

Tools For Protecting Your Privacy Online - andrewsass
http://www.compylr.com/post/tools-for-protecting-your-privacy-online

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nolite
Half of these services are run or maintained by private companies... This is
fundamentally something that we can't trust.. trusting our security and
privacy to an opaque organization. Any tool needs to be open source and
transparent

~~~
mpconlen
The unfortunate reality seems to be that quality open source versions don't
exist for a lot of these. I'd love to hear about alternatives that you know of
though.

~~~
drdaeman
It doesn't matter privacy-wise if service without end-to-end encryption (like
Burner, Pastebin or DuckDuckGo) uses FLOSS or not.

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spindritf
> Internet Relay Chat (IRC) can be set up to encrypt all messages

Wouldn't SILC[1] be more appropriate than IRC? IRC can be made secure with OTR
or FiSH but it's very much insecure by default.

Also, you're probably much safer with Tails[2] than with a manually configured
Tor instance.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILC_%28protocol%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILC_%28protocol%29)

[2] [https://tails.boum.org/](https://tails.boum.org/)

~~~
mpconlen
These are both very good points.

The main reason I mentioned encrypting IRC instead of something like SILC is
that many people already include irc in their daily workflow. Adding settings
to a client you already use may be less intrusive than picking up a new
protocol altogether.

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surespot
surespot is a free and open source mobile messenger encrypting all messages
end-to-end with 256 bit AES symmetric-key encryption using keys created with
521 bit ECDH shared secret derivation. www.surespot.me was built from the
ground up to provide this exceptional security in an unobtrusive way, this is
not a layer over something existing. surespot is like whatsapp but actually
encrypted! group chat on the way.

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gasull
And Bitmessage. It's a good substitute for email, Twitter and chan boards.
It's a fork of the Bitcoin code.

[https://bitmessage.org](https://bitmessage.org)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_dTotavJZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_dTotavJZ8)

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forward_number
Please consider Forward-Phone-Number as a complimentary to Burner App service
with phone numbers in 40+ countries and Bitcoin acceptance.

Here is a direct link: [https://forward-phone-number.com](https://forward-
phone-number.com)

Disclosure: I work for them

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systematical
I don't understand how setting up a VPN on my local network would secure the
information. It seems like you'd need to sign up for one of these vpn services
so the exit node was elsewhere. Am I missing something here?

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richardlblair
I appreciate that he wrote this up for the general population, but I don't
feel this is really worthy of getting on the front page of hacker news.

I mean, is there anything on there you honestly didn't know?

~~~
zxcdw
I can say I've _heard_ of all of the items but have I used them so I could say
I _know_ them? No. I would expect this to be the case for majority of HN
readers, quite frankly.

And I'd consider myself rather paranoid even, at least among the social
circles I'm part of.

