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Me. I deal with IT security every day at work. I'm also a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). There are also other members that have similar background that I'm sure can speak their minds as well. I think Roger was asking in another thread about options for communicating securely. If you still want to stay online and have a smart phone, there are some suggestions that have been made by members. I'll just add my 2 cents here. Take it for what it's worth...

Get rid of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft logons. If you need an explanation of why at this point, please do yourself a favor and start a thread calling Travis a homo and enjoy that for a while.

For me, getting rid of Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft logons was easy, I just ripped the Band-Aid off. Google is more complicated. My Gmail account is all over the place online. I need to scrub all my online accounts. Cancel all the ones that are stupid to keep, and then change my account email address for the rest. If you have an android phone, it's difficult to use without a Google account and still use the core services or fetch apps off the Google play store for instance. It isn't impossible but it would required way more expertise than many have. But you can go into your Google account details and turn off a bunch of features like location history, search history etc. Yeah they probably can dig that off their servers but it would take effort.

I am going to a secure email address and account. An organization called protonmail is out of Switzerland. It's secure, encrypted email, they don't have ads, and they don't keep logs of email. They claim that even they cannot read your email. They also have a real VPN app (not just a proxy server) that does end to end encryption from your device to the VPN server. That makes it impossible for your ISP to watch your activities. Both the email and the VPN have free options, without ads and without logging and with full encryption. The paid accounts offer more features and bandwidth like being able to secure multiple devices simultaneously, having multiple email alias accounts, more load balancing across multiple servers, more email storage, more bandwidth etc. They only make money if someone gets a paid account so you may want to consider that. As an example, I got a paid email and VPN bundle deal on Black Friday for $8/ month called their "plus" plan. I can try and find a link to that if anyone is interested if it's still active on their web site.

For a messenger, a lot of people use Facebook messenger. Again, at this point- stupid. Some folks use a messenger called Whatsapp. Well, Facebook bought them, so still stupid. I am researching a secure messenger called "Signal", which is open source, not owned by any of the douche bag tech companies, and offers end to end encryption. That's all I know for now. If anyone is interested in that as an option, I will check it out and reply to the thread. The challenging thing about a messenger, is that whoever you communicate with will likely need the same app or the end to end encryption is moot and you might as well just shout your secrets out the window at rush hour.

For online searches, please do not use Google, Yahoo, or Bing anymore. Some have suggested they use Duckduckgo. That's better but not best imo. Yes, you are not using the Google servers for your searches. But as OP mentioned in another thread, Duckduckgo does use an archive of Google's search database. Google may not be tracking your searches in real time, but the search results may be optimized by their AI algorithms to give you targeted results that THEY want to give people to steer humans' thinking in a certain direction. For example, if you were to search on "corrupt politicians", Google's AI may give you a bunch of targeted results referring to Trump first, instead of Biden or Hilary etc. And that bias may be archived in what Duckduckgo uses. As someone mentioned in another thread, I use Qwant for a search engine which is out of France.

Bottom line, when looking for ways to securely communicate online, there is no perfect solution, but some simple changes can make you a lot more obscure. When looking at secure email, messengers and search engines, it's sad to say but I tend to look at options under the European Union security laws. Their privacy laws are much more strict than ours in the States. Our tech companies are in on the agenda and they are in bed with some very bad people.

Take care and welcome to Amerika comrads.


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Big ++++++++ on Signal


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Good stuff, Jake. Thanks.

I'm that one guy still using AOL for email, probably not good, huh?

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Thanks.


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Thanks for the info. I will likely use quant.com for now on.


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I've been using Swisscows as my search engine for a while now.

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Also, if you haven't done so yet, you should get a password vault. There are some free options out there that would be fine for most people. Lastpass and Firstpass are popular. Personally, I use Bitwarden for my password vault because it also allows me to integrate with my work multi factor authentication needs. But people need to get into the settings on their browsers, turn off tracking, and at least 3rd party cookies, and turn off password save and auto fill. It's more of a pain but much more secure to use a password vault instead of relying on your browser's security.


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Originally Posted by JakeBlues
An organization called protonmail is out of Switzerland. It's secure, encrypted email, they don't have ads, and they don't keep logs of email.


I have seen this one tossed about quite a bit the last couple days.

Thanks Jake.


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Damn good post... And I TOTALLY agree with ditching twitter, FB et al...


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Thanks for the heads-up!


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Drum roll please...... "I don't know, to be clear." and THAT is one promise he's kept!!!
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Originally Posted by JakeBlues
Also, if you haven't done so yet, you should get a password vault. There are some free options out there that would be fine for most people. Lastpass and Firstpass are popular. Personally, I use Bitwarden for my password vault because it also allows me to integrate with my work multi factor authentication needs. But people need to get into the settings on their browsers, turn off tracking, and at least 3rd party cookies, and turn off password save and auto fill. It's more of a pain but much more secure to use a password vault instead of relying on your browser's security.


I use Avast Ultimate......is that a no-go?


