Tech Alternatives for Conservatives

Started by taxed, March 11, 2022, 04:52:26 PM

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taxed

This is a work-in-progress (including fixing typos) rundown of various alternative technologies and tools we support that provide essential security and privacy to netizens, most importantly, conservatives.  If you have any recommendations or alternatives to the products I recommended, please post them.

Covered:
- VPN and Geolocation
- Secure Web Browser
- Email
- Password Manager
- Search Engine
- Secure Video Conferencing
- Secure Messaging App
- Smartphone
- Nitter and Piped
- Decentralized Document Storage
- Document Collaboration
- Alternative to Linktree
- Payment Processor

VPN and your Geolocation

This isn't the 1990s where we don't care if the world knows your IP address, which ties you to your geographical location.  The communists are putting innocent people on watch lists, banning them from financial services, threatening employment, and doxxing them for harassment by domestic terrorist organizations like AntiFa-BLM.

At a minimum, you should hide your location.  The days of "I have nothing to hide" are long gone.

You want a "no log" VPN, which means they won't keep activity logs (although, some say they don't but do), which can be easily handed over to government agencies devoted to harassing you, or handed over to domestic terrorist organizations.

I've used ProtonVPN for some years now.  They're based in Switzerland, who have the strongest privacy laws (which hopefully will remain true) and have a good reputation.  I use the premium version, but they have a free version as well.

One feature you need is the "kill switch" option.  If you're surfing the web, and your VPN connection drops unexpectedly, your real IP address will be exposed with any network traffic that continues.  A kill switch will shut off your internet connection to make sure your location isn't leaked.

Another feature you need is DNS leak prevention.  If you leak your DNS queries, the bad guys will know what sites you're visiting.  You don't want your deep-state ISP to resolve your DNS queries, therefore your VPN provider should provide this protection.

When your VPN situation is set up, test it here.  You should not see your location.

Test for a WebRTC leak here.  WebRTC is an unsecure peer-to-peer technology for real-time audio and video.  In the section "WebRTC IP Address Detection", you shouldn't see your IP address.  If you do, you can turn off WebRTC in your browser, as you can leak your location, even on VPN and Tor.

NOTE: There's a lot of shady VPN products, especially a lot of the popular ones making the rounds on our favorite internet shows.  Security researchers find problems with pretty much every VPN to some degree, so don't assume your anonymity is guaranteed.  Ultimately, unless you set up your own VPN, you have to depend on the word of the VPN company.

Secure Web Browser

The tech that separates the entire web from your computer: your web browser.  Because this software is literally your last line of defense, you should take it seriously.  Edge, Chrome, and Safari are no-nos.

We're proponents of the Brave browser for several reasons, including trust of the founder, development team, their radical approach to security and privacy, and mission to engineer their product so they "can't be evil."  There are some excellent privacy browsers on the market, such as Tor Browser and Epic Privacy Browser.

If you don't use a privacy browser, at least install the browser plugins HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger, both developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  HTTPS Everywhere will ensure all of your web requests are encrypted, and Privacy Badger blocks invisible trackers.  The EFF is very reputable and you can trust their browser extensions.

If you do use a privacy browser, these extensions are built-in.

As mentioned above in the VPN section, you want to make sure your WebRTC is turned off.  On Brave in Settings, go to Security and Privacy and set WebRTC IP handling policy to "Disable non-proxied UDP".  For non-Brave browsers, you're on your own, but if you find it, post it here.

Also mentioned above is mitigating DNS leaks.  In Brave, also under Security and Privacy, select Security (my option has a padlock icon) and find "Use secure DNS", and toggle to "With".  CloudFlare provides a secure DNS service, so select "CloudFlare (1.1.1.1)"

Another really cool feature of Brave is Tor is built in.  Combine that with VPN, you'll be pretty hard to find.

Email

If you're still on GMail, Yahoo, or any other satanic-controlled Silicon Valley platforms, you really need to change.  You are doing nothing wrong in your correspondence with others, however, you are building the case for your eventual incarceration in some gulag.

