Wasabi ending CoinJoin. Quote from Twitter:
"After years of relentless dedication to improve Bitcoin’s privacy, zkSNACKs, the company pioneering the development of Wasabi Wallet, is shutting down its coinjoin coordination service, effective June 1st, 2024."
Source: https://x.com/wasabiwallet/status/1786083838415769673
How to use Nostr on Desktop w/ the RebelNet:
https://rebelnet.me/news/0x7480de270c36863343
Almost everyone here already knows this information, but the video will be posted in new places to on-board people. So it’s being posted here just as a reference.
I know I’m going to get a lot of shit for promoting Ethereum push channels as a substitute for Youtube subscriptions that aren’t as sensitive to time, to compliment Nostr’s substitute for a fast trending Twitter. But there’s 3 main points,
First) We’re offering Bunny CDN for off-platform (out of our control) videos, and they accept Bitcoin only. So nobody is forcing you into anything. Even if other things are offered in the future (like IPFS or Arweave), you will always have a BTC option to pay.
Second) It helps, not hurts, Nostr to spread its exposure and use. If you think the global townsquare is going to be a repetitive echo chamber, you are blind to the diversity of thought and prevent Nostr’s adoption. You’d think the people into censorship resistance would not be into censoring ideas. There’s real tech value here, in having a whole new DNS system.
Third) The real enemy is Google. If you clown on me for trying this, then turn around and post to Youtube, you have lost the Cypherpunk way.
So before you curse me out, consider watching our tutorial on what it even is,
https://rebelnet.me/news/0x78e2b8d7a367de3534
UK seized new powers:
--Police will no longer be required to make an arrest before seizing crypto from a suspect.
--seize anything, such as written passwords, flash drives, or memory sticks
--destroy crypto assets, such as privacy coins, for the "public good", like Monero
--goes into effect today
This has the text copy-pasted from the official UK website, but without having to have your IP address literally connect to the official cybercrime division website, (ironically, I seized their text)
https://rebelnet.me/news/0x02fcc902af8d6cedd9
Layer 0 for encryption as identity. So it allows cross-communication among any layer 1 protocols, including Nostr. We’re using it to promote Nostr to new audiences and spread it across the internet. We’d love to have you get involved, let me know I’ll whitelist your npub.
You have to update Feather wallet
It fixes a previous minor error with sending Monero. This new version is 2.6.7, and I confirmed it works. Your funds are safe.
Update right in the wallet. Spread the word.
Why should you try RebelNet.me ?
1) Reach is not based on followers. You can be heard based on merrit. But you can increase your followers on "Native Nostr", so it's productive.
2) Most Nostr clients don't differentiate between different people reposting the same content. This leads to an annoying echo chamber of scrolling through the same thing, and sets up posts to be an all or nothing chance at going viral
3) Native Nostr is highly sensitive to time. You have a short window to be heard, and given the global nature, this means 1 of the 3 major timezones will not hear you.
4) On Native Nostr, if you're new, you're a meaningless keypair spamming. To try to be heard, people mass follow others, which fills your feed with things you don't care about. While on the RebelNet, you're the top new post. This sets you up to meet people who care about your topics, and helps Native Nostr on-board people the right way.
5) Remember AWS banned Trump. Unlike Stacker.news which is on Amazon's surveillance and censorship cloud, our dedicated server is in Malaysia with a free speech firm. Support decentralization.
6) Unlike Stacker.news which has a pay-to-post model, I'm on the grind for the love.
RebelNet.me
We’re rebranding our Nostr forums,
Meet, the Rebel Net,
https://rebelnet.me/news/0xad937afc3901f9e4c6
The focus of this instance will be:
-Libertarian news
-CypherPunk Tech
-Agora networking & Meeting new Nostr people
Firefox/Tor? Nos2fx extension
Brave/Chromium? Nos2x or Flamingo
Mobile? Kiwi Browser w/ Nos2x or Flamingo.
Don’t trust anything? Make a new keypair, that’s fine. You get heard regardless of followers.
DM me to get your npub whitelisted for new threads.
You can reply or like without a whitelist, or even as a guest without an extension.
How does a Tor Onion work?
Well Nostr is a public/private encryption keypair to prove who you are. So is a Tor Onion. The Onion address is the public key, and it works by exposing the public key to the network, so people can find you. But the big negative of Onions is one has to keep the private key on the server itself. This means if the location of the Onion is discovered, it’s game over.