Biden's most truthful quote ever came during his first press conference, 03/25/21.
Drum roll please...... "I don't know, to be clear." and THAT is one promise he's kept!!!
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If you don't want to get a standalone VPN, you can consider using the Opera browser. It's a spin off of Chrome but it has a built-in VPN that works pretty well and is free.


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10-4, good buddy.....

Couple of questions. I own my own domain name and use it's email service. Any reason to still go to a third party email provider?
Two: Browsers. Firefox OK? Or? What about the Firefox VPN service? Credible?

As far as a messenger, what's wrong with SMS, over?


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Originally Posted by Nebraska
Originally Posted by JakeBlues
Also, if you haven't done so yet, you should get a password vault. There are some free options out there that would be fine for most people. Lastpass and Firstpass are popular. Personally, I use Bitwarden for my password vault because it also allows me to integrate with my work multi factor authentication needs. But people need to get into the settings on their browsers, turn off tracking, and at least 3rd party cookies, and turn off password save and auto fill. It's more of a pain but much more secure to use a password vault instead of relying on your browser's security.

I use Avast Ultimate......is that a no-go?

I looked at the specs on their password manager module and it appears to be a pretty good product. That all assumed you're using the PW vault to save and auto fill credentials. If your PW data is also stored in the browser, it kinda defeats the purpose.


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Thanks!

Just switched from firefox to brave and still running duck duck go but will try qwuant. Brave sends 1 add/hour but can ignore them at least so far and otherwise no adds seem to get through.

Have been looking at Swiss proton mail and thier VPN.

Looks like some excellent startup opportunities for American developers.

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Excellent post


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Originally Posted by Dutch
10-4, good buddy.....

Couple of questions. I own my own domain name and use it's email service. Any reason to still go to a third party email provider?
Two: Browsers. Firefox OK? Or? What about the Firefox VPN service? Credible?

As far as a messenger, what's wrong with SMS, over?

As far as browsers are concerned, I would stick to non Google and non Microsoft services variants. No Internet Explorer, no Chrome and no Edge. Firefox would be better. And you can use browsers that use the Chromium code, as long as they don't integrate with Google's cloud. Microsoft Edge actually uses Chromium code and doesn't tie into Google's cloud but who knows what Bill Gates has going on in that browser. So for the Chromium derivatives, my overall favorite for most people is probably Opera because it has a built-in ad blocker and free VPN. I like the Iridium browser because it is built from the ground up for security and all Google integration points are removed. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a mobile version, otherwise I would probably use it on everything. Brave is a pretty good option in that category as well. I'm sure Mozilla has a good VPN.


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What about web browsing on the phone? I assume there is something much better than Safari...

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Originally Posted by Dutch
I own my own domain name and use it's email service. Any reason to still go to a third party email provider?

As far as a messenger, what's wrong with SMS, over?

Unfortunately, there no way for me to tell you how secure your email service is. There are two ways in which email can be secured. They email itself can have end to end encryption, in which case, the message cannot be read while enroute. The other way is for it to have a digital signature. That doesn't make it unreadable, but it ensures the email is not modified enroute. You would have to ask you email service provider what they have for options.

When you refer to SMS, that's really more of a messaging format than anything (plain text). If you were thinking "text messages" over your cellular carrier service, well, that's not very secure actually. When I was referring to messengers, I am talking about a standalone app that can do instant messaging. Seems similar but the backbone is different. It seems similar simply because most cellular text messages have multimedia capability today so the lines have become grey.

An instant messenger is going to go across the Internet as opposed to the phone providers data network. The goal would be to have a messenger that provides end to end encryption and NO LOGGING of your data. That's why I suggested Signal in my post. Still researching that one.


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Originally Posted by wrecklessranch
What about web browsing on the phone? I assume there is something much better than Safari...

So Safari is a pick your poison question because it's an Apple product and God knows Apple's schit is all integrated so you have to use all their stuff. Some people think Apple is more secure because in the past there have been times when the Feds wanted them to crack someone's device for information and they refused. I respect that, but this latest talk of them taking the Parler app off the Apple store is crap if it's true. So maybe in some regards there more privacy trustworthy, but in other regards, they're in bed with Satan too. You have to make your own choice there. Personally, after hearing about the Parler app, I would never buy an Apple product. In all fairness, that's easy for me to say because I don't own one now and never have. I'm not going to tell someone to get rid of a $1,000 iPhone.

For a mobile phone, I would stick with Opera, Firefox or Brave probably. I have Opera right now because it had the built-in VPN and ad blocker. Since I got the Proton VPN, I'm may reevaluate my options there. One of the biggest limitations of the mobile browsers that are Chromium based, like Opera and Brave, is that there's no support for extensions. So if your favorite ad blocker is an extension, you're out of luck on those. Just turns out all I used extensions for was ad blocking and VPN and Opera has those built-in. There is one exception, however, call the "Kiwi" browser, that is Chromium based and also allows extensions. If that's important to you, you can look into that. I have not seen a serious security audit done on that browser so for now it a no-go for me. Firefox still supports extensions on the mobile browser if that's important to you.


Progressives are the most open minded, tolerant, and inclusive people on the planet, as long as you agree with everything they say, and do exactly as you're told.
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