I recommend letting content creators about this and suggesting alternatives, e.g. PeerTube instances, Vimeo, etc.

as how to change your default browser and search engine, suggestions for different OS’s and how to install them on any kind of computer, different options for Microsoft software, etc. For example, I’m on a Mac just because it’s still good and I don’t want to pay for a new one…I’d love either some simple ways to “harden” it and/or install Linux.

Wonderful, I can do that! I indeed assume that people just don’t “want” to install Linux because they think Windows, or other Microsoft products, is “good enough” for them but maybe they just don’t know how or imagine they don’t have the ability to do so. That’s a great suggestion I’ll try to address it soon, thanks!

buy the burner device in the US

Can you trust it then though?

With sxmo as the interface.

Ah… thanks! Well let me ask then, if there was another “Beyond Monopoly” video that could be less “advanced” what would you like it to be about?

FWIW I believe it’s mostly, if not only, for code.

My pleasure, thanks for sharing all this important knowledge!

PS: I have few related things on https://fabien.benetou.fr/Cookbook/DigitalSelfSovereignty so I’d be curious to hear your opinion on it.

Link https://www.punchinguppress.com/post/disengage-from-the-internet and ToC :

Part 1: Why Disengage?
    Chapter 1: What We’re Fighting Against
    Chapter 2: How Do We Reclaim Our Lives By Disengaging?
    Chapter 3: Giants In The Dark

Part 2: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Data
    Chapter 4: Pay Attention to Privacy Policies
    Chapter 5: Control Your Online Accounts
    Chapter 6: Bash The Brokers
    Chapter 7: Surf In Secret
    Chapter 8: Escape Email Tracking
    Chapter 9: Protect Your Phone
    Chapter 10: Stop Being Loyal

Part 3: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Home
    Chapter 11: Hide Your Home Address
    Chapter 12: Remove Your Home Photos From The Web
    Chapter 13: Banish Smart Products From Your Spaces

Part 4: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Content
    Chapter 14: Protect Your Posts
    Chapter 15: Retract Your Reviews
    Chapter 16: Say Sayonara To Social Media

Part 5: Disengage By…Reclaiming Your Attention
    Chapter 17: Don’t Surf If You Don’t Need To
    Chapter 18: Annihilate Ads
    Chapter 19: Say See Ya To Your Smartphone
    Chapter 20: Ghost Corporate News

Part 6: Disengage By…Quitting The Big 4
    Chapter 21: Say Goodbye To Google
    Chapter 22: Say Au Revoir To Amazon
    Chapter 23: Say Arrivederci To Apple
    Chapter 24: Say Mmm-Bye To Microsoft

Part 7: Live Your Life

I also have a PinePhone and PinePhone Pro… but I wouldn’t (yet) recommend them as daily drivers unless :

• you are REALLY committed to privacy
• don’t care much for the camera
• don’t need mobile “Apps” and fine using the Web or Linux (which are great) apps
• don’t need much battery
• you are eager to tinker.

If you’re in EU https://murena.com/smartphones/ is a good compromise IMHO and it will be radically cheaper than an iPhone. I imagine elsewhere there are other companies selling new or refurbished deGoogled phones. Again that’ll probably set you back 300 € versus 1000 € for an iPhone. One is a tool, the other is, again from my biased perspective a former iPhone user, a tool too but mostly a status symbol.

Edit on parental controls : from a technical standpoint, which I’d argue it’s only part of the challenge, I’ve found https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/parental-control specifically but more broadly https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.timelimit.android.open/ or https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.timelimit.android.aosp.direct/ which are more about self discipline. There is also https://github.com/xMansour/KidSafe but seems outdated.

Android always sends requests to Google.

If you meant even deGoogled Androids (e.g. /e/OS as suggested here), not stock Android, then can you please send references on that?

A de-googled phone with no Play Services is too limiting.

Isn’t microG with alternative app stores sufficient for most people?

The general consensus amongst the Android community is that rooting is detrimental to privacy. In a sense, I agree with them since privilege escalation because of human error becomes a much bigger threat if the user has root access.

No, that’s BS. It entirely depends on your “threat model” just like security.

Namely if you go full OSHW/FLOSS and yet you volunteer your data on Facebook.com (or whatever that website is called today) then you have no privacy. It’s not a technical problem, it’s a behavior problem.

If your threat model is about government hiring dedicated staff to know what you are up to, or that the infrastructure you rely is can’t be trusted, then rooting is the last of your problems.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t worry but I don’t see the relevance of rooting Android in that situation. Root or not does not somehow change how your modem behaves, you’re still at the mercy of the drivers.

I recommend you check projects like Precursor (at https://precursor.dev/ redirecting to the CrowdSupply page) which try to tackle, if I understood correctly, the kind of worry you have, namely actually understand the entire stack.

That being said, even in such context, you still rely on some infrastructure to relay messages to others so you need that and the recipients to also respect your privacy. If not (which would be a fair assumption) then at least you must understand the cryptographic primitives you rely on… and if you don’t (which most people don’t, me included despite my interest in the mathematics behind that, in particular one-way functions) then you have to some trust in the public research in the domain.

So… I do have a Precursor, tinker with it, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, had an iOS phone until recently, switched to (rooted) /e/OS and my personal position is that while interacting with others (and a mobile is 100% about that) one has to make pragmatic about their choices.