Online Security & Privacy 101
Mini Blog20241002Once more we have to return to the topic of Proton's use of the non-privacy respecting services
Zendesk - a US-based company that, incidentally, uses 'AI' aka ML aka LLM - and
Uservoice - perhaps by coincidence or perhaps not also a US, SF-based company.
Following my contact's having written an 'Open Letter' via email to the illustrious Board of Trustees of
The Proton Foundation - which amongst others includes Dr. Andy Yen and Sir Tim Berners Lee - to present the case to them, with well over a month having elapsed since, my source reports that he/she still has not received any reply whatsoever. He/she is thinking of perhaps sending a follow-up message.
I very much regret this whole sorry business leaves me, as a firm Proton advocate, more than a little disappointed and perhaps even somewhat disillusioned. Proton's conduct in this whole matter is not only utterly inexplicable but even inexcusable.
My source and I have jointly decided henceforth
not to avail ourselves of Proton's non-privacy customer service to report any issues, bugs, and the like. Proton's loss, as much as alas our own. However, there is another avenue to contact customer support. Furthermore, we shall henceforth not use Proton Uservoice to post, comment, or vote, or otherwise provide feedback. Decidedly Proton's loss.
However, in place of this, I shall be reporting on any missing features and other inadequacies of Proton apps, as well as making suggestions, here in this Mini Blog. I shall do so in conjunction with my source, who has so far been making valuable contributions to Proton's feedback.
This not withstanding, one still would hope that Proton/the Proton Foundation's Board would clear up this sorry affair with some kind of response or statement.
Furthermore, none of this should be seen as any kind of reflection upon the quality of Proton's software. It is singular in providing the best and strongest privacy and security protection available, and I shall continue to endorse it and advocate its use.
More privacy/security news soon.
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All rights reserved20240909Following lively discussions elsewhere, it has become necessary to add a couple of supplements to the article 'Windows & macOS 101' to cover topics such as privacy-focused installation and/or clean-up of the OS and its configuration. Work has already started on these, putting other articles on hold for now.
We have to return to the topic from last time concerning Proton's use of the non-privacy respecting services
Zendesk - a US-based company that, incidentally, uses 'AI' aka ML aka LLM - and
Uservoice - perhaps by coincidence or perhaps not also a US, SF-based company.
My contact informs me that he/she had written an 'Open Letter' via email to the illustrious Board of Trustees of
The Proton Foundation - which amongst others includes Dr. Andy Yen and Sir Tim Berners Lee - to present the case to them a little over three weeks ago. With over three weeks having elapsed since, a more than reasonable time to allow for at the very least some kind of acknowledgement of receipt, my source reports that he/she has not received any reply whatsoever.
I regret to have to say that at this point I am more than just a little disappointed in Proton over this whole sorry business. As much as I am taken by their underlying ethos and their aim for a privacy by default internet, I find this whole matter and their conduct in it incomprehensible. Just as I find it incomprehensible that they keep adding more new apps or major new features while some of their existing apps are seriously in need of major attention. In all these matters I have to agree entirely with my source, and in his/her words (not necessarily verbatim), "one has to wonder whether all of this is not a sign of a major malaise within Proton. One of weak and perhaps misguided leadership and a huge degree of inexperience throughout the organisation.
"Good public and especially customer relations are vital to any business. However, software development, good, solid, inspired even, software development cannot ever be subservient to any kind of 'democracy'. It requires strong - even if somewhat dictatorial - leadership from the top, leadership with vision, inspiration, passion, focus, and ideas and ideals, and the ability to inspire the rest of the team while never settling for less than perfection, and the ability to see things through to the end. This could quite well describe the late Steve Jobs while he was running NeXT - he never accepted the term 'impossible' from anyone, with the result that NeXT produced some of the most advanced hardware of its time and far and away the best and even the most beautiful OS of the time. It's the lack of this kind of leadership and the 'democracy' culture in Linux desktop distros that alas has so far always held back Linux's developmental growth and innovation and its growth of market share. One would like to hope that Proton could fare better.
