
Privacy Respecting Services and Software - nikivi
https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/privacy-respecting
======
jancsika
Under "Browsers" Tor browser is listed as an alternative to "You are the
product".

I'd like to take a shot at a quick counter-argument:

1\. Tor gets money by delivering a workable privacy overlay to organizations
that fund it for such a purpose. The largest funder is the U.S. government.

2\. To operate properly, Tor needs a relatively large anonymity pool.

3\. The Tor service itself-- while still certainly useful (esp. its hidden
services, even for purposes that don't require anonymity)-- doesn't generate a
large enough anonymity pool.

4\. Tor Browser Bundle adds to the anonymity pool by making the Tor service
usable to a much wider audience of non-technical users.

5\. To actually attract such users, Tor Browser Bundle must allow Javascript
by default so that sites do not "appear broken" by non-technical users who
don't understand the intricacies of a low latency privacy overlay.

6\. The set of TBB users who view sites with Javascript on by default are
subject to a wide variety of de-anonymization attacks which, while generally
not trivial nor cheap, put them at greater risk than users who are not using
Tor with a browser frontend.

7\. Either the U.S. government funds Tor with the intent to use it with a
browser frontend, or they fund it for use without a browser frontend. _If_
they fund it in order to leverage the Tor service without needing the browser
frontend, then congratulations! You-- the non-technical TBB user-- are the
product.

What do you think?

~~~
devrandomguy
When did Tor Browser start enabling JS by default? It was blocked by noscript
by default for me, when I started using it years ago, and that was still the
case the last time I installed a new workstation OS, earlier this year.

I use TBB for about 20% of my browsing, a habit that I cultivated while
traveling and working overseas. Now, with all the crazy identity politics
going on at the major data companies, I think that anonymity is becoming much
more important for the general public.

Thank you for playing devil's advocate. The fact that the project is funded by
the US govt is certainly concerning, no doubt about that. I can only hope that
their motive is just to enable their own agents to operate online without
being identified, profiled and social-graphed by the private sector.

~~~
jancsika
> When did Tor Browser start enabling JS by default? It was blocked by
> noscript by default for me, when I started using it years ago, and that was
> still the case the last time I installed a new workstation OS, earlier this
> year.

You sure about that?

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBJavaScriptEna...](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBJavaScriptEnabled)

------
schoen
I don't understand why Telegram is categorized as "You are the product" there.
In particular, I thought the most prominent criticisms of Telegram (including
those linked to on this page) were related to engineering rather than to its
business model or privacy practices.

~~~
devrandomguy
IMO, requiring a mobile number is grounds for disqualification, because it
strongly identifies a person, and can be abused quite badly. Telegram demands
a mobile number, even though it does not need to place calls. Check out Wire
for an alternative.

[http://wire.com/](http://wire.com/)

~~~
ktta
Signal does the exact same thing.

------
dahoramanodoceu
I tried setting up a usable mastadon and distopia account, not only are the
interfaces shit, but during my signup I had 0 explanation about the process
(where's the FAQ and blog posts explaining stuff?).

Also, during the sign-up, both Mastadon and Distopia give me a list of
instances , but close to Zero information about the instances, so after some
failed google searches i just randomly picked one and was dumped into shitty
web UI with no information whatsoever.

In the end I had a bunch of unanswered questions (how do i link instances, or
do i have to do a seperate sign up for each one?), so i just gave up.

~~~
dahoramanodoceu
It's pertinent to add that this lack of documentation is recurrent in a lot of
FLOSS projects. I don't think that software like linux and mastadon and
distopia need to be simplified, they just need people who are good at
explaining stuff to spend more time doing just that. Instead, projects geared
to the lay user like ubuntu and distopia think pretty UI and graphics are what
drive traffic. I wholeheartedly disagree.

What makes for a rewarding User-Experience is first and foremost getting shit
done (aka challenge/reward), not the resolution of the feedback sprite or the
trendiness of your color-scheme/layout.

~~~
dahoramanodoceu
and, so, to drive user adoption you aren't required as a rule to shorten the
time-to-accomplish-distance between the two elements of the first challenge /
reward, there is such thing as making it too easy, as growth / prowess also
drive adoption. Instead, look to creating a clear path to accomplish the first
few tasks, that is, those tasks that pretty much every user will want to do to
early on "get in the game."

------
cgb223
Why even host this in Github if it's just going to be a single .md file
linking to a medium post.

Seems excessive with no actual information presented

~~~
nikivi
Hosting it on GitHub means other people can fork it and add to the list. Thus
the content grows in quality with contributions.

~~~
jbob2000
Copy and paste works great too!

This is a stupid use of github, it's a hammer looking for nails. If you want
to make a change to a single text file, just copy it.

~~~
nodomain
I think the main goal is to receive pull requests in order to curate the list.
This would not work by copy and paste.

------
mobitar
"Notes" wasn't a category listed, but check out Standard Notes
([https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)) if you're looking for
a privacy-respecting notes app. This is an open-source project I work on. It's
an encrypted alternative to Evernote.

------
Xoros
Never heard of the Brave browser before. Anyone knows if it's really ok ?

~~~
skue
Brave was founded by Brendan Eich, as his next thing after departing Mozilla.
Many of us may not agree with his views on marriage equality (or at least his
past actions), but I believe over the years he has demonstrated a strong
commitment to online privacy.

Personally, I'm glad someone is trying to figure out how websites can derive
revenue through privacy-respecting microtransactions instead of the current ad
model, and I hope they can make it work.

