Hi! 2 and 4 months ago @Hellfire103 and @Charger8232 made a post about their privacy setup. So I though I would also share mine.
Remember these rules:
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Be respectful! Some people are early on in their privacy journey, or have a lax threat model. Just because it doesnāt align with yours, or uses some anti-privacy software, doesnāt mean you can downvote them! Help them improve by giving suggestions on alternatives.
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Donāt promote proprietary software! Proprietary software, no matter how good it may seem, is against the community rules, and generally frowned upon. If you arenāt sure, you can always ask! This is a place to learn. Donāt downvote people just because they donāt know!
-** Donāt focus solely on me!** I want to mention that this thread is not designed to pick apart only my setup. The point is to contribute your own and help others. That doesnāt mean you canāt still give suggestions for mine, but donāt prioritize mine over another.
- Be polite! This falls under āBe respectfulā, but be kind to everyone! Say please, thank you, and sorry. Lemmy is really good about this, but there will always be someone.
Here is my setup:
Web browsing
- I use Librewolf for almost everything.
- For 3D stuff (games, 3d modelling) I use Brave.
- On mobile I use Vanadium.
- My preferred search engine is Kagi.
- Most if the time I have MullvadVPN enabled.
Desktop and laptop
- I have self-build Ryzen + Radeon PC and Ideapad with Ryzen CPU.
- I use Arch Linux BTW!
- I have disk encryption and Nitrokey as a decryption key (or a long password of course).
- I have secure boot with locked BIOS.
- Iām running self-compiled linux-hardened kernel.
- Iām using Gnome (Wayland).
- I have only open-source apps installed.
Mobile
- I have Google Pixel 7a with GrapheneOS.
- I have different 5 profiles: main, google, school, finance, anonymous.
- I have PIN on every profile and also fingerprint for main and school profiles.
- I always use VPN, either Mullvad or self-hosted Wireguard.
- I donāt use a privacy screen protector (for now).
Messenger
- Signal for my family.
- Viber for my schoolmates.
- MS Teams for school.
- Matrix for help with some open-source projects.
- Discord for voice chat and local scouts group. I have Aliucord on mobile and Armcord on desktop.
Online accounts
- Passwords are safe in self-hosted Bitwarden (Vaultwarden).
- I use 2FA if I can. Either hardware 2FA - Nitrokey, or TOTP with Aegis.
- I use SimpleLogin for email aliases and randomly generated usernames and passwords.
Video streaming
- I watch only Youtube. Newpipe on mobile and Invidious on desktop.
AI
- I do not use AI a lot, but if I do I use locally running LLama3 8B or Duckduckgoās LLama3 70B
Social Media
- I had Instagram, Snapchat and Viber accounts, but Iāve deleted them.
- I use only Lemmy on clearweb and Dread on darkweb.
- I have Mastodon account, but I donāt use it.
- I use ProtonMail.
- One of the best privacy things you can do is use SimpleLogin (or other email alias service).
Shopping/Finance
- IRL I use cash most of the time.
- Online I use Monero if I can, otherwise just my credit card.
- Cashew app for helping managing my purchases.
Music streaming
- I use only RiMusic on my phone, thatās it.
TV shows
- I use a VPN, thatās all Iām gonna sayā¦
Gaming
- Minecraft, Veloren, SuperTuxKart, and some Steam games.
Programming
- I forgot how to code in Python, because Rust is so much better.
- VS Codium.
Productivity
- LibreOffice for simple stuff.
- Typst for proper documents.
Paid services
- ProtonMail - 4$ per month
- SimpleLogin - 30$ per year
- MullvadVPN - 5$ per month
- Kagi - 10$ per month. For 5$ you get 300 searches, I use ~350 searches so I will try to lower my searches.
- Domain - 13$ per year
Self-hosted
- Everything runs on Raspberry Pi 4 with encrypted micro SD card.
- Pi-Hole for blocking ads on network level.
- Bitwarden (Vaultwarden) for storing all my passwords.
- Wireguard server (with pihole as DNS) for connecting back home from anywhere.
- Ntfy for self-hosted push notifications.
- MollySocket for Signal push notifications.
- FindMyDevice if I lost my phone.
- Cloudflare DDNS, because I donāt have static IP.
- Nginx Proxy Manager.
- Watchtower automatically updates docker containers.
- My website.
Misc
- I have Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 classic. Iām trying to do something about itā¦
- Iām using Syncthing to sync documents and pictures between my devices.
- I donāt have a car (because I canāt - Iām 17) and I wonāt have one for quite some time. I have a bicycle and my parents have 2 (smart/spy) cars.
- Iām into crypto (mostly XMR) and Iām trading a little (making a trading bot) on MEXC. I also have Ledger Nano S Plus.
- I have a 3d printer and itās fun and usefull :)
TODO
- self-host Git repos for my projects.
- Buy a privacy screen protector when I break my current one.
- Buy a faraday bag, just in case.
- Do something about my spywatch (maybe sell).
- Make backupsā¦ Yep, I donāt have any yet.
- Monitor and harden all my devices.
- Memorize cryptowalletās private key in case it gets lost.
Thanks for reading!
They require your payment information and you sign in to use it.
First of all, you can pay with crypto and use a burner email, but secondly, they donāt link searches to your payment or sign in. (Assuming of course you take their word for it, but thatās the same for every service that you do not host or compile yourself, and for which youāve also read the entire source code yourself.)
Iām not saying people should use Kagi, Iām merely pointing out you canāt claim itās āmisleading and not privateā without providing some sort of proof.
At best you can say you canāt verify for yourself that they are indeed private as they claim.
On Duckduckgo you can use it with Tor and have a totally different session for each search. You canāt do that with Kagi. You are stuck with one account for everything.
ddg results arenāt as good :(