• 0 Posts
  • 48 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 24th, 2023
  • ashaman2007@lemm.eetoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Is F-droid insecure?
    2·
    9 days ago

    Let’s be careful to remember that there are different levels of effort and understanding required for different levels of security and privacy. GrapheneOS has taken the approach of offering harm reduction, with sane defaults and options that allow advanced users to take near-complete control over their device (within the limits of the Pixel hardware). This is obvious by their inclusion of the sandboxed Google Play Store as a major feature of the OS, as it is much better than the situation on Google’s Android. It is also not installed by default, forcing users to at least somewhat educate themselves in order to install it.

    Accrescent is right in line with this philosophy, and is also not installed by default. Of course if your threat model (or desire) is to achieve the highest level of online anonymity and to have a completely FOSS system, you should not use it… of course you probably shouldn’t use FDroid either, in that case, and should build from source. However, you are clearly in a situation where your threat model does not require those lengths, and FDroid is more of a principled choice.

    I think its pointlessly inflammatory to call Accrescent “dangerous” just because it allows for non-FOSS software. Now if you want to criticize whether or not it is fulfilling its stated goals, that is another story.

  • ashaman2007@lemm.eetoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Why was the thread about the free VPN Riseup removed, while there's a 2 day old thread about Windscribe, a paid VPN still active?
    271·
    4 months ago

    I would be interested to know why you are pushing this product across multiple places on Lemmy. Your post, despite disparaging “viral marketers”, has a viral marketing tone with statements such as “I feel like I’ve been wasting money on my VPN ever since I found Riseup”.

    Additionally, while I do believe a free VPN using an autonomous collective, resource pooling approach is a great idea, in practice this VPN has had… not a great history from my point of view. A quick search shows that in 2017 they were forced to comply with US Law Enforcement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riseup, see the Warrant Canary section. VPNs based in the US are known to be at risk, and this is another good example.

    When choosing a VPN provider, server location is important, as well as company location. You are repeatedly encouraging people to Torrent from a VPN based in one of the most zealous countries opposing file sharing worldwide, and one that has already worked with Law Enforcement.

  • ashaman2007@lemm.eetoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•FYI - Graphene OS has biometrics with pin
    6·
    4 months ago

    FYI, for folks currently using a normal PIN and looking to use this, it’s intended that the 2nd factor PIN at least be different than the main unlock PIN. Otherwise you can just swipe up to dismiss the fingerprint prompt and get to the main PIN prompt; if its the same as your 2nd factor, that’s pointless.

    I was told on the Graphene matrix channel that the most secure configuration for this is:

    Main unlock method: 6 word diceware password

    Secondary unlock method: biometric + 6 character 2nd factor PIN

    Be aware that if you use this config that you will be prompted for the main unlock method (long password) at reboot, and also every 48 hours.