But Nostr relays can be hosted with Tor Onions, which makes the network essentially impossible to stop. Since the individual posters wouldn’t be bound to those physical locations, PLUS those locations aren’t easily known. Also in Whonix, it would find a new Tor circuit for each Nostr relay.
~
Why are Tor Onions so slow?
Normally Tor is 3 hops, but Onions take 6. This is because you take 3 hops, and then you meet the “service” or other person who also took 3 hops at a “rendezvous point”. This hides the location of both the server and the visitor.
~
You ever wonder why Protonmail’s Tor Onion is so damn slow?
It’s because they use SSL encryption AND tor encryption. You see all websites have httpS or SSL encryption. But Tor has its own layers of encryption as well, these are peeled away “like the skin of an onion” on each hop. But the Protonmail developers are negligent and don’t understand that the httpS encryption just slows down the encryption already provided by Tor, without adding anything of value.
Was this confusing? You might like our animated video on “how Tor works” for beginners:
https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/how-tor-works/
Privacy software is flawed.
When developers make software, they cryptographically sign it to prove that they are the creator and it has no backdoor. Just like Nostr posts.
But unlike Nostr, we trust Microsoft’s Github and Cloudflare to give us the correct public key to begin with. This means all Github privacy software is potentially compromised. Even if you could convince all these open source devs to come on Nostr, their posts with the hashes would scroll off their feeds. Ideally, you want a website.
That’s where our PGP directory comes in. We’ve pointed blockchain domain names to websites that aren’t tied to a particular location or server (IPFS), to have a neutral third party source of information for you to compare to.
It’s easy to go to this website in Brave Browser, and verify your software with one command:
SimplifiedPrivacy.sol or SimplifiedPrivacy.x
And if you don’t know how to go to blockchain domain websites, here’s a tutorial:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/ipfs-brave-browser/
Hello, thanks for your reply. IPFS is an excellent choice for something of this nature because it is immutable. Once you upload something, the CID or “identifier” becomes permanent. Therefore, the locations of the servers hosting it around the world are a commodity that can’t make decisions. We are not hosting the IPFS pinning on unstoppable.
Unstoppable domains does it on Polygon’s blockchain, but their API is fairly centralized yes. This is why we also use Solana and Ethereum domains also pointed to the same CIDs. I encourage you to visit the website to gain a better understanding.
IPFS site is back up!
Verify your critical open source software without government domains, using multiple blockchain DNS and IPFS CIDs.
I struggled to get this working before, and to fix it, I had to made my own CDN with multiple VPS & broke it down into smaller groups. Then to avoid link breaking people out, I used multiple domains. I’ve been at this for like 3 days now, here it is.
Landing Page w/ links:
SimplifiedPrivacy.sol
or
ipfs://QmfY9hcVKmc63SzVUaLYAdtZbvfqVkwaJm7g2JDKbfLFr8
PGP directory:
SimplifiedPrivacy.x
Summary of content:
PrivacyFreedom.x
Do you not know how to visit IPFS or resolve blockchain names?
Hit up our tutorial with Brave Browser:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/ipfs-brave-browser/
Thanks for your time. When developers make software, they cryptographically sign it to prove that they are the creator. Just like Nostr.
But the public key for that encryption is on the same big cloud companies (Github) as the software itself. So people have no way to verify that the developer made it.
One answer is everyone comes on Nostr, but this has things scrolling off the feed and requires each dev to have an account. Instead, we have laid out all developer public keys on a 2nd new internet called IPFS that is even more difficult than Nostr to backdoor. So it's a website, instead of a twitter feed for keys. Hit up our tutorial with Brave Browser:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/ipfs-brave-browser/
Shoutout @Mike Dilger for his great work with the new Gossip release. Humanity owes him big time
nostr:nevent1qqs0tz2m24avrz2pw842k2mtjw7msa0wt9u0z2w0v57xzwm87pa6xtspypmhxue69uhkx6r0wf6hxtndd94k2erfd3nk2u3wvdhk6w35xs6z7qgjwaehxw309ahx7um5wf6k2tnrdakj782dg5j
Privacy Checklist
Step 1. Learn Linux
It’s easier than you think. You don’t need the command line, and the software compatibility isn’t as big a deal as it used to be, because a lot is in a web browser now. Over the last 10 years, Linux has improved dramatically, while as Microsoft Windows has gotten worse due to their increased surveillance wasting more and more resources.