"Yet sadly, somehow none of these qualities and principles seem evident with Proton. Vision, perhaps, but else? And experience would suggest that all and any basic features are included in any app from the outset, and that good, detailed documentation is provided with each and every one from early on. Again, these are areas in which Proton seems to be lacking. In fact, no user guides exist for any Proton app on any platform so far, other than some very basic 'instructions' on web pages that seem as much ad as instruction.
"Similarly, one might perhaps put it down to inexperience that Proton chose to use far from privacy focused services for its customer support and for user suggestions/feature requests/feedback and the like at the outset that are irreconcilable with its ethos of 'privacy by default' and the 'advancement of privacy, freedom, and democracy'.
"However, one would reasonably assume that, given the time elapsed, the Proton Foundation's Board of Trustees would have at the very least acknowledged receipt of the email referred to above while perhaps considering a response. In the absence of such, one can, sad to say, only be left to wonder..."
So much for my source. Regrettably, I have to state that I have to agree entirely with his/her analysis, views, and sentiments. However, none of this should detract from the importance of Proton to privacy software and to any internet user valuing online privacy and security.
Personally, I would not want to be online without Proton's VPN - now featuring availability of Proton's own 'Stealth' protocol on Windows and macOS, although at least the Windows version still seems buggy and results in fairly frequent disconnects/reconnects - and Proton Mail. I am reasonably happy with the Drive web app, though I decidedly would not want to use the current Windows desktop app - nor any Linux port thereof - until some major revision. Similarly, the current incarnation of Proton Pass is still severely lacking in my opinion, although it has promise. Generally, if privacy and security are your concern, my advice has firmly to remain to stick with Proton.
More privacy topics next time.
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All rights reserved20240802Just in the last Mini Blog entry we talked about the importance of Proton in the fight to defend the rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and even freedom and democracy itself. And Proton is indeed our best hope in this.
However, there are a couple of things that sit rather ill with Proton's ethos of the above. I, along with a few others of my acquaintance, have long been unhappy that Proton's otherwise exemplary (email) support is not end-to-end encrypted, utilising zendesk.com instead of keeping it within the Proton domain. The same must be said about the feedback and feature/app suggestion/request system, which uses the appalling Uservoice.com, rather than an on-site alternative.
Both of these do not sit well with the general Proton ethos, neither of them being privacy-centric. Indeed, Uservoice email notifications come with a tracker, although this is swiftly removed by Proton Mail before it ever reaches your inbox!
But more worrying news has just reached me in relation to Uservoice. I am told by a reliable source and fellow privacy, freedom of speech, as well as Linux, Ubuntu, and Proton campaigner and advocate that Uservoice supervises Proton Uservoice with a bot censor/s that seem to instantly pounce on anything they may deem not to be 'politically correct' - and possibly other, even more mysterious criteria seem in operation. In a comment, my source used the common enough and perfectly innocuous expression 'bitching and moaning' - the former term was instantly censored. Whether this term is or is not 'politically correct' is indeed highly debatable. But then, apparently it is not 'permissible' any more even to call a female dog a 'bitch' - an absurdity like all PC-ism. In another comment about this issue, my source mentioned not giving a flying 'flatulence' about PC-ism - in which I would heartily join him/her here - only to have the medical term for fart instantly censored, by what twisted logic I'm sure even the gods would not be able to fathom.
Such censorship is a complete violation of the right of freedom of speech and as such is indefensible in the context of Proton's stated ethos and incompatible with it! In closing this topic, one may only hope that Proton will prove true to that ethos and not succumb to the tyrannies of identity politics and their PC 'thought police'. (Orwell had nothing on them!)
