“I trust Mozilla more than Google; the problem is Mozilla trusts Google more than you” Google is the default search engine on Firefox. All their app store screenshots feature Google Search. No self hosted F-Droid repo. It’s again Google Play. Google is their primary & only ‘real’ source of income. Ironically their only real competitor. Do they want to promote privacy friendly social media? I see no PeerTube or Mastodon accounts to follow; it’s again Twitter & YouTube....

Whaat? you use Linux? aRe yOu sOme hAcKeR? No, that’s not how I perceive it. People & the media - have confused us with the term hacker. I mean ‘hacking’ as in ‘a hacksmith’ someone who is playfully clever. Tinkering stuff, not just computers, hacking as in life-hacks, not breaching security as such, they too are hackers but not the only ones :0 GNU+Linux gives me the Freedom to get my perfect look ~ this is what I meant by ‘hacking’ 👨‍💻 A musician has total control over their guitar, an artist over the paintbrush 🖌 me & (hopefully) you over our computers It’s the perfect OS for hackers - people who want control over the tools they use You probably use a partially libre software operating system already!...

If you’ve searched for privacy oriented messaging apps Signal tops that list. By now you’ve probably heard about Signal the centralized, navy blue, metadata resistant messaging app, now anchored by an ex WhatsApp co-founder. Signal values great security and it has strong, out of the box client side end to end encryption, plus forced 2fa called Signal PINs Signal out of the box still lacks a bit of polish....

Unless you’re from the USA (the land of free SMS). You probably use a messaging app like WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram Why? You get cross-device-sync, better features, ditch phone numbers as identifiers, privacy controls, stickers & share huge files Does Privacy = Security? A prime example of this is ‘WhatsApp’. News and media websites keep using that buzzword ~ End To End Encryption and say your messages are secure....

I posted recently, on my Mastodon account As you can deduct, I’m a big fan of the fediverse and I blogged about switching to the fediverse a long while ago and it’s going great Wait? why not Twitter?, YouTube or XYZ? Any social network is only as valuable as their users - Network effect Post content to PeerTube a week or two before it goes to YouTube, post to Mastodon and use IFTTT to auto fetch the RSS feed and don’t look back on Twitter Another way to think is - the only reason to be on YouTube or some proprietary service is to get everyone to join the fediverse and discover alt-platforms through your account Post content to the decentralized fediverse first, before they air on centralized social media ~ reboost it, cross platform and aim for organic growth not to please an algorithm, plus it saves you time and effort because it’s modifiable to serve your needs....

China; heard about China in these recent days? The app bans and censoring websites of Chinese origin under the so called name of national security and privacy of Indian citizens? While ironically the Government relies on American services and #BigTech giants like GAFAM Google, Apple, Facebook (Instagram and WhatsApp), Amazon and Microsoft and they don’t face the ban hammer because of their countless privacy violations The Indian government has no problem with the American government spying on us....

The quickest way to call me? 🤙 VoIP calls: polarhive.ml/contact A dilemma ~ privacy? or instant connectivity - you can’t have both There’s the obvious privacy issue, the cellular radio in the phone is screaming all day to towers near you to keep you connected 24/7 wherever you go. I have the phone app disabled on my phone. Airplane mode turned on and only rely on WiFi for my internet When using a SIM, there’s no guarantee that calls and SMSs are not intercepted....

What is Tor? Tor is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the original software project name “The Onion Router”.[7][8] Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network consisting of more than seven thousand relays[9] to conceal a user’s location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Unblock domains, access websites freely and securely This article is a quick how to guide on circumventing censorship online....

Without the big 5 tech titans. Utilizing FOSS/Libre software Here’s what’s different from your average expectation from a phone It runs Android, without pinging Google or other such servers without me telling to do so. No ads, spyware, lag or battery draining apps. No Google apps, none of the infested Facebook apps, Tencent, WeChat, TikTok whatever that mistreats me, the user. There are better alternatives to WhatsApp for example....

Imagine Instagram allowed users to follow and like someone else’s Tweets through the Instagram app or follow their favorite YouTube channel with their Instagram account You can like posts follow Pixelfed from your Mastodon account. You can watch a PeerTube video on Mastodon like and comment with your Mastodon account that’s the beauty of the Fediverse. This is federated social media, best implemented by the ActivityPub protocol Mastodon, PeerTube, Pleroma, FunkWhale, WriteFreely, Pixelfed and many many more you can discover...