Currently trying to make more emails for myself, and I want something outside of Gmail. I already have a Proton and Tutanote email, but I keep those private. I don't want to violate their ToS, so I'm wondering if there's any other email providers I can use for my email.

I'm de-googling my life and email is the last big step. I was about to pay for mailbox, but now I'm second-guessing it and considering Tuta as well.

What matters to me is: it has to be hosted in EU.

Has anyone used both? Which one would you pick, and what are the real-world downsides of each? Open to other suggestions if they fit the requirement.

Thanks to everyone who will help me find the right email provider!

Oh and I don't like proton.

Beforehand this is less of a tech support issue rather than a privacy concern, Smart TVs are flooding the market and finding one that does not possess these capabilities is a real pain. Not connecting it to the internet does not suffice in certain cases due to remote access (which is available even on monitors) allowing some Smart TVs to upload data collected locally.

I was wondering if desoldering the storage NANDs would basically turn the Smart TV into a regular TV or if the primary NANDs also contained things such as calibration, drivers, etc.

You see I think it does, as the ai age verification costs alot, also it can kill independent studios which is supported by under 16s and such. If you remove them it causes a decay of the internet first, independent studios start to run out of money, next the social media start removing content and alot of innocent ones, then the independent studios go bankrupt which includes non big tech, then finally big tech has a massive hold and still has alot of money. Don't forget, people protecting their privacy, big tech realizing they can lobby more, and such.

Today there will be the final votes for chat control.

This implies that all of our private chats will be scanned, and everything we do will be in plain text in front of their eyes.

If it passes, I will permanently stop using centralized messaging platforms and switch to a self hosted matrix session, I don't care if I lose many contacts, if they really want to talk to me they better install fluffychat and shut the fuck up.

It's crazy how the EU was basically the goat for internet privacy and now they are the villains.

Are you ready for this? For the absolute end of privacy?

I ask this cause I heard that this is so far a confirmed date of when it will drop at the UK here.

Which apart from many worrying things in the world,this one is quite concerning to say the least.

PorkBun has gotten popular lately as a registrar for domain names. I recently tried to register a domain, and they demanded a biometric face scan and government ID. None of the other registrars I've worked with recently have made this kind of preposterous demand.

In case it needs saying out loud here, never do this. It is not necessary for security, and the companies who run these face scan apps range from leaky sieves of data breaches in the best cases to subcontractors of Palantir in the worst.

PorkBun evidently demands face scans on a case-by-case basis, meaning many current users may not have had to deal with this yet. If you use them and they haven't required a scan, be aware that they can lock your account at any moment in the future for "security reasons," shutting off your access to your own domain, until you are forced to consent to their ridiculous invasion of your personal data. This must not be normalized. Do not use PorkBun. If you use them now, find a new registrar before they lock your account, and tell PorkBun why you're leaving.

​I was literally in the middle of upgrading to Pro, entered my credit card info, and was ready to check out when a verification pop-up blocked me. So far, so good... until I realized what it was asking for: a live face scan and a picture of my government passport.

​The vendor Anthropic forces you to use for this is Persona. Who backs Persona? Founders Fund, Peter Thiel's VC firm. Thiel is also the co-founder and chairman of Palantir.

​Think about that setup for a second. Palantir's entire business model is mass surveillance and intelligence software used by governments, police, and the military to track and identify people. Persona is the identity pipeline processing passports and biometric facial geometry. When these corporate ecosystems intersect, you are feeding detailed biometric data directly into a network built around surveillance infrastructure.

​I know some of you will reply with "I have nothing to hide." But saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. Privacy is a fundamental right. Even if you think your day-to-day life is completely uninteresting, surrendering your biometrics to private corporations sets a dangerous precedent where accessing basic digital tools requires handing over your core identity.

