Software Endorsements

[Null]

There are tools you can use to enjoy the Internet more. I am a crazy person on the Internet 24/7 and this is what works best for me.


This site is very thorough and has many suggestions.

Best Privacy Tools & Software Guide in in 2023

The most reliable website for privacy tools since 2015. Software, services, apps and privacy guides to fight surveillance with encryption for better internet privacy.

www.privacytools.io

Browser

Brave
Pros

• Heavy privacy emphasis.
• Far and away the best mobile browser. Allows mobile extensions.
• Built-in ad block.
• Supports cryptocurrency "Basic Attention Token" natively, and is a promising way for casual web users (you) to support sites (kiwi farms) anonymously and easily by paying pennies to websites and content creators you frequent the most.
• Headed by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and founding/former CEO of Mozilla.
• Recent development allows all Chrome extensions to be used in Brave.

Cons

• Nothing. All previous complaints I've written here have been resolved. It is Chrome, minus spyware, plus crypto for normies.

Proxy / VPN
I can't recommend one.


AdBlock

Brave
Pros

• Built into Brave.
• Always up to date.
• Works on Mobile devices.
• Has site-level controls to keep sites with anti-adblock shit from breaking constantly.
• Brave's AdBlock also includes native HTTPS everywhere and other quality of life considerations AdNauseum and uBlock Origin don't have.

Cons

• Kind of weak on what ads it actually blocks. I think Brave's AdBlock follows a "friendly advertiser" policy that allows a lot of ads through.
• Doesn't have a custom block element tool like others do.

AdNaseum
Pros

• A fork of uBlock Origin.
• Absolutely fucking magical, somehow even blocks ads on Twitch.tv.
• Clicks every single ad the sites put infront of you to destroy advertising profit incentives.
• Has actually caused Google to issue hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds for fraudulent ad clicks.

Cons

• No native extension for Google Chrome or Brave ( ),
• Absolutely fucking nothing of material. If you're on FireFox, install this right now. I actually think Twitch can detect AdNauseum users and hides their ads from you willingly because you're a bad motherfucker.

Temporary Cards
Privacy (Affiliate URL)
Pros

• Great way to abstract credit card details from your bank accounts.
• Good way to prevent yourself from creating subscriptions when using fucking trial.
• Hides your personal details from companies.

Cons

• I think it's only for Americans?

Cryptocurrency Suggestions
Coinbase (for buying and selling)
Pros

• Drop dead easy to use. Just fucking braindead.
• Allows you to buy ETH and LTC as well. Both are preferable to BTC for small-dollar transactions and donations.
• Best of its class; a blessing and a curse.

Cons

• I believe it's only for Americans.
• I do not trust their business practices. I think the service itself is safe, but I don't like them. Delaware company with no human point of service. I had to call their fraud line and threaten them to even get an email reply. It's one of those big evil faceless tech companies that see any access to human interaction as a design flaw, like Google.
• Requires government id.
• No private key control.

LocalBitcoins (for buying and selling)
Pros

• You can indeed buy coin with cash in person at a public place you both agree on, but there are many sellers using many different instant transfer methods. For instance, Zelle has worked great for me.
• Every country serviced. Even Botswana.
• Even though it's a peer2peer system, there is an escrow service managed by the Local Bitcoins team and I've had nothing but good experiences with them.
• Doesn't require any form of id and can be done entirely anonymously, though some sellers and buyers may refuse to work with you.

Cons

• Involves human interaction so if you're some sort of sweating autist who can't handle talking to people rule this shit out immediately.

Jaxx (Wallet)
Pros

• Handles many kinds of currencies.
• User friendly. Fucking Tommy Tooter could set it up and accept $5 in Bitcoin from me for playing Hot Cross Buns on request in under 5 minutes.
• Has mobile versions.
• You control your private keys!!!

Cons

• Glitches out pretty frequently for me. I've seen transactions show up that didn't actually belong to me as an error of the program (thanks a fucking lot I really could have used 8 BTC, assholes). The glitches are only UI related, but it's still annoying.
• Not open source. There are some parts that have their source released, but that's not the same thing as actually open source. If you can't compile the program itself and run it without downloading the executable directly, it's not open source.

Search Engines

DuckDuckGo
Pros

• Not Google.
• It's its own thing. A lot of privacy-centric search engines are just Google in a candy wrapper.
• Pretty good. Sometimes even has a leg up on Google. DDG had StackOverflow previews before Google did, for instance.
• Google obfuscates results it does not want you to see. DDG does not.