Step 2. Get a DeGoogled Android
It’s as easy to use as a regular Android! You can have all the same apps (although you should ditch some of them). You don’t need the newest and most expensive model, Pixel 6a or 7a are just fine. We sell them cheap, or do it on your own.
Step 3. Slowly learn about open source alternatives.
There is a lot of alternative software out there, and our site covers most of them. Kdenlive is just as good as Adobe Premier for 90% of stuff. GIMP is just as good as photoshop for most people. Try to replace one app a week or month, you’ll get there. Patience.
Step 4. Get a VoIP line.
Stop using the number on the real SIM card of your phone, otherwise the phone company sees what you’re doing. If you use VoIP with a VPN, then the phone company sees just a VPN tunnel. And the VoIP company just sees a VPN exit. The data is still unencrypted, but this is a huge separation of knowledge.
Step 5. Transition to Crypto.
Bitrefill, coincards, cake wallet, and many more vendors have a huge variety of stuff. This depends on your country and needs. But no country has no options. Don’t let pessimism keep you trapped in fiat.
Step 6. Consider self-hosted email.
If you’re not going to just use a bunch of burners, and you actually have real content going through email, then self-host on a VPS is the best way. It’s true that the VPS provider can still access it, but if you need business email, then this is your best choice. We offer to do the setup for you, or you can read guides on your own.
Step 7. Start on-boarding your friends and family
It takes two to tango. It helps to have the other side of your conversation secure as well. Our site has guides on how to approach them, but the answer usually lies in increasing your value proposition and friendship. And never in cursing them out. Target your pitch on what they know and care about.
Step 8. Type your name in search engines.
See what comes up. Are these accounts you can clean up, change, or delete?
Step 9. Make the plunge: Delete Facebook.
It’s a tough one. And most won’t do it. But I did, and I kept all the people I actually talked to in the real world in my life via different tools. Good time to pitch Nostr.
Conclusion:
When you first see this list, it will be overwhelming with what you ought to do. But I’m here today to tell you that I was once just like you, and I felt powerless with all this technical jargon I had to overcome. But remember, to some people Nostr or Bitcoin is complex. So it’s all what you’re used to. If you go through this list slowly over the course of a few months, I promise you that one day you’ll look back, and be surprised that you ever let it intimidate you.
Now I need you to return the favor, and spread the knowledge you just learned. For the more people that walk this trail, the easiest the path becomes.
US Senate FISA fight on-going now
[before expiration tomorrow]
Quote Alexander Bolton:
“The Senate voted 67-32 to advance a motion to begin debate on the bill, the first of at least three procedural steps needed before holding a final vote on the legislation”
Dramatic expansion of government power on who has to collect data...
Quote Reason Magazine:
"including grocery stores, department stores, hardware stores, laundromats, barber shops, fitness centers, and—perhaps most disturbingly—commercial landlords that rent out the office space where tens of millions of Americans go to work every day, including news media headquarters, political campaign offices, advocacy and grassroots organizations, lobbying firms, and law offices."
Tell your Senator no! And if you think it’s hopeless, then start fixing what you can control. Get your ass on Linux. Get a DeGoogled phone. Start persuading friends to switch to encrypted messengers.
Maybe you can’t change Senate votes, but you can change your life.
FISA expands?!
The US FISA surveillance program was supposed to be reformed to prevent abuse,
Instead, a new version of the bill being voted on this week dramatically EXPANDS government power to:
a) Force ANY business to aid in wiretapping, not just direct ISPs. For example if you use WiFi at McDonalds, then they are required to log your data for government review. Quote Wired: "The text could be interpreted to extend to “delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utility providers.”
b) Vague scope: "Americans’ emails, phone calls, and text messages—so long as one side of the communication is foreign" As long as they think you MIGHT be talking to a non-American.
c) The goal is to stop foreign adversaries, but it ironically aids foreign IT companies. Quote Wired: "many customers will “likely look to foreign competitors,” Miller says, companies whose technologies are viewed as less exposed to clandestine government requests."
Reach out to your Senate representative and tell them you don’t want your freedoms trampled!
