I like Qubes OS and ran it daily, for years. While it’s not completely bullet-proof (there are ways to break out of VMs and x86 hardware is probably riddled with exploitable bugs and deliberate backdoors) it’s the best publicly available usable thing we have.

You don’t have to break encryption if you compromise the endpoint.

If you’re specifically targeted by the NSA or even a national security service there is not much you can do. However, assuming that the network is always hostile is a sensible position. Because it is.

There is not much value added in Latvia. At least some of their hardware is supported by OpenWRT https://openwrt.org/toh/mikrotik/start though.

Mikrotik is proprietary, and has a bad security track.

With multi-layered defense you should protect your network, but not trust that you always succeed.

Debian is a community distro. Ubuntu is downstream of it.

Old Reddit and some exits work.

Apparently, they don’t need my business. Acceptable.

Thanks, useful information.

1. Do not have a mobile device
2. Do not install anything proprietary or governmental on that device you don’t have
3. Use borderline secure (GrapheneOS) OS on that device you don’t have and don’t unlock it if demanded unless your health and/or life is in danger

Does XMPP have feature parity with Matrix? I presume that bridges exist?

Thanks. It’s slightly worse than I thought. I’m kinda limited to communication with my small peer group, so I don’t notice that other user classes exist.

Many people run Tor nodes. I also used to run exits until dealing with complaints became onerous, then I ran middlemen for many years. In general one should only pipe encrypted traffic through Tor, and be it just for malicious exits which sniff and tamper with your traffic. There are use cases for using Tor together with a VPN tunnel, but these need careful consideration.

Or you could just use Tor.

They are quite simply corrupt. It doesn’t matter what they privately think. Corruption includes personal immunity, as long as you toe the line.

Well, yes, but privacy in the current world is not free, even if it involves some own thought and planning. Being wary of defaults and being aware of implications one’s choices bring is of course too inconvenient for many. But these do not get to complain.

Poor people (who still can afford the end devices and an Internet plan) can of course share the costs in a community, or use one of the many free servers, as long as they are aware of the tradeoffs. Beigers not being choosers, and all that.

It’s a federated communication protocol and open source implementation thereof, including servers and clients.

https://matrix.org/docs/chat_basics/matrix-for-im/

What is it?

Matrix works a little like email, but instantaneous and secure:

You need to register an account at a provider Whatever your provider is, you can talk to people using other providers In the same way you can use Outlook or Thunderbird with the same email account, you can use different Matrix apps for the same Matrix account. Several apps exist, but we’re going to go with Element for the sake of simplicity, as it’s among the most fully-featured Matrix apps on the market.

Once you are more comfortable with the basics and if you want to use another app, head to the clients section of this website.

Federated protocols are not centralized in principle. It might not scale to one user-one server (which probably even Lemmy can’t handle) but if you’re signing up for a central server, you’re doing it wrong™. Don’t do that. The nice thing about Matrix client is that it allows end to end encryption, including groups. So that greatly limits what Mallory can do in principle. As to servers being costly to run, given what documented Synapse requirements are, you’re looking at less than 5 EUR/month for a single server. Which can be shared among several users, obviously. This is in the same range as costs for a monthly VPN.