Cons

• Results are sometimes much poorer than Google's, but most of the time they're fine.

StartPage
Pros

• Not Google.
• Privacy oriented.
• Design is preferred over DDG to some people.

Cons

• I think StartPage is just an amalgamation of other search engine results.

Yandex
Pros

• Really good.
• Ignores legal takedown notices because Putin doesn't care about your country.
• Yandex.com is new and in English, so you don't need to guess anymore.

Cons

• Trading American Corporate spyware for Russian State spyware.

Torrenting

Brave (Client)
Pros

• Opens magnet: URIs directly in the browser.

Cons

• Bereft of any convenience features.
• Doesn't allow you to seed, as far as I know, which is disgusting.
• If you terminate the download it doesn't let you pick back up.

qBittorrent (Client)
Pros

• Does the job perfectly.
• Only torrenting client for Windows I know of that isn't loaded with ABSOLUTE fucking GARBAGE like uTorrent is now.

Cons

• None.

Email

Email is harder to explain, so I'm going to describe how I use my email.

I have like 10 email addresses over 4 email services.

1. I use Gmail for things I absolutely cannot allow to disappear (banking, government).
2. I use my school's in-house email system for anything academic (including things that discount you for having a .edu).
3. I use cock.li less frequently for general throw-away stuff and disassociative identities.
4. I use my lolcow.email server for a lot of stuff, but it's just me hosting it so I tend not to put anything too sensitive on it and keep the email off the server itself by routinely deleting everything I receive.

In general I treat lolclow.email and cock.li as things that are reliable, but can potentially vanish. I use .edu sparingly and Gmail for shit that needs 100% uptime.

To make my life easier, however, I don't check these email clients on their websites. I instead use Thunderbird and Blue Mail for managing my mail. Using IMAP/POP, I can keep all my mail in one place and manage the different sending addresses. Google can also use IMAP/POP to import and send-as, but I don't want a majority of my email content on Google.

Thunderbird (Desktop Email Client)
My desktop email client of choice.

Blue Mail (Mobile Email Client)
My mobile email client of choice.

Gmail (Mobile & Web client)
Pros

• Does the job perfectly.
• Integrates all your email addresses flawlessly into the Gmail system, which
• Works on all computers as a web client, as well as importing your mail into your mobile devices.
• Allows you to send and receive from all your email addresses exactly as the standalone email clients do.

Cons

• Google.

Proton Mail (Web client) (Affiliate URL)
Pros

• Claims to be encrypted by your password, which they do not keep.
• Open source.

Cons

• Some features are paygated, like IMAP/POP3.
• Requires another email address, a payment, or payment by bitcoin to make an account as an anti-spam measures.

Yandex (Web client)
Pros

• Yandex is Russian Google so it's probably as safe as Google to store your mail.

Cons

• Trading American Corporate spyware for Russian State spyware.

 

[The Fool]

DDG is amazing, more people need to use it and stop shilling for google

Had to look up what the fuck Brave was because their website is as informative as a propaganda poster, apparently it's just another Chromium fork.

 

[Null]

Had to look up what the fuck Brave was because their website is as informative as a propaganda poster, apparently it's just another Chromium fork.

Is it a Chromium fork or a Webkit browser? Either way it's better than every other Chromium fork I've seen. FireFox is super fucking fast right now though.

 

[The Fool]

Is it a Chromium fork or a Webkit browser? Either way it's better than every other Chromium fork I've seen. FireFox is super fucking fast right now though.

Wikiped says Chromium. I'm pretty happy with Vivaldi right now, if there's any Chromium derivative I'd probably stick with that one. It's not perfect but it's the best I've seen so far.

 

[CIA Nigger]

There should be a Linux distros section. I've had good experiences with Void, Ubuntu Mate, and Debian (though Debian does have a learning curve, especially since it doesn't contain the firmware by default.)

 

[BoingBoingBoi]

i was entertaining using Brave for a bit but i got nervous about the "block and replace" thing i read that they do with ads. not sure if that's changed. i also dont like that it's a chromium fork. i can't remember the details about and went for firefox instead.

DDG is great.

@CIA Nigger i think people have too strong of opinions on distros, and distros are often catered to users' needs, so "recommended distros" probably wouldn't make for a good list.

