Old Reddit is consistently blocking my VPS at least. Before Youtube started the recent IP-flagging BS, it was the only site that outright denied me access from this datacenter.

I’ve heard of them in the context of screwing over people who want an easy income: they’re promised some pennies for their connection being used, then find themselves banned from Netflix and Spotify for “being on a VPN”.

Also, isn’t this where scrapers come from? Edit: just a short while after writing this, saw the news about FOSS projects being DDOSed by AI scrapers from Amazon and such. Yes, they are indeed using such residential IPs.

Yeah, I get it (barring the fact that literal Facebook is not even accessible from my IP lol). But whether this is useful, depends on who the attacker is. If we’re talking about, say, a data broker - yeah. But would Jake from accounting have such “IP-account” logs?

Good luck, my IP consistently points to an entirely another city.

A blurred house in a row of unblurred ones would attract more attention.

Funny that the crypto wallet also upset people in the space who like crypto. Because crypto, IF USED CORRECTLY, can be a privacy tool (because it is the main way to pay online that can be utilized without KYC). However, such people got upset not just with Proton broadening their product scope for no reason, but also the fact that Monero was not even considered, despite it having built-in privacy protections unlike Bitcoin, and overall being agreed on as today’s “digital cash”.

Yeah. For me, Signal’s security benefits are counteracted by various other usability issues. Such as not being feature-complete on desktop and not even allowing registration there without workarounds - given that phones are very privacy-invasive by default and far from all can have a privacy-respecting OS installed (while Linux works on pretty much any random computer). Or even on mobile - pushing the user towards Google download with dark patterns, not being on F-Droid, or (at least in my experience) the official app not working at all on my Graphene device (Molly worked perfectly though). Also, from what I’ve seen, even if you don’t mind losing connectivity with other users and would only converse with people on your server anyway (like how I do with my family on XMPP), selfhosting Signal is really hard compared to XMPP, Simplex or even Matrix, even requiring modifying the client app.

• Do not upload pictures of your face ANYWHERE, period - including private chats
• Do not use any name even resembling your real one, or rederencing your known interests
• If something asks for a phone number, avoid using it
• If it is mandatory (like for government services) or very hard not to use (like Whatsapp or Telegram), ask the parent first, maybe there is an aliasing solution
• If the data sharing is mandatory, try digging deeper for alternative options because it may turn out to be not so mandatory
• Do not post anything political or even remotely questionable in the current climate (should be talked about with the parent), and must understand you can be arrested for pretty much anything and be made an example of
• Each time an application is installed, think about what data it is able to access, pay attention to permissions
• Prefer FOSS programs for everything possible
• Learn to treat a Windows PC or a non-degoogled phone as a fundentally unprivate device and learn to not trust them with personal things (if I were a parent, I’d install a privacy-preserving OS on a device prior to giving it to a kid anyway)

Exactly! My usecase is exactly the same as yours.

While massively flawed, for now it is the most viable alternative financial system we have.