This sums up my concerns very clearly. It's not about being paranoid 'they' literally know everything I am doing on my chromebook. Thanks for the video. I've got a good idea of what I am trying to accomplish from all the responses here. Gonna take some time to shake them off, but at least I have a direction.
setting up an online anonymous presence.
- Thread starter fx9
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Apperently, I have a good one for wiping chrome and installing linux. This is why I am working to set up the Dell completely before wiping everything to make sure I have a functioning laptop if it all goes sideways. Also why I am being cautious to set it up right so I don't go wasting my efforts.
BoringZombie
Active Member
It's not a matter of hiding, I just feel I've been walking around with my pants down, rather with my **** out and exposing everything for the last... Far too long. I just want to zip up and walk around without everyone having a look at whatever they want. Not intending to be crude, but It's pretty literal to being a Chromebook user.
So far I am on the Dell, Linux mint. Surfshark, Tor Browser, Librewolf, and Firefox browsers installed. Using Librewolf tonight because I haven't hardened Firefox, yet. I installed KeepassXC and have imported all Passwords. Still not sure what to do with bookmarks. Does it matter or are they readable for browser footprinting?
Sorry to anyone that I didn't directly engage with or respond to, this gives me so much to think about sometimes I don't even have an answer. Often I was just trying to digest and grasp what was being said. I just went through all the posts again to make sure I didn't miss anything. I still intend to tweak Firefox and likely use that for Amazon, Netflix, pay accounts and such. Maybe set up another browser for business stuff, website editing, email accounts, etc. Keep Librewolf and Tor for rabbit hole searches.
I still need to look into Youtube players, but I am using Linux, not the Chromebook. Mostly I just need to make using it a little more fluid, then it's literally making sure I have all my files transferred and backed up and I can wipe the OS from the Chromebook and set up Mint and do this all over again.
Now, I'm not saying I don't have more questions coming, but thanks for all the input.
BoringZombie
Active Member
Use FreeTube, I use it to browse YouTube videos on Linux. https://freetubeapp.io/
Way better features than YouTube.
Done
This is brilliant. I set up a proton email and I'm transferring logins from my age old email and changing account passwords as well. This will make the Chromebook useless and it's demise inevitable.
Any preferred mail clients?
Any preferred mail clients?
BoringZombie
Active Member
You should always have more than one email account for different purposes. So if one gets compromised none of your other accounts do.
For me I use Microsoft Outlook for things the Government and Companies already have on me.
I have one account on Outlook for each of these:
- Financial
- Professional/Medical
- Gaming
- Technology
I use Mailfence as my main address accept I have not sent anything much from it, because I use SimpleLogin aliases for everything else.
I use SimpleLogin aliases for: to contact me, forum accounts, website sign ups, social media (decentralized and open source ones I only use), Samsung account, phone carriers, Firefox, shopping online.
So these would all be forwarded to my Mailfence account.
I use ProtonMail as a recovery address.
Links:
- Mailfence: https://mailfence.com/
- ProtonMail: https://protonmail.com/
- SimpleLogin: https://simplelogin.io/
- Outlook: https://outlook.live.com/owa/
All of my emails and aliases are setup to notify me if they end up in a breach and are compromised, I signed up here for it: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
I watched some videos and searched a lot on the topic last night. I get why anonymity and complete privacy are unattainable. It's quite the world we live in.
At least I'm moving in the right direction. I've 'deleted' everything on Google Drive, and waiting on a bulk download of my images, then the Google account can be deleted and the chromebook can wiped . I'll give it a few weeks and make sure nothing gets lost in the transfer, but there is a big part of me that wants to destroy the thing in a physical display of contempt. I'm sure it will make a good backup with mint on it though
BoringZombie
Active Member
captain-sensible
Well-Known Member
C
CrazedNerd
Guest
the main readon that it's unattainable is that all telecommunications systems have some way of tracing you to the devices you use. Assuming that this is malicious by itself just leads to paranoia: it is scary if you value your safety, but just remember that ease of communication was always important, no matter how far back you go in history. If you catch someone using the internet in a way that's disgusting to you...there's not always something you can do about it. Ignore cyberbullies or talk smack about them to someone who's sympathetic. Study social engineering, internet, and phone scams so that you don't become a victim. I haven't read this yet but will try to later today:
Social engineering (security) - Wikipedia
I still get these scam emails every once in a while claiming my paypal has been compromised, but it never comes from @paypal.com .
rwsr
If you tell me your PayPal username and password, I could look into that for you and let you know if you've been compromised!
If you tell me your PayPal username and password, I could look into that for you and let you know if you've been compromised!
BoringZombie
Active Member
lol
C
CrazedNerd
Guest
haha, nah i don't need your clearance status to know that an email address like this is not from paypal:
;akdfjgka;[email protected]
luckily i haven't fallen for any of the phone scams, but when i was in college i did put my credit card number into a porn site and money was slowly taken out of my account. Also, more recently my amazon account got hacked and i have no idea how that happened. I hope they enjoyed leaving spam reviews of products because that's all that really happened.....
That's actually a pretty clever use of a hacked account. It's kinda brilliant in its simplicity.
I am pretty sure you can do 2FA with Amazon now. Without some serious effort (or just a stolen phone), like IEMI/SIM cloning, 2FA can be pretty secure. Heck, even my lowly Linux Tips site supports a couple of methods of 2FA.
(I take my site's security pretty seriously. That one site has some personal information that I've been entrusted with. They're just email addresses and usernames - and passwords but those are salted and hashed - but I still take my obligation to secure them seriously.)