Staying with Proton a while, yet another new product has been launched, the
Proton Wallet, a self-custodial secure and private Bitcoin wallet. However, initially this is only available to Lifetime and Visionary Accounts. More general availability will follow gradually as and when sufficient infrastructure upgrades are in place.
In principle, I have to say I consider this app to be an excellent idea that fits perfectly into the Proton ecosystem and its ethos, and I quite eagerly await its general availability myself. And yet, there are at least two big 'buts' here. The appearance of the Wallet represents yet another alarm bell warning that Proton is over-stretching itself in a near frantic rush to come up with more and more features and apps. With a total of merely about 500 employees one has to wonder how many are actual programmers and otherwise directly concerned with application development, and how many are involved in admin, IT management, customer service/support, and other jobs. Even being (over-) generous, I cannot see how more than at most one third of the total could be engaged in the first category.
With five pre-existing apps, of which one (Pass) is very deeply flawed, another's (Drive) desktop implementation is deeply flawed, and even the generally excellent Mail and VPN need some improvements, in the case of the former just minor features and in that of the latter an improved update process, one could be forgiven to think there would be more than enough work to get things right and little time left for new major features let alone apps. (I so far have not been able to look at Proton Calendar as I've never had use for one so cannot comment on that yet.) And yet, we have recently had the new 'Doc' feature for Proton Drive, and - aimed squarely at the business sector - the new 'Scribe' add-on for Proton Mail, "a private writing assistant that writes and proofreads emails" to quote Proton's blurb! All this plus Wallet?!
Now for the second 'but'. If your infrastructure currently will not be able to cope with the demands of a general release, as indeed Proton admits is the case here with Proton Wallet, surely it would be better to just announce the app as a forthcoming one while the infrastructure is brought up to speed? Furthermore, this issue would seem to indicate that Proton's finances are somewhat stretched.
Anyway, for those interested in this app, there is more at
Proton Wallet. It's certainly mouthwatering!
A few months ago I mentioned the
Waterfox Browser. I have to add here that while over all my impression is still favourable, it does not see much use here and I am mostly just keeping an eye on it in the hope that certain issues will be addressed. The issues I quickly discovered include that of the cache not being cleared when re-starting or closing the browser in private mode, in common with Firefox, and not retaining the setting to query certificates. One lives in hope!
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All rights reserved20240715Why Is Proton Important?Proton, the Swiss premier privacy and security software developer, should matter a great deal to anyone even remotely concerned about their online privacy and security, and it is time we explored here why this should be so in a little more detail than would be possible elsewhere under the umbrella of "Online Security & Privacy 101".
In order to further assure their status as a not-for-profit, Proton has recently placed the majority shareholding of Proton AG into a non-profit
Proton Foundation, led by Proton founder Andy Yen, joined by Jason Stockman (Proton’s co-founder) and Dingchao Lu (Proton’s first employee). This is to assure Proton's ability to continue putting people and people's privacy and security before profit. This also puts beyond the remotest possible doubt the motives and aims and its essential benevolence, even nobility, of purpose.
Furthermore, to further confirm the soundness of its security systems underlying all their open source applications, Proton sought and recently received
ISO 27001 Certification, following a rigorous external audit. While this should also reassure ordinary users that their online privacy and security is in very safe hands with Proton, it no doubt is even more important to the corporate sector where Proton has to earn a substantial share of the funds it needs for continued development as well as continual upgrading and expansion of infrastructure.
While both of the above should substantially help to assure Proton's future longer term, in the shorter term there are without doubt difficulties to be met and overcome. Being funded solely by users paying for Proton's services - which is what Proton's apps essentially are - means that it is somewhat beholden to its users and their wishes. In other words, its users have a substantial influence on what will be developed. At the same time, Proton's funds are not unlimited - even if there are over 100 million paying users, this would still put considerable constraints on the numbers of developers that it can employ.
