[Wavelets]

This is sort of an aside, but I find it interesting that so many people’s threat models include the NSA/CIA. I see it all over the privacy-focused forums and subreddits I read. Don’t get me wrong - I believe privacy is a fundamental right and a carte blanche dragnet approach used by these agencies is not appropriate, but paying $10/mo for ProtonMail and ProtonVPN isn’t going to address that threat. That said, there is a balance between digital security/privacy and living a normal life. If you are truly trying to hide your online activities from those agencies, you are going to need to live a very specific lifestyle.

I’m more concerned about my privacy being utterly raped for advertising purposes. That’s why I use a paid VPN, paid privacy-focused DNS, paid ProtonMail account, use Signal, etc. I could probably be better served from self hosting some of these things, but this is a good balance for me. It seems to me that this concern - hiding data from Google, Microsoft, Verizon, etc. - is secondary to hiding from the NSA/CIA in many open privacy conversations.

Note - I am sympathetic to the fact that there are hostile governments all over the world and privacy-tooling is mandatory for whistle blowers, activists, protestors, journalists, etc.

[ufo]

I think this comment would also have worked without the "r" word.