Get the full story:
https://linked-out.me/news/4dde82b0dca8f05254d0
Protonmail breaks user-applied PGP signatures,
They only allow Proton PGP. And NOT you applying it on your own.
"you’ll upload your private key to our servers and you’ll like it!"
I'm reposting this from John Floren's Blog, I'm not the author.
(he's using Proton Bridge in a VM, with his own PGP via FairEmail and Claws)
"
When I sent a test message to myself, though, Claws and FairEmail didn’t have any clue that it was signed. If I switched to PGP inline, it worked. I sent an email to one of the Claws maintainers, who reported that my MIME structure was all messed up. He sent me a signed message back, and Claws was able to verify the signature just fine.
It turns out that Proton has been breaking outgoing PGP signatures from the beginning: https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/26,https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/320. It seems that their argument is this:
-When you send a regular email via Proton to another Proton client, they automatically PGP sign+encrypt the message. (I think this is great!)
-Their automatic signing+encryption cannot coexist with a user-applied signature.
-Therefore, all user-applied signatures will be broken. Tough luck, bucko, we’re the SECURE email company, you’ll upload your private key to our servers and you’ll like it!
It’s absurd that there’s no way to disable this, no option to tell Proton “if you see a multipart/signed or multipart/encrypted message, just leave it the hell alone.”
I’m looking at other potential email hosts. I know PGP isn’t widely used, but I have a hard time swallowing Proton’s silent mangling of my email, and I especially dislike their smarmy we-know-better attitude when people complain about it."
Original Source:
https://jfloren.net/b/2023/7/7/0
Alternative?
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/email-cloud-combo/
As things in the Middle East heat up, remember,
Being anti-war goes with being pro-privacy
As it’s the “crisis of war” that often justifies a “temporary” loss of digital rights, that eventually becomes permanent. The Patriot Act and FISA which are getting renewed now, were supposed to be temporary emergency powers. And it is their abuse by government that is the real terrorism.
Yeah that’s why I’m disappointed you ignore my DMs on Nostr federated peertube. Your exact request handed to you in code from random people with no VC money
Oppressive Censorship:
Meta permanently banned this innocent woman across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads for a single meme, erasing 17 years of her photos, memories, and her only means of reaching some international friends.
Simplified Privacy interviewed her to help Nostr, and to show the world that censorship is not just for fringe political groups, but the everyday person.
Do you want Nostr to spread? Let’s share her story,
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/facebook-ban/
Give her a warm welcome,
npub1aerdp897vj4k4e2wauhz7n4rqrvs7g3f9tethjuymava6zyynhuscfkvut
This was supposed to be reformed before being passed but wasn’t. The speaker of the House supported reform before he became speaker of the House, then changed his tune after he got power.
nostr:nevent1qqsqqqqpfwj788zqjhwfyc4fgr5tn9ty6reg059rptg07zfte8hayyspg3mhxw309ahhsarjv3jhvctkxc685d35093rw7pkwf4xwdrww3a8z6ngv4jx6dtzx4ax5ut4d36kw6mwdpa8ydpkdeunyutzv9jzummwd9hkutcpzpmhxue69uhkztnwdaejumr0dshszyrhwden5te0v5hxummn9ekx7mp06cy6dh
Why Privacy
As the US Congress votes down “FISA” Warrantless Wiretapping renewal for the third time, and momentum in favor of privacy starts to turn,
Shadow Rebel makes the epic case for “Why Privacy”. In this hard-hitting video, he persuades even the most skeptical haters, how privacy isn’t just for some fringe political journalists, but is required for you to have real wealth, free speech, and fair opportunity in life.
Do you struggle to convince your friends to use encrypted messengers? Tune in to this,
https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/why-privacy/
If you have a solution to the problem, you’re an entrepreneur.
But if you’re bitching just to bitch, then you’re a pessimist.
So write it down & work on it, or shut the F up
Session and Nostr both:
1. Use static, locally generated, public-private encryption keypairs
2. Connect to public nodes/relays to hold messages
3. Identity is disconnected from location or government domains
4. Hard to censor individuals.
5. Don’t rotate keys, but…
Session lets you assign your blockchain name to a new keypair manually if your private key is compromised. This is like “Nostr with an undo button”.
Session is marketed as privacy, but its true strength is censorship resistance. Since you can’t stop an anonymous entity that isn’t tied to any physical location or even any particular private encryption key.
