A reverse proxy from somewhere like Cloudflare would allow you to host without any router config. Plus, it’d give a little more protection against bots, but it’s not going to block 100% of them.

B2 does charge for API calls: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/transaction-pricing

Though, it’s not so bad and they give you 2.5k free calls of each paid tier per day.

I really like duplicacy. It’s just a single executable you add to your path, then configure it to back up to basically any remote you want. I don’t even bother to run it in a container since it doesn’t have dependencies. Encrypted, compressed, deduplicated, incremental backups. The algorithm is pretty slick too. It can back up multiple machines to the same repository, and it’ll dedupe across them without any locks required.

Duplicacy CLI is free, and there’s a front-end for a reasonable fee. I think $50 for the first year, then $10 for every subsequent year.

For storage, you can just go with whatever is cheapest/easiest. I use a gdrive I’m paying for regardless for effectively free storage. But if I didn’t have that, Hetzner seems very appealing. I think it’s $4/mo for 1TB? Very reasonable, and you wouldn’t need to worry about api calls or chunk size / file count like you would with S3/B2/StorJ.

Agree, that’d be awesome. However, it’s probably not worth their time to create/maintain/support a self-hostable backup server/integration since this has been possible for many years now via Signal’s existing backup functionality. You can backup Signal to device storage, then sync that to a remote server using Syncthing or whatever else. Not super user friendly, but neither is hosting your own server.

EDIT: At least on Android

Cops don’t train like the military, they just dress like it.

And the apps that do have lifetime licenses went from $5 to like $80

Lmao, yeah, batteries have improved quite substantially for all phones in the last 14 years. Unless you want removable batteries, then everything is worse now.

Blocking basically all ads on your phone is trivially easy.

1. Find “Private DNS” (or something similar) in your settings
2. Set it to dns.adguard-dns.com

And that’s really it. There are other ad-blocking dns providers out there, and they all use slightly different block lists. I like adguard because their blocklist is less aggressive than others I’ve tried, and I’d rather an ad or two get through than for something legitimate to stop working.

You can also set it up as your dns provider in your router to block ads on your entire network. People tend to like to self-host adguard or pihole for that, but as long as you don’t care about a dashboard or manual dns entries, using a free dns is as easy as it gets and is very effective. I self-host as a hobby and I still just use adguard’s public dns.

You should be able to go into your router and block internet access for your tv, no additional hardware necessary. And it’s more reliable than pi-hole since it’ll block all internet access, even static ips, and no chance of a dns leak.

Alarm systems are often unnecessary. However, if you need one, I’d go with an old-school hard-wired system from a company like DSC. I’d avoid any “smart” devices unless you really want the convenience. For cameras, you can get a real CCTV system with beefy cameras that record to a local hard drive.

Wireless systems, like Simplisafe, are hilariously easy to bypass with even a weak radio transmitter. The devices run on very low power so put out weak signals that are easy to drown out.

Security companies will try to charge you insane monthly fees for crap you don’t need. There are companies out there that will tie into your wired system and do things like call you and the police when things go wrong for less than $20/mo. If you want the police to actually respond, I’ve heard you’ll need a camera system, otherwise they’re going to assume it’s a false alarm and get to it when they get to it, if ever. Any additional upgrades, like connecting additional smart devices to a security app managed by your provider, are generally scams imo.

Once you add networked connectivity to any of this, they tend to lock things down so they can charge you unnecessary fees to access your devices. The nice part of a dumb wired system, besides being unhackable, is that you can wire an esp32 up to it yourself and connect it to home assistant. I’d check for device compatibility with esphome before buying anything.

That’s all for actual security, though. It’s going to be overkill for 99.999% of people. The convenience of smart and/or wireless devices should not be overlooked. For something like windows, a few zigbee contact sensors from Aqara would have you covered for very cheap and the install is just sticking them on. I wouldn’t consider it a true security system, but it’s easier and more realistic. Throw in a smart camera and doorbell and you’re golden. Eufy lets you store video locally without a subscription, which is nice, but that doesn’t actually mean that it’s private.