Quote: (02-18-2018 03:06 PM)Dragan Wrote:
What are some good alt-tech sites/service?
I think the time of alt-tech has arrived.
I use TOR for anything where i want to avoid tracking.
Tor is good, but not ideal for general day-to-day browsing. VPNs are better because they're faster and you can pick a location you want to appear to be from. PIA, Mulvad and AirVPN are good options that take your privacy seriously. Never use a free VPN and never buy a VPN based only on one review site. You want several independent sources to confirm that the VPN doesn't log information about you. What I tend to look for are services run by people with an "activist" mindset, meaning simply that they are pro-privacy based on principle rather than as a selling point.
Other Alt-Tech:
VeraCrypt - For encrypting your hard drive or SSD. If someone steals your laptop, they can take out the hard drive, connect it to their computer via USB and read all your files. Full Disk Encryption will prevent this. NEVER forget your password. ALWAYS read the manual before doing something. ALWAYS back up your files before your start. I didn't include a link because you should do some research before using it anyway. Clicking mindlessly through it could easily lock you out of your computer.
KeePass - An encrypted password database. A file that stores a list of all your passwords. The file is encrypted and is unlocked with a password that you remember. This is now the ONLY password you have to remember because all the others are stored in the file. The big benefit of this is that you can have a unique, strong password for every site or program that you use. One of the biggest threats is using the same password for several online services. We all do this and we all know we shouldn't. KeePass is the solution.
ProtonMail - Secure(ish) e-mail address that most likely doesn't spy on your or require a phone number to sign up. They have a free and a paid version. If you sign up with Tor, you might have to give a phone number because they get a lot of people creating one-off e-mail addresses.
Bloody Vikings (Firefox) / Chrome - Consolidates several free disposable e-mail addresses so your main address doesn't get spammed or shared with the service provider. Just right-click the e-mail field when you sign up, select Bloody Vikings and choose a disposable e-mail provider. A unique address will be filled into the form field and a new tab opens where you can check the inbox.
Mozilla Thunderbird - From the guys behind Firefox. Can replace Outlook or Gmail.
Monero (XMR) - Private and anonymous version of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not anonymous and all payments are public on the blockchain. This is not the case with Monero. There are other so called "privacy coins," but Monero is the best established one.
HexChat - IRC Client. Alternative to mIRC. If you use IRC on a regular basis, you probably don't need to take tech tips from me.
StartPage - Like DuckDuckGo, it's a search engine that takes its results from Google. Also has a proxy service so you can see the site without actually going to the site in your browser. Never use free proxies, but in this case it doesn't matter because the search engine will always be able to tell which link you clicked on the results page. They also must know what content is on the site you clicked because otherwise they can't serve you the search result. Startpage has been around for many years and I've never heard anything bad about it.
GPG Encryption - A way to encrypt the contents of e-mails or files before sending. It's a fairly complicated topic that requires some research before using. I put it last because it's not really as useful as you would think. The reason for that is that very few people actually use it or know how to use it. End-to-End encryption only works if both participants know how to use it. To use a real world example: I could send you a locked safe with 100,000 dollars, but unless you have a key to it, the safe is useless to you. On the other hand, if we both have a key, we can be reasonably sure that the postman won't steal it because he couldn't open it anyway.
CRUCIAL BROWSER ADDONS:
uBlock - Blocks ads, is very lightweight and can be configured extensively. Read the manual before starting advanced configuration, as it can be tricky to troubleshoot why sites suddenly don't load if you mess something up. Works great out of the box, though, so 99% of people shouldn't need to change anything.
HTTPS Everywhere - If there's an encrypted version of the site available, this add-on will ensure your browser uses it.
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