Nostr is marketed as censorship resistance, but its true strength is privacy. Because it allows anonymous entities to establish verifiable business reputations in the public space. This is the foundation for trust without government IDs.
The only difference is on Nostr, the sender picks the relays. While as on Session, the receiver's nodes are randomly assigned.
And I beg you realize, that fighting over which keys or coins only weakens and divides us.
When the only true side, is the side of freedom.
Join the revolution, Session ID: Simple
Hello, thanks for your time.
We're looking to use Session's network to hide and change the the location of the sender upon discovery of the server. Jami is peer to peer, so ties encryption keys to a given device. Yes it's true that Session depends on its network, but the same can be said for Nostr.
You can find our writing on this here:
http://simplifiedprivacy.com/uncensored
Libertarian Institute has the potential to bring us tens of thousands of new users if we can convince them that this first account is a success so the podcasters use it:
npub1jjn8f2qr0cc576c0qme737hgh0d8j3uyrugrehhyv4rh9dwy3kyqc39576
This is four months old, but is copy paste from Mike Dilger himself...
Gossip, coracle, nozzle, camelus.app, snort, lume, amethyst, and anything built using PABLOF7Zs NDK use this NIP-65 "gossip model".
Damus, primal, iris, and many other clients still use a fixed set of relays, many with a client-side caching server so their users don't miss out of notes on other relays. But most of those client's developers have expressed interest or concrete plans to move to the gossip model. Rabble just mentioned today that is on the roadmap for nos.
For once happy news, the German government switches 30,000+ PCs to Linux & LibreOffice!
I guess they are concerned after France’s data leak.
Let’s dive into this:
https://linked-out.me/news/0x95ae6b673b9c13009c
Did you know? Your phone is:
a. Tracking your location 24/7.
b. Sending your push notifications to the government.
c. Recording your conversations and reading your messages.
d. Recording audio OFF the phone, in the same room as the phone's mic.
e. Relationship mapping everyone you know, to label unknown numbers or accounts as you.
So, who cares?
Well, Without privacy:
a. You don't own your Nostr private key.
b. You don't own your Bitcoin wallets.
c. You're using the infrastructure of your enemy, who is actively looking to suppress your speech and take away your rights.
What's the answer?
A DeGoogled phone is just Android without telemetry. You can do it on your own, or Simplified Privacy sells cheap ones.
Why would I get a DeGoogled Android through Simplified Privacy?
a. Pay in Bitcoin, keep your name off the hardware identifiers.
b. Get a 1-hour consult included to ask your questions on the best apps and ways to use it.
c. Pay zero taxes.
d. Get low pricing, we do the Pixel 6a for just $300.
e. Avoid the stress of ending up with the wrong thing or a bricked phone.
f. Participate in the Nostr economy. We don’t need government registration, our signature is our word.
g. Support us to develop our open source Nostr client.
Learn more:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/degoogledphoneinfo/
Libertarian Institute on Nostr?!
Simplified Privacy is proud to announce our partnership with the Libertarian Institute to promote, manage, and setup services for their Nostr & Session!
The Libertarian Institute features many amazing authors, podcasters, and influencers:
Scott Horton, Sheldon Richman, Laurie Calhoun, James Bovard, Ted G. Carpenter, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight
And Tom Woods
The combined audiences of these guys is over 100k! This is a big opportunity for Nostr to grow!
They are giving this a brief shot. But it’s meaningless without your adoption. I’ve been grinding to find influencers to adopt it. But we need to show them there’s an audience. We got this, I believe in you. Let’s bring it home guys.
It starts with just the Institute, but they all will follow. All these podcasts promoting it. Repost the shit out of the posts from this Nostr public key:
npub1jjn8f2qr0cc576c0qme737hgh0d8j3uyrugrehhyv4rh9dwy3kyqc39576
& Session ID: “Libertarian” (without quotes)
WhatsApp is down, worldwide.
Instagram and Facebook are down for some.
This shows the danger of using centralized services! Switch to “encryption as identity” with Nostr & Session, and the nodes are commodity. You would be indifferent to any particular server going down.
Use this opportunity to convince your friends to switch to privacy!
Learn more on the outage:
https://linked-out.me/news/1aac1c90378c6c988ae7
What if you could convert anyone onto Nostr and help it grow?
Do you struggle to convince friends to see Nostr’s value?
