

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A vigilant reader of my blog challenged my earlier criticism of Skype thoroughly and even though I felt his remarks could have been tempered a bit, here is my thoughtful response. I am very thankful for all of the comments I receive and encourage more people to express their opinions here. It is only when our opinions are constantly challenged, are we forced to rethink them and are less likely to believe in aged and false dogmas. Below I intend to counter the main points of his argument, but only after I have refashioned and strengthened my main argument. The … Continue reading →

Ten Reasons Why You Should Boycott Skype

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If you want to understand what Skype actually is, it might help to picture an almighty telephone and mail company. This company can not only spy on your private conversations and has total control over them, but it also forces you to use it. It owns the telephone lines and all mail transportation and does not let other companies use them. At the same time, you are bound to only use their telephone and mailboxes. Despite of these facts, more and more people are using Skype and even begin using the word “to skype” as a general term for talking … Continue reading →

Facebook’s outragous Terms of Use

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Many of us knew already that Facebook’s Terms of Use are unacceptable and that nobody should ever use Facebook, but work on a free (as in free speech) alternative to Facebook. A couple of weeks ago, Facebook changed their Terms of Use again without notifying its users. It basically grants itself an “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license” to do anything they want with all our data. This license never expires and all your data will never be deleted, not even when you delete your account. The Blogosphere covers this in many places. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg defended … Continue reading →