At present, there is already a substantial amount of work needed in fixing bugs and other issues in existing applications and achieving full parity for Linux. In addition, Proton's website, in my considered opinion, is in a woeful state and in need of complete re-design. Integration into Proton's own site of customer support - in place of the current service through Zendesk which is not end-to-end-encrypted while occasionally, support issues need users to disclose sensitive information - surely should be considered as fairly urgent. A little less urgent would be to move the current - IMO - rather messy and unsatisfactory Proton Uservoice to Proton's website in the form of a series of properly interactive forums.
Any one of these tasks would require a lot of work and even the first mentioned of fixing current apps should be enough to prohibit any immediate work on further apps. Proton's developer teams are not large enough for that as I see it.
One would therefore appeal to the Proton user community to show restraint in their wishes for new apps and to wait patiently. It is remarkable just how many apps Proton has already delivered in a relatively short time, and users ought to appreciate this and give Proton some breathing space as it were to put these right first.
Proton is the only comparatively major independent, non-profit and fully open source and open standards developer committed to a focus on privacy and data security there is at present. Its apps consist of Proton Mail, Proton Calender, Proton VPN, Proton Drive, and Proton Pass. An already rich privacy ecosystem that is available for all major computer platforms and mobile devices, and more.
This is why Proton is not merely important but I would suggest vital for anyone seeking to conduct their online activity in a privacy and security maintaining environment. All apps are and always will be available in free versions that are perfectly capable. At the very least, the privacy seeking internet user needs Proton VPN and Proton Mail. There simply is no viable, truly privacy-focused and safe alternative to these two. The Calender - which incidentally comes with Mail - is a feature rich app that also compares well to any competitor. Proton Drive in its web app form is excellent, though I cannot at present recommend the desktop apps for Windows and macOS as they still need a lot of work to make them secure and properly private. Until it also receives major improvements, I regret I also cannot recommend the Proton Pass app in any shape or form and instead would recommend using KeePassXC in the meantime. In particular, the latter's Password Generator is currently far more capable, allowing for very long passwords that can be highly complex and include extended ASCII characters. The 64-character limitation and lack of extended ASCII character option of the Password Generator of Proton Pass are sadly simply not up to scratch for now. As an example, I use complex 256 and even 512 character passwords that include extended ASCII characters for device encryption.
In conclusion, I simply cannot over-emphasize the importance of Proton for anybody with even the slightest concern for their online privacy and security. If you have not done so yet, I can only urge you to go and try the Proton apps and, if you can possibly afford them, get the paid apps and support Proton. And supplement them by using privacy-focussed browsers such as TOR and Firefox and privacy-focussed search engines such as DuckDuckGo and others. Also if at all possible avoid
anything Google.
Ultimately, everyone's freedom of speech/expression, freedom itself and even democracy depend on the fundamental right to privacy, and Proton is the best defence of this that we have. So come and join the good fight!
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All rights reserved20240526In the UK, a huge potential privacy issue is presented by the ongoing introduction of so-called smartmeters by electricity and gas suppliers. There are other issues in relation to these 'smartmeters' too, but here we shall focus on the privacy issue and only very briefly deal with other issues in passing.
'Smartmeters' started to be introduced in the UK in 2011, ostensibly with the aim that they would help reduce energy use and contribute to reaching the government's net-zero greenhouse emission targets. However, another scenario at least potentially presents itself. But first, a little insight into how 'smartmeters' function.
Briefly, they read your consumption of energy continuously like a conventional meter, but send these readings at user settable intervals - varying from every five minutes to once a month - via the cellphone network to the supplier. The data are processed - allegedly anonymised - by a specialist company before being returned to the supplier for billing the customer. However, unlike a conventional 'dumb' meter, 'smartmeters' record energy use in great detail, such as spikes and drops, in real time. Given the characteristics of various appliances and gadgets, it is possible to distinguish what is being switched on and when and when it is switched off.
All these data further can be used to exactly profile your energy use and more besides, such as the times you are active in your household, the times it is likely to be unattended, and more.