The problem is you framed it as political censorship, when the real issue is about control.
Our new guide shifts the focus away from fringe tinfoil hat politics, and instead convinces small business owners how they are going to make more money and get more traffic by owning their identity,
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/why-you-need-nostr/
These rock solid arguments can shift the tide in your favor. If you want to see our values and way of life grow, share this link with your skeptical friends.
Don’t share it for me. Spread freedom for you.
Q: What are the advantages of self-hosted VPS email over blindly trusting Proton?
1.More control and privacy. Proton is running the software, compared to you running the software. This means there is no passive surveillance. There is no AI scanning. The only time your emails would be read is with an active court order. Even if there’s a court order, whatever you deleted in the past would remain deleted.
Think of this with the analogy of renting your own private condo, compared to using someone’s bunk bed, for free, in a tiny room jammed packed with other roommates masturbating. Yes in both cases the landlord can get to what’s stored in the room, but with your own condo, it’s kept hidden until he takes serious action.
2. Proton is the target for thousands of court orders a year. Just by using them and wanting to be “private”, you’re a heavily scrutinized target. It’s no effort to automate the court order process for them. In comparison, to when you run the services yourself, it’s a bigger time commitment and costs more money to get data from that VPS.
Yes, if it was truly critical to law enforcement they can get it. But they have to first win over this unique and different VPS company in a different country. Then the VPS company has to find an IT guy who knows how to snapshot memory and retrieve emails from your particular unique email software. Remember, that each self-host is using different software, which is all adding more cost to get to. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying it costs money and time. Which completely kills passive surveillance, and is likely not worth it unless its real serious. Compared to Proton, where it’s all automated.
3. Proton hands over many thousands of emails a year, and the number is exponentially growing. If it’s all encrypted, why does law enforcement want it so bad?
4. Proton is slow as shit on Tor and restricts Tor signups. They want you to have an email already to sign-up. They don’t understand Tor Onions don’t need httpS encryption, so the Onion is so slow its unuseable.
5. If you’re going to use Proton, do a free burner. Why would you pay money to Proton, when you can have a VPS for nearly the same cost, and then get all this extra functionality on it? Such as chat or docs?
The real benefit to your own VPS is beyond just email. You can have your own website. Your chat completely under your control, as opposed to just blindly trusting some random XMPP server or the SimpleX developer servers. Replace Google docs with CryptPad with solid encryption and convenient file sharing and collaboration.
6. Branding and security for your small business. If you have your own domain, people take you more seriously. But if you point your domain to Proton, you give up your autonomy. If you have your cloud collaboration docs on secure end-to-end encrypted Cryptpad, your clients collaborating on documents will love the secure and professional treatment of their data. Compared to using public free infrastructure that makes your brand look homeless.
If you want save yourself time and hassle, consider Simplified Privacy’s VPS combo pack of Email, Chat (XMPP/SimpleX), and collaboration docs (Cryptpad) all on 1 single low cost VPS. This perfect for your small business to get cheap and reliable tech support, and look professional and secure to your clients. See screenshots and learn more here:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/email-cloud-combo/
You can in theory host email on a (24/7 on) home computer or rasberry Pi, the problem is that outgoing email would be labeled spam. And anyone who sees your domain would know where you live. So we do not recommend this.
However, you don’t need a full dedicated server, as that’s expensive. Best option is a small VPS cloud.
I agree email sucks. And I agree it depends on the person.
But many businesses require email for sales. So for small businesses, who want the freedom and privacy, then this goes excellent with the other VPS services such as cloud docs and chat.
Guys I’ve decided to join the NSA and sell all your data.
Further, I changed my mind on Google, and I will be having a Gcaptcha anal probe inserted into my rectum to monitor my daily activity.
And finally, I’ve decided to switch to NordVPN & Telegram, because they are secure & private.
Ok, maybe that last one is going too far. April fools.
Q: Is email encrypted or private?
A: Let’s take a step back and learn how the web works. Domains point to IP addresses or physical locations. The physical location registers encryption keys with a certificate authority. Then when an email is sent, it looks up what IP address to send it to and the public encryption key. When it gets to that physical location, it’s then unencrypted. So it’s only encrypted in transport.
Q: That’s absurd to only encrypt it server-to-server in transport. Why don’t you register the public encryption key with the domain registrar instead of having the physical location register it?
