This. NameCheap actually responds to abuse reports, as well. Turns out they actually think it’s bad for business to allow grifters and con artists to use their services, unlike other major registrars.

Barely Bones sounds like a skeleton’s Only Fans

We also are the only thing on the planet that produces plastic.

It’s kind of a moot point if you’re in the USA. There are only 3 companies that actually own and operate cell towers: ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile. I’m speaking in terms of privacy, not coverage or quality.

Any other company just leases usage of the towers from one of them.

• PureTalk = ATT
• Mint = T-Mobile
• Cricket = ATT

Then you have T-Mobile that gobbled up a bunch of smaller companies and kept the names to trick you into thinking it’s a different company (kinda like Nestle and their local bottled water companies). T-Mobile also owns Sprint and MetroPCS.

They understand this 100%

I’ve had a good experience with RamNode, and very little limitations in what I can do.

They used to be headquartered in Atlanta, GA (with servers in all major countries/cities) but were recently bought out by another slightly larger provider. I haven’t had any negative experiences since the buy out.

https://ramnode.com/

I have 3 minecraft servers running on one VPS at RamNode (it’s a dedicated server, not shared). One is vanilla, one is a heavy tech mod, and the other is a heavy RPG mod. People come and go all the time, no issues. $50/month, though. Note that minecraft is not the only service running on it. It gets very heavily utilized for many, many things.

RamNode will kick you in the ballsac if you try pirating with them, though.

Just because something is developed in the USA does not mean it will follow authoritarianism. These projects are open source, and many USA based open source projects are fighting back against this stuff. Besides, the internet is the internet, and these open source projects will live on beyond any USA law. This is the very point of the licensing. Having said that, I do agree with you on the RHEL/Fedora side of things.

I’m not sure about the Debian legal ties, I’ll have to look further into that since you didn’t give me anything to reference. Still, the key point here is open source, which means you can review the source code and security experts will, too. Signal is also a USA based company; France and Sweden are trying to force backdoors on them, yet Signal has vehemently said, “No. Fuck Off.” So, clearly it’s not just the USA doing shitty things.

I get that the current political situation in this shithole country is absolutely horrifying, but that does not immediately mean that the entire population of the country is with the fascists by default. Starlink being used for election purpose should be the number one red flag indicator that the citizens of the USA did not actually vote for what’s happening and it was manipulated. Because of the fascist playbook and money, it is difficult for the proletariat to do much without seriously violent actions.

I just don’t agree with your sentiment on this US jurisdiction idea when it comes to open source, non-profit projects. And to be clear, it’s OK that we might disagree. I’m just providing discourse with a healthy dose of skepticism.

jurisdiction in the US, which means a lot of Linux distros are not an option anymore.

Please elaborate and provide some receipts to what you mean.

I know your list is what you use, my list is more data for you to DYOR and find even better, privacy respecting alternatives than what you suggested. As you say, do whatever you think is best.

Thanks for coming back around about it. Still, I agree with you and consider it a red flag, it is antithetical for a privacy person that claims to support FOSS.

Instantly, I don’t trust whoever this is. That’s a red flag. Matters a great deal to me, thanks for pointing it out so I don’t give the site a click.

• Chromium forks are troublesome. I’d suggest Mullvad Browser or LibreWolf instead.
• Qwant is nice, but SearXNG aggregates qwant together with several other engines. Then there’s a new up-and-comer called Mwmbl.
• Proton is yet another ecosystem that pretends to be for privacy while actually doing the opposite. Instead, Tuta or Mailbox (only downside to mailbox is no free accounts).
• No comment on payment systems, I don’t trust any of them except maybe a local Credit Union.
• Practically any Linux, don’t limit suggestions to one distro when there are many with varied support and out-of-the-box options.
• Mullvad VPN + Mullvad Browser were made for each other, browser being co-developed with Tor Project, and is the highest rated in terms of defeating browser fingerprinting (even over Tor), and they have pioneered DAITA. I see many, many mixed thoughts on Surfshark. It is mainly a cheap and better alternative to Nord or Proton, but Mullvad is only $5/mo and you get so much more.

None of the above are USA-based apart from Mwmbl, but it is non-profit and wholly FOSS.

Test your browser fingerprints:

• https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
• https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/

Indeed. Fuck Swiss Google.

https://tuta.com/

I’m tired of all these ecosystems going fascist.

I’ve seen others mention the redundancy for the PSUs. One note about that, they are meant to be plugged into 2 different circuits! Otherwise, if they are on the same one and it fails, then redundancy is out the window.

Not a requirement, but if this is going to be a data hoarding type deal or you want it highly available for your purposes, then you should make sure you keep this in mind.

On that same token, read up on RAID Levels for hard drive redundancy.

Just FYI, duckduckgo has an agreement with Microsoft regarding ads.

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/ads-by-microsoft-on-duckduckgo-private-search/

Regarding Password Managers, you can put a little extra effort into setup with KeePass + SyncThing to avoid using 3rd parties at all.

Highly recommend not relying on a cloud provider for this kind of thing. You’re just asking for one of two things to happen:

1. Their servers get compromised
2. They decide to shut down

I know you can self-host with vaultwarden, but if you’re not a self-hoster then it’s a little bit simpler to setup SyncThing and use the kdbx format.

I wholeheartedly agree with Tuta over Proton Mail!

And to add to password manager, KeePass + SyncThing is excellent if you need to access your vault on multiple devices without any 3rd parties involved.

The more plugins you add, the more unique you become, just FYI.

Use this site to test your uniqueness in different browsers and VPN setups:

https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/

I have found that Mullvad Browser + VPN (with DAITA and Multihop ON) are better than FireFox or LibreWolf. Me and another user on here went through a little back and forth comparing some things. Just follow the comment thread from here:

https://programming.dev/comment/15090531

(take it with a grain of salt and DYOR, we are not experts)

Also, I love Tor, but another reason to be careful: exit nodes can be run by anyone, including bad actors and any 3-letter agency in the world. At the very least, add a VPN layer when using Tor.

ETA: Keep in mind that it’s not just the browser that matters. Your screen size, GPU, operating system, and several other factors also add or take away from your uniqueness in terms of browser fingerprint. Basically, they less you change in the browser, the more generic and similar to everyone else you look like. The better your OS hides things from apps (for instance, in flatpak sandboxes) the better.

ETA2: I like creepjs for testing over EFF’s tool for one main reason. EFF tells you how unique you are, theoretically. Creepjs actually takes extra steps to make a guess at whether or not the browser is lying and trying to hide from fingerprinting. That being said, might as well use both to corroborate.

I have one device where I installed the APK straight from Signal themselves. That is the only device where it has updated itself.

My other devices all use the Play version through Aurora Store, and always updates through that.

Maybe there’s a config/setting somewhere?

But also, maybe don’t use F-Droid for apps regarding privacy.

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues/

alternative question to ask: is it advertised by an “influencer”? If yes, it’s a scam.