At present, energy suppliers claim that your data are not shared or sold on. Even if true, this could change at any time and most likely will eventually. But even in the absence of this, imagine what could happen in a major data breach : all your data could for instance end up on the dark web, giving a perfect guide to when it might be easiest to burgle your home!
Essentially, 'smartmeters' represent a massive violation of privacy that nobody should tolerate.
For a variety of reasons, almost half of UK households have so far refused to have 'smartmeters'. What the situation might be in other countries I have been unable to ascertain so far, although I certainly discovered that some countries have so far not started introducing them.
Of those households in the UK that have 'smartmeters', about half have or have had problems with them, such as malfunctions causing unusually - even stratospherically - high bills, and others. The other half seem happy with them and claim that having a 'smartmeter' is saving them money, sometimes a lot of money.
Apart from the gross privacy issue, there are as already indicated earlier other issues concerning 'smartmeters'. Perhaps one of the other major ones, if not the major one, is that the return of data to the supplier via the G5 cellnet network occurs in bursts at much higher energy levels than a cellphone, and this technology has not been around long enough yet to be considered safe with any degree of certainty. The considerable number of households that have or had problems with their 'smartmeters' is another.
However, it is of course the issue of massive privacy violation that is totally unacceptable. This is as bad as anything that the likes of Big Tech Google and others get up to. With one difference though - the energy suppliers themselves are completely clueless where IT technology is concerned! 'Smartmeter'? No thanks!
Finally, a brief return to the topic of encryption. While not a recent article,
Can Encryption Be Broken? is nonetheless of interest in this context, as well as
What To Do If Your Data Is Leaked?. The former explains the most common causes of encryption being broken, while the latter gives advice on what measures you could take in the event of your data being leaked.
How Passwords Become Compromised is about exactly what it says on the tin, while
Hacker tricks are getting smarter... deals with various fairly new methods that hackers use to get their hands on your data and how Proton's privacy apps can keep you safe.
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All rights reserved20240504Today, everything you always wanted to know about encryption but were afraid to ask. Well, almost everything.
Without further ado, the Proton Blog's
What is Encryption? article is a good introduction to the topic. Further information can be found in
What is PGP Encryption?,
What is End-to-End Encryption?, and
Zero-Access Encryption.
Also of interest should be
Post-Quantum Encryption, which deals with post Quantum-safe encryption, that is, encrption that should or will be safe even once Quantum computers do become a real threat as they should be able to break current encryptions.
Of further importance to note is
What is a Brute Force Attack?, a common variety of attacks seeking access to user data and more.
Last but perhaps not least,
Is the Future Passwordless? deals with the increasing number of methods of passwordless log-in and the for the foreseeable future co-existence of passwords with methods such as PassKeys and more.
Of course, this is by no means any kind of exhaustive information on the subject of encryption, but at least it covers a few bases.
Meanwhile, work is continuing here on further articles as listed on the Contents page, albeit slowly due to extreme time constraints. These latter also mean that Mini Blog posts unfortunately may have to take a bit of a backseat from time to time.
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All rights reserved20240420Something a little different this time - back to the usual next time. But this affects us all.
Directly related to privacy and security are the concepts of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and ultimately freedom of thought. Without these, there is no freedom, and democracy cannot exist.
All of these are being eroded to a frightening degree and indeed are threatened as never before. The tyrannies of 'Political Correctness' and Identity Politics - the politics of basing identity on the belonging to some kind of 'group', i.e., e.g., feminists, belonging to a particular minority religion, belonging to a certain minority ethnic group, Zionists, the LGBT (I'll stop at the 'T' as the 'T' is abomination enough IMO!) 'community', and others, and the 'woke' cult and ideology, 'cancel culture', and more - are certainly most instrumental in this erosion of freedom. Indeed, Identitarians practically and effectively act as a thought police.