A: That’s how Session messenger works! Except their “domain registrar” is the blockchain. You assign on the blockchain which public key goes to your name, so the relays (physical locations) are powerless, and you have self-sovereign control. But that’s NOT email! So until you and me can convince these bone head clowns to let us register all our accounts and do all our businesses on Session & Nostr, we’re stuck with email.
Considering you need email to function in society, you have 2 choices. Either blindly trusting Protonmail/Tutanota, or self-host.
Q: What does “self-hosting email” even mean?
A: It means renting a 1 core VPS in a datacenter for under $10 a month, and running open source email software on it. Also once you have the VPS, you can get other use out of it, such as chat (XMPP or SimpleX) and replacing Google docs with Cryptpad. So a VPS doesn’t have to be just email, you can connect VoIP phone lines to XMPP, you can collaborate with all kinds of docs/spreadsheets, and have much more control over all your data. Also your friends and family can use the VPS too. Not only is this economical, but if the communication stays on the same server, it’s even more private.
Q: Why don’t I self-host email in my residential home?
A: Unfortunately, most email providers block messages from homes as spam. So if you host in your house, you can receive email, but you can’t send outgoing. Also people will know where you live just by seeing your domain.
Q: So Protonmail is NOT encrypted?
A: As we just discussed above, ALL email uses TLS (transport only). TLS gets unencrypted when it arrives at its physical location. Protonmail then claims to encrypt this after they scan it for spam. But this is a conflict of interest as they are encrypting it to protect from themselves.
Q: What are the advantages of self-hosted VPS email over blindly trusting Proton?
A: We’re going to break this up into 2 Nostr posts to prevent it from being an entire Bible.
So stay tuned, show some love so that others can learn, and we’ll see you next time!
Why should you have a self-hosted email?
Because without it, you don’t own anything.
Most websites force you to link an email, and the email can reset the password. And because email forces you to trust the provider, the provider really owns your accounts.
Don’t use Protonmail. The emails come in as plain text, and then they supposedly encrypt it. But this is a conflict of interest, as they are protecting you from themselves.
Instead, here at Simplified Privacy, each customer gets the login credentials and SSH keys to their own tiny cloud (VPS). So you fully control your own data, and lock us out. With Protonmail, you can’t verify their cloud. But with your own VPS, you are the cloud.
Our combo package is designed to keep your VPS lightweight and save you money, while being jammed packed with functionality!
We’ll setup 3 services, (using open source software, all on the same VPS):
1) Email
2) Chat (Your choice of XMPP or SimpleX)
3) Team cloud docs w/ CryptPad (like Google docs but encrypted)
4) With a full YEAR of tech support after.
5) Includes domain name registration AND the first month of VPS costs.
All for just a one-time $99 setup fee, and then after the first month you take over paying the VPS directly (like $8 a month).
See screenshots and learn more:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/email-cloud-combo/
I believe we have a miscommunication, that’s alright let me clarify.
Simplified Privacy is technical support. We don’t run the VPS.
We setup for you/customers services you like on a third party VPS that you pick, with your domain choice.
So we aren’t hosting the email, we’re providing the software and technical support.
The challenge is getting 3 services, with different web panels, to all work without issue.
So once we set it up, you lock US, meaning Simplified Privacy out.
We do offer it on a root w/ encryption. But as you just said, they can still snapshot memory as ALL email has this issue.
But there is still privacy above what proton has, and you get other services such as XMPP and Cryptpad with it, so its good for small businesses that need email to function
Most Nostr users post to relays on Cloudflare and Hetzner
They don’t realize that they’re easily censored, and it’s not decentralized.
Here’s our NEW guide to Nostr relays:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/nostr-relay-guide/
Featuring a guide to Tor Onion relays, with tips for speed on Gossip:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/tor-nostr/
Plus a list of clearweb relays by company, so you can diversify,
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/nostr-relays-by-company/
I’m an optimist. I’m putting in the effort. If you want to stay an obedient Big Tech slave, you chose to do so. Don’t you dare spit that pessimism at me.
Change is possible, it comes from you. Share this, they gotta learn also.
The central bank empire wants the price of Bitcoin to go up, because it makes layer 1 transactions expensive. Then they can push you to custodial layer 2 that’s easier to regulate and control.
Oddbean new post about login | logout
Notes by SimplifiedPrivacy.com Podcast | export