 

[A Hot Potato]

- snip -

As a greedy and heartless thief, I personally endorse Duckduckgo if you are trying to find really obscure reading material.

Or any obscure goods, for that matter.

 

[Null]

There should be a Linux distros section. I've had good experiences with Void, Ubuntu Mate, and Debian (though Debian does have a learning curve, especially since it doesn't contain the firmware by default.)

This is geared for normies.

(Debian server, Ubuntu desktop.)

As a greedy and heartless thief, I personally endorse Duckduckgo if you are trying to find really obscure reading material.

Or any obscure goods, for that matter.

Okay enough, I have definitely warned you to stop quoting entire OPs before. I am not your fucking nigger and you do not get to force me to clean up after you.

 

[The Fool]

There should be a Linux distros section. I've had good experiences with Void, Ubuntu Mate, and Debian (though Debian does have a learning curve, especially since it doesn't contain the firmware by default.)

lol all linux distros are just the same shit with different packages added or removed. it's like trying to discern between sonichu characters

 

[Fuck you jewish cunt]

DuckDuckGo is good. Wish it didn't automatically have safesearch set to "strict" though. Also wish it was a little bit better with the search results.

 

[Polish Hot Dog (spicie)]

Yandex? Other people use that?
The world is a little less lonely

 

[Rand /pol/]

DuckDuckGo is probably the most user friendly of search engines that claim to be "Pro Privacy" in my opinion.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

This is great information. Fwiw, Avira antivirus has been treating me well ever since I dropped Avast over false positives from this site. It's fast, quiet, and doesn't source malware reports from whatever source was attacked to get at KF. They also offer an antivirus liveCD that can unfuck a surprising amount of virus-riddled machines.

 

[The Fool]

This is great information. Fwiw, Avira antivirus has been treating me well ever since I dropped Avast over false positives from this site. It's fast, quiet, and doesn't source malware reports from whatever source was attacked to get at KF. They also offer an antivirus liveCD that can unfuck a surprising amount of virus-riddled machines.

Antiviruses are for normies that have to impulsively double click on hotporn.png.exe and browse huffpo without an adblocker, not for people who know what the fuck they're doing. Why are you even allowing that annoying shit to eat your resources in the background while it waits to scream at you for looking at batch commands on twitter?

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

Antiviruses are for normies that have to impulsively double click on hotporn.png.exe and browse huffpo without an adblocker, not for people who know what the fuck they're doing. Why are you even allowing that annoying shit to eat your resources in the background while it waits to scream at you for looking at batch commands on twitter?

Please refer to my position the last time this was discussed.

 

[FunnY]

DuckDuckGo is a must to put as a default search engine.

Bit fftopic:, but a friend recommended me a source called Tor Browser and I did used it to test out for usage of privacy and wondered if anyone also used it. Little downside for it was using Tor for this forums is a bit slow so it's a 50 50, but everything else is decent plus there's an option where you can restart the browser to make it less trackable.

 

[Purple Man]

This is great information. Fwiw, Avira antivirus has been treating me well ever since I dropped Avast over false positives from this site. It's fast, quiet, and doesn't source malware reports from whatever source was attacked to get at KF. They also offer an antivirus liveCD that can unfuck a surprising amount of virus-riddled machines.

Avira launched their own VPN service called Phantom not too long ago, but I can't say for certain how private it truly is.

On another note, I've been using yet another Chromium fork named Iron. It works quite well for me.

 

[shilly_mays]

Nice. I paid for IPVanish until recently, anyone use that one before? I liked it and I got it on a good deal but it was kind of slow. Of course I expect a degree of that with any VPN but still very slow.

 

[NIGGO KILLA]

Something diffrent but

I endorse the mpc-hc video player


It plays every video file i have, can switch audio on the fly, supports subtitles and is highly customizable

https://mpc-hc.org/

 

[Null]

Bit fftopic:, but a friend recommended me a source called Tor Browser and I did used it to test out for usage of privacy and wondered if anyone also used it. Little downside for it was using Tor for this forums is a bit slow so it's a 50 50, but everything else is decent plus there's an option where you can restart the browser to make it less trackable.

Tor is an entirely different beast with an entirely different ruleset than just a privacy-conscious browser with a VPN.

I can't make any malware suggestions because I don't use anything. Even Windows Defender is off because it's shit.

https://mpc-hc.org/

a fucking TRAFFIC CONE is better