Not enough that social media and similar platforms are firmly in the grip of this thought police, Big Tech itself has been quietly or not so quietly working away for some time at ways to censor speech and impose the ludicrous politically correct Orwellian NewSpeak on users.
Big Tech Speech-Police Feature To Promote ‘Inclusive Language’, an article by 'Save Britain' dated April 26th, 2022, makes for interesting reading! Of course, the villain of this particular piece should be familiar to everyone and it should come as no surprise that it is none other than 'Big G' aka Google itself.
And for a prime example of woke and cancel culture in action in the developer world seek out
this series of articles.
All this certainly reinforces the need for all internet users to fight for their privacy and for freedom and democracy itself. If you have not done so already, come and join the privacy revolution and embrace open source privacy software such as
Proton! All Proton apps are available in free versions - free not because of advertising but because of the large numbers opting for the paid versions.
Personally, I shall never succumb to NewSpeak and Political Correctness and other absurdities etc. Hence, let me conclude by paraphrasing that wonderful living, talking teddybear Ted: "F*** that! Who gives a shit about shit!"
Next time, the planned coverage of encryption and more.
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All rights reserved20240413A bumper crop today!
If you have ever wondered just how much email providers and various apps for your Windows or macOS PC and your smartphone care about your privacy, then discover just how you are being conned in this
"Privacy Washing" article on the Proton Blog!
Some news on the web browser front. This topic will be covered in some detail in its own forthcoming appendix here of course, but just a few 'head ups' for now. I am rather dismayed to discover that the otherwise possibly very good DuckDuckGo Browser for Windows is in fact a Microsoft Store app! I couldn't possibly comment on the macOS, iOS, or Android versions of course, and I was waiting to see when a Linux version would appear before having a closer look. In view of the news here I am not sure that I would actually recommend this browser.
I have been meaning to have a closer look at the
Waterfox Browser as that is once again an independent project in the hands of its original developer since last year. However, the Linux version seems to be a portable app without an installer and will run just from its unarchived directory. I still have not got around to creating the sym link but will do when I get a moment. First impressions are very favourable. Shall also install the Windows version ASAP.
Meanwhile, the Mullvad Browser does get used a bit - mainly in Ubuntu Linux - and performs well. Other browsers to be included in the appendix will include Librewolf, Pale Moon, and others.
Something for the Windows 10 and 11 users, but definitely somewhat savy ones, is
Windows Tool from Chris Titus. Open source of course. This runs in Windows Powershell (with Admin privilege) and lets you, among other useful things, tweak your Windows to your heart's content and remove a lot of junk and privacy/security impeaching stuff. For instance, it lets you get rid of that ghastly data harvester Windows Edge! It is a brilliant utility. I have been using it a fair bit for quite some time now and find it to be invaluable. I should have mentioned it here from the beginning of this Mini Blog but somehow always forgot until the topic came up in a query in a forum the other day!
Some of the results after first tweaking etc. session, only Windows 10, Proton VPN, and ESET running. (I kept a list! I was amazed!) Edge and MS Store apps - gone. A lot of other junk too. Hooray! Active tasks (e.g., Windows services - loaded only when needed) down 30-40%. Memory use down about 35%, overall resource use down substantially. Everything running noticeably faster. Shutdown almost instant. Reboot very fast and booting up very much quicker too. Result!
Definitely a 'must have' utility for privacy and security conscious Windows users.
And just in at the time of writing, Proton and Standard Notes
join forces. Excellent as Standard Notes is and much as this will be welcome by many users, I cannot help thinking this may be a bit of overkill, especially also considering Standard Notes' price structure. The top package costs about as much as Proton Unlimited. How that will all fit together remains to be seen. I cannot help being somewhat sceptical and concerned that this may be to the detriment of paying Proton users in terms of cost.
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All rights reserved20240324Lots of interesting and vitally important online privacy and security info this time.
