The question of browsers
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What host os do you use?
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I recommend Fedora or openSUSE Tumbleweed.
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Does anyone have any suggestions for a more private setup browser-wise? Tracking blocking at DNS level will continue and I’m on debian-based linux.
My worries sound similar to yours but my approach is a bit different.
- I switched from Mac to Linux (Arch, then Debian and for the last 4 years, Mint).
- I use EU services as much as I can instead of the US ones.
- I do block as much tracking and ad crap as I can. Still use javascript on a few sites.
- I use different browsers for different activities.
But I also consider this a lost cause. Sadly.
- I consider anything I do online (read, write, watch, listen to,...) is at risk of being tracked, and exploited, mined or whatever and somehow linked to the real me (not to one of my pseudonyms).
- With an increasing speed and willingness to destroy any remaining rights to privacy we may still have, I'm also expecting my country (France) to sooner than later make it illegal to use real encryption, to use a VPN, or even to use a pseudonym instead of my real name—all of that for my own good and for the protection of little kids which is obviously something that I as a law abiding citizen would not ever dare question.
So, instead, I do as much things as I can offline. Reading, writing, watching stuff, listening to stuff, communicating with people.
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You got most things right about UDP and TCP. They both work in the transport layer of the OSI model. They are also completely different protocols, related yes but independent.
UDP is "simpler" as it basically throws data packages in to the network and hope they reach their destination. TCP on the other hand has checks in place that verifies that a data package has actually reached its destination.
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It depends on your threat model. Using tor via a know vpn endpoint does make you stand out and can be used to profile your traffic. One of the main points of tor is that all users look exactly the same.
If you have e.g. one user out of a 100 using a vpn endpoint instead of some residential ip address that user immediately becomes a much more interesting target. There is information floating around in the web that state actors control both entry and exit nodes.
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Have you tried LibreWolf ?
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# Debian sudo apt install lynx # Fedora sudo dnf install lynx # arch, BTW sudo pacman -Sy lynx -
What I meant by my threat model not being the tightest was that if I want to read something on a site that requires javascript and cookies then I will just turn them back on temporarily rather than not read what I want just because of possible tracking.
I agree with your point about the web being almost unusable in parts without JavaScript. However, I find that a lot of sites have a lot of javascript-heavy pages at the front but simpler pages behind where you get to things you actually want to look at. Usually a site's RSS feeds let you get directly to the simpler pages without using JavaScript.
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I am, unfortunately, on Windows, mostly because of my inability to find adequate Linux replacements for key features in AutoHotkey and IrfanView. Believe me, I've been looking and trying to learn...
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I've found XnView to be a good IrfanView replacement. (Granted it's not QUITE as good; same as how there isn't anything quite as good as Notepad++)
As for Lynx on Windows, looks like it's available through Scoop! https://bjansen.github.io/scoop-apps/main/lynx/
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Out of curiosity, what can N++ do that VSCodium can't? That's what I've been using and it's been mostly fantastic.
Wow, thanks for sharing Scoop; I had no idea of this software, and dang, that is one huge games bucket... I'm gonna have to crawl through this sometime. I'll check out XnView as well!