There's a number of solid secure email products, with ProtonMail being my preference.  It's the same company as ProtonVPN, therefore Swiss privacy protections apply.

For any email product you use, make sure it's end-to-end encryption, where the keys aren't stored on a central server.  When you send an email to another ProtonMail user, your messages are completely secure from your browser to your recipient's.

Like their VPN product, ProtonMail has a free service, but I use the premium, which gives me multiple email addresses.  I have a dummy email address that doesn't give away my name, keeping me anonymous when I register accounts on websites.  Because I combine my email with unique, secure passwords via my password manager, if a website is compromised, I know it's isolated to that site.

Password Manager

If you're still entering passwords into websites then you're way behind the times.  I have accounts all over the place like most people, yet I haven't created or typed a password in years.  For example, here on CPF, I have no clue what my password is.

You should use a password manager.  In general, most passwords are easy to crack because dumb humans always choose the path of least resistance, using their college Alma-mater's mascot, or their pet's name, or kid's birthday, etc.  A password manager makes the secure practice the path of least resistance.

NEVER assume a site on which you have an account is secure.  Always assume that site will be hacked and the criminal will at least have your email and password.  That's true for this site as well.

If they have your email, and know you like to use your dog's name FiFi for a password, there's a high probability you follow suite with your online banking account and your email account.

A password manager saves your login information and randomly generates a unique secure password.  If the leftist criminal steals your login credentials, that password won't work on other sites.

Here's an example of a random password I just now generated with my password manager:

Ns@eoayz9!6JBKYsc#aNW^vCNfWTejLBMtodL*^CmCbboi!g5#$&soMHZZqUAx8pwHXky@z%S

Good luck guessing something like that.  For my password manager, I use Bitwarden.  It's a browser extension, and when I visit a site on which I have an account, a little notification icon shows in the browser.  When I go to the login page, I click my icon to drop down my login accounts, click the specific login to use (you can have multiple), and that's it.

Search Engine

This is important for us conservatives because not only do we need private searches, but also quality search results.  The only search engine that provides both is Brave Search.

There's an important distinction between Brave Search and others: Brave Search has its own index.  Every other search engine alternative depends on deep-state indexes, even if they don't track you. Leftist DuckDuckGo, for example, depends on Microsoft Bing's index.

Brave Search is new.  It's only a year old, and to build a search index that competes with Google is a monumental task.  I've been using it since day one, and I've seen a steady improvement of quality results.  If you use Brave Search and you're complaining about results, I have three points for you.

First, be part of the solution.  In your Brave browser settings, select Search engine and make sure "Web Discovery Project" is toggled on.  This will allow your browser to send anonymous search data privately to Brave and help fine-tune their index.  Over time, with more people doing this, the results will continue to improve, and they'll lean on Google and Bing results in the background less and less.  Remember, Google had borderline alien technology from intelligence agencies to build their search product.  With a project like Brave, it's up to the people.

Second, and along the same lines, there's a "Feedback" option on the results pages.  Use it, and use it often.  The more feedback you provide, the better.

Third, and it's a trick I learned that helps, take advantage of the article dates.  You'll see an "Any time" option above the results.  If you're searching for a new story, set that to "Past day", "Past week", or within whatever range you think your story may fall.

Most importantly, keep using it.  If you aren't getting the results you want, try to re-word the search terms.  If it's still not right, hit them with the feedback option and lean on their fallback options of Google, Bing, and Mojeek (which Brave proxies to keep you private).

Regarding news articles, or a news feed specifically, the Brave browser offers this functionality, however, it defaults to the fake news sites.  There's a "Customize" option, and you select "Brave News", and add your own sites and delete the fake news.  Easy.

UPDATE: Solar turned me onto this one: Freespoke.  It's definitely solid, and while it does do some tracking, just keep your privacy settings on and you should be fine.  It's more of a political article search engine, and they do a pretty decent job of pulling from a mix of fake news, conservative news, and neutral.  I don't mind a story buried in Marxist fake news fluff if they manage to get the facts right, especially when it's dripping in panic.  While Brave is a search engine for everything that's still developing its index, if you search for news articles in particular, Freespoke is a great alternative, as it appears to be using Google's long-established index, yet manages to mine the top-level SERPs to pull out real news.  I haven't spent time digging into how it works, and will update when I learn more, but I do give it a thumbs-up as a user searching for news articles (and Solar really likes it).