To kick off, here's something for the iPhone users out there. Ever wondered how private using your iPhone really is? You may glean something from this
article on the Proton blog. After reading and digesting that, you may well want to throw the blessed iPhone in the junk and certainly ought to consider changing to something else, or at least making it as secure and private as possible. And BTW, much the same info pertains to the iPad also.
Also on the subject of privacy and data harvesting with particular regard to email,
this article from the Proton Blog focuses on Gmail but is likely to equally apply to other 'freebie' email providers, including at least to some extent to some of the claimed 'privacy' ones.
The lesson so far? Don't trust anything from anyone unless it's fully Open Source and gives you fully end-to-end-encrypted email with zero-access-encryption using fully open standard encrytion. (Hmm, yes, that leaves out Tuta - previously aka Tutanota - for starters.)
More on the topic of encryption perhaps another time.
The
Proton Pass Password Manager now fully supports
Passkeys for all Proton Pass users whether free or paid.
What's a Passkey? explains all.
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All rights reserved20240313Excellent news from Proton - their desktop app of the superb Password Generator/Manager / Identity Manager 'Proton Pass' for Windows is now available, in addition to their apps for Android and iOS. The Linux and macOS desktop apps should follow shortly, while in the meantime the browser extension is there. I personally have not had the opportunity yet to install the Windows app as I have not used Windows again yet - the Linux version will get far more use here when it comes along.
I would have provided a direct link to the Proton post announcing Proton Pass for Windows but only get an .onion (TOR network) link atm. You can find it easily enough though doing a quick search on the
PROTON WEBSITE.
And while you are there, you may also find heaps of excellent articles concerning privacy, security, and also all the superb Proton apps.
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All rights reserved20240224The documentary in the 'Storyville' series titled 'Total Trust: Surveillance State' broadcast on BBC4 TV at 22.00hrs GMT on 20th February in the UK proved of great interest indeed. Not only for what it actually dealt with, but just as interestingly for what it did not deal with - the world-wide descent into a surveillance society. Another point to note is, of course, just how accurate/credible this film was. Living in the age of 'fake news' and fake everything as we do, are any of the media still credible?
But let us assume for now that this film was accurate and credible. Yes, truly terrifying to say the least. But the western world is not very far behind, and in many ways it is well ahead of China. Digital surveillance and its consequent total erosion of privacy for one thing is far more advanced and far-ranging. But apart from that, other factors are at work in the erosion of freedom of expression freedom of dissent. In the west, we do not need any state apparatus to suppress our freedoms. The great public does a far better job already - the whole 'woke' and 'cancel culture', and the all-pervading identity politics make sure that dissent is not tolerated.
It is tragic and calamitous that the majority of ordinary people allow the erosion of freedom and privacy, and thereby democracy, to happen without even being aware of what is happening. It therefore is all the more important that people should vehemently and rigorously act to defend their freedom, privacy, and security online.
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All rights reserved20240217Another interesting
POST about just how much money 'Big Tech' is making from your data came up on the Proton Blog the other day. Data is indeed the new oil! For anyone wishing to explore the world of privacy and security in some depth, the Proton Blog is highly recommended in general, not just for the aforementioned post.
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All rights reserved20240213 The most recent changes to Outlook make it an unbelievably extensive and invasive Data Harvester. Have a look at this
Article on Proton's blog for all the gory details and ditch Outlook if you value your privacy and freedom and oppose total surveillance! This really is monstrous.
And more recently, in the UK London's Metropolitan Police have started 'experimentally' using Live Facial Recognition cameras! An unprecedented violation of privacy in this country, and civil liberties organisations may challenge this in the courts.
Still in the UK, BBC4 TV at 22.00hrs GMT on 20th February is showing a documentary in the 'Storyville' series titled 'Total Trust: Surveillance State' that should be of great interest to anyone who values privacy, freedom, and democracy. A surveillance state is totally incompatible with democracy and is in fact totalitarian.
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