​Some people will argue that the government already has our passports anyway, but that misses the entire point. In a constitutional democracy, there are laws, legal rights, and courts limiting what the state can legally do with your data. If politicians abuse their power, citizens can vote them out. But when you hand your biometrics over to a private corporate ecosystem, all democratic control disappears completely. You have zero say in how that data is stored, shared, or leveraged down the line. A private company answers only to its shareholders and profit motives, not to your civil liberties.

​Take a look at Thiel himself. He's an openly gay billionaire, married with kids, who is deeply conservative and literally gives talks around the world framing global politics in biblical terms about the Antichrist. He openly pushes back against the democratic institutions designed to regulate tech giants like him.

​And if you try to criticize these entities publicly, they play hardball. Look at how Thiel funded the Hulk Hogan lawsuit to bankrupt Gawker. Or look at the recent case in Switzerland where Palantir tried to legally force the independent magazine Republik to print massive counter-statements after investigating them. Luckily, the Swiss court shut Palantir down and press freedom won, but still.

​It really comes down to one question: Do you actually trust handing your face scan and passport to an identity system tied to Peter Thiel? If you do, go ahead and give them your data, but live with whatever happens down the road. If you don't trust them, draw a line and don't hand over your most delicate identity data just to use a chat interface.

​Am I pissed off that I can't use Claude or Claude Code anymore? Of course I am. It's currently the best tool out there for coding. But I'll just find an alternative. Competitors will catch up, open-weight models will get better, and the gap will close.

​And before anyone says "They need this to stop bots and AI abuse": come on. There are a dozen ways to prevent abuse, like rate limits, hardware tokens, device attestation, or fraud detection that don't require harvesting raw biometric face scans paired with government IDs.

​Rant over.

It is possible to set a password and encrypt your files via WinRar.

Wanted to ask the more techsavy people, how legit is it, if I want to upload those files to my google drive, but make them unreadable for google?

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I can't believe it - I've been saying for a while now that as my accounts are all around 18 years old I shouldn't have to verify my age with anyone.

Well for some reason I can't post a screenshot but I just got an email from Xbox that's says;

"Due to your longstanding XBOX account activity, we’ve estimated your XBOX profile to be an adult account and updated its age verification status to “Verified.” You are no longer required to complete full age verification for uninterrupted access to social features on XBOX."

I'm not optimistic but I hope everyone else follows their example.

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I'm interested in the Pocketbook Verse. How private are they?

I am going to need a new car soon and the U.S. models all collect huge amounts of data. Are there any tips or tricks to reduce the info they collect from the car remotely?

If I have our family trust own the auto and pay cash rather than financing how effectively does that reduce the personal info I am forced to provide. Will this keep the data from car from being attached to me?

How much would it help to buy a used car? Does it reduce the data tracked and sold about me?

Hey so a cousin of mine has an old instagram account from years ago where they have pictures of like family birthdays and there are some cringy photos of me of there. My cousin doesn't have access to the account anymore and it's public. I don't use social media that much except to follow relatives and friends and I don't post anything myself. I have reported the account to instagram and nothing is being done to them. It's costly but I am thinking of using online removal services like maximatic media to get the account taken down. Has anyone used any removal services or gotten pages taken down if so how? I have tried everything and i just don't want cringy pictures of me on social media.

When browsing images from the photos tab in messages, I often see that iOS will ask to download the photo. Initially I thought this was a cache issue, but when I try to download the image while in airplane mode or without internet the download fails.

What is confusing is that the photos are stored locally in messages and I can access all of them just fine by scrolling through messages. I also have iCloud turned off for photos and messages so they technically shouldn’t exist anywhere online to be downloaded from.

What is happening here? Is this some kind of bug where iOS assumes it needs the internet and refuses to try without it, or is Apple saving copies of all your messages/ photos even if you have those features turned off?

please i wanna leave discord, do i trust hitting the delete button on discord deletes anything? no, but I wanna export, and the tool is so beautiful, i wanna remember my friends chats, just not on discord servers, can someone please help