Secure Video Conference

Video call platforms, like Zoom, are horribly unsecure.  Stop using them.  Instead, use Brave Talk.  Open your Brave browser and click "Start call".  That's it.  It's free for four participants.  For a call with five or hundreds of participants, you can pay a hefty premium of $7 per month.

No installation, apps, or account registrations.  Secure and easy.

Secure Messaging App

Session is the most secure messenger on the market.  It requires no identifying data, and routes messages over a Tor-like onion routing network.  Also keep on the lookout for 4Privacy, currently under development.

Smartphone

Smartphones are little spy and tracking devices that constantly record our location, video, sound, text messages, and our habits.  The phones have known security vulnerabilities, some of which have been known for years.

GrapheneOS and CalyxOS removes any trace of Google, hardens the OS, and patches vulnerabilities.  Either of these phones are highly recommended.

NOTE: DO NOT buy the grifter "Freedom" phone that's been circulating over the past however-many months; it's not secure.

Nitter and Piped

Twitter and YouTube are horrible with tracking and data collection.  It's a good idea to keep a prophylactic between you and these invasive services.

Nitter and Piped keeps you hidden and prevents your data from being compromised.  With Nitter, there's a browser extension that will automatically convert the Twitter URLs to nitter.  Piped has a similar browser extension, however only for FireFox.

Decentralized Document Storage

As the modern-day book-burning communists continue to wipe information from society, there's a need to ensure a document can be preserved and persist forever.  The International Planetary File System (IPFS) does just that.  Side note: we'll be archiving this site on IPFS so it can live forever.

Another bonus for the Brave browser, IPFS is integrated out of the box for easy file requests.

Document Collaboration

One of the most useful products Google has is their Google Docs product, but with all their usual tracking crap, they're even parsing and censoring documents.

A strong secure alternative I've been using is a product out of France (yeah, I know) called CryptPad.  There's another secure alternative that hit the market called Skiff, but I have yet to use it.

Alternative to Linktree

An application that's been very useful for those with accounts around social media is Linktree.  It's a very simple concept: a single-page directory that lists links to your various accounts and websites.  Sadly, they went woke, and you simply can't trust woke products and companies with your security.

An excellent alternative is LibertyLinks.

Payment Processors

I've heard very good things about One Source Solutions, although I have not used them as of yet.  They're a great alternative to PayPal and the others, and at least takes Silicon Valley out of the loop for payment processing.


TODO:
- Crypto
- File Storage
- Maps
- whatever else I'm forgetting
#PureBlood #TrumpWon

blulady

What do you think of opera browser. Thats what I use and I went and changed the vpn like you said.

taxed

Quote from: blulady on March 11, 2022, 08:07:48 PMWhat do you think of opera browser. Thats what I use and I went and changed the vpn like you said.

At least add those two EFF extensions (Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere).
#PureBlood #TrumpWon

CasND


taxed

#PureBlood #TrumpWon

blulady

Quote from: taxed on March 12, 2022, 06:39:07 AMAt least add those two EFF extensions (Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere).

Thank you for tips I had to undo the vpn wouldnt me log on the online banking

taxed

#PureBlood #TrumpWon

Snuffy

Signature to come!

taxed

#PureBlood #TrumpWon

Sick Of Silence

With all these lawyers with cameras on the street i'm shocked we have so much crime in the world.

There is constitutional law and there is law and order. This challenge to law and order is always the start to loosing our constitutional rights.

Frauditors are a waste of life.

Solar

Quote from: Sick Of Silence on December 10, 2023, 10:18:38 AMTor Browser?

https://www.torproject.org/

Thanks. I tried it a few years back and it just didn't work right.
Seems much better now.
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!