Chat Control is Finally Dead?

Oh, there we go.

Hello, everyone.

We got a lot of stories for you

today.

Chat control,

one point O has been defeated.

DuckDuckGo is building their own web

index.

Vala wants to make payments on Android

that would work on custom ROMs.

So all of that and other news is

coming up next.

Stay tuned.

Welcome back to This Week in Privacy,

our weekly series where we discuss the

latest updates with what we're working on

within the Privacy Guides community and

this week's latest top stories in the data

privacy and cybersecurity space.

I am Nate,

and with me this week live and in

the same room is our executive director,

Jonah.

How was travel?

It was a good trip.

Not too much to complain about.

I didn't have to travel quite as long

as you did.

It was still okay, though.

I've had much worse.

So... All right.

Yeah, with that,

we're just going to jump right into our

main stories this week.

And our first story... Oh, excuse me here.

This is acting up a little bit.

Yeah,

our first story this week is about chat

control.

This is good news.

We don't typically get a lot of good

news in the privacy space.

I mean, I hate to say it,

but we do get good news sometimes.

And this is a good one.

Chat control one point O has...

been heavily, heavily, heavily reigned in.

So for those of you who may not

be aware, chat control,

there's two versions of chat control.

Well,

let me start by saying that chat control

is basically the initiative in Europe to

get companies to scan all communications

and messaging.

and um chat control one point oh is

a voluntary version and uh companies can

choose to comply or not comply and it

basically provided them with legal

protection if they did choose to comply

kind of a whole uh kind of like

what section thirty two thirty is supposed

to do here in the us where like

if you're acting in good faith we're not

gonna you know get too crazy with with

suing you if something goes wrong um two

point oh is

the other one that would require client

side scanning,

even for things like Signal and all these

encrypted messengers.

But yeah,

but one point it was obviously still not

great, right?

Because, you know,

this this blog post here comes from

Patrick Breyer,

who is an MP for the Pirate Party,

which I think is actually the official

name, which is pretty crazy.

But yeah,

and he's he's long been a big,

a big proponent of

of privacy in general in Europe.

He's definitely been pushing for a lot of

good privacy initiatives.

And with this

With this Chat Control,

the Pirate Party put forward Amendment

Five.

Sorry,

I know I'm going a little out of

order here.

Chat Control is one of those things that

has to be renewed every so often,

and it's actually up for renewal here in

April.

Unfortunately,

it doesn't look like they were going to

stop it entirely,

but at least they were able to get

in this Amendment Five here,

which basically says, okay,

it's still voluntary, it's still scanning.

but it has to be limited specifically to

individual users or groups of users

suspected by a competent judicial

authority of being linked to child sexual

abuse.

So basically, like the headline here says,

they've ended the untargeted mass scanning

of private chats,

and they've at least reined it in to

be like,

it has to be people that you think

are potentially guilty of this specific

crime.

um so yeah i mean those are kind

of the facts of of this story um

it's huge news i mean the deadline for

chat control one point oh uh was coming

up pretty quick it was coming up in

april and april sixth i think they said

yeah a lot of countries in the eu

were definitely planning on renewing it um

which would have enabled the current state

of affairs to continue on which isn't

ideal because it provides these companies

a

you know,

a legitimate use for or a legitimate

reason to scan all of this data for

their customers,

as long as they're saying they're doing it

for the purposes defined in check control

one point.

Oh,

they can kind of do whatever they want

scanning wise with

The data of Europeans and now,

even though.

You know,

it'll still be around getting this

amendment in that restricts it to.

Just like court or ordered situations,

I think is.

A huge benefit for sure.

And again,

even though this version of chat control

will.

pretty much inevitably be renewed.

It's in this form still a voluntary

system.

So something like signal is not going to

be affected by this anything with end to

end encryption isn't going to be affected.

It'll mainly be something that like,

probably big tech companies, Google,

Facebook are going to use to scan

messages,

which they were certainly doing already.

So it's not great.

Ideally, you know,

all of these services would have more

privacy by default,

but

at least you can still switch these

private alternatives, right?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and it's really interesting.

I know this isn't necessarily relevant per

se,

but this article has some really good

statistics here that I thought were really

interesting.

Like they say here that there was overload

of junk data.

Forty-eight percent of the disclosed chats

are false positives and criminally

irrelevant.

They said in Germany,

forty percent of investigations already

target minors who thoughtlessly share

images rather than organized predators.

So like here in the US, for example,

the age of consent is like eighteen.

And so if a seventeen year old is

dating a seventeen year old and sends an

image to them, that is technically CSAM.

But it's also one of those things where

most people are just kind of like, yeah,

okay, maybe they shouldn't be doing that,

but also we shouldn't treat them like

child predators.

And so he just kind of points out

all the reasons that this stuff is just

completely insane.

And yeah,

it's definitely unfortunate that the whole

thing just didn't get thrown out entirely,

but it is really cool to see it

get reined in for sure.

And that...

I don't know.

Do you think this has any implications for

Chat Control?

That is what I was just about to

ask you.

No,

I do think there is different ways that

they could go about this.

This has obviously been around for quite a

while and I think they have been using

this as an excuse for like,

this has been around for years and now

we want to expand on these requirements.

And so certainly it's not great because it

kind of gives them an excuse to do

all of this.

At the same time,

I think that this version right here and

the proposed to point out version that

they continually try to push across the

finish line.

They are pretty different.

And I don't necessarily know that this

will lead into that.

But it's always a slippery slope.

I think we're always we're always right on

the edge of maybe these privacy

protections no longer working.

So even though

I don't think this is going to be

a huge deal just because it has been

around a while and this is an even

better form of it.

And so we're kind of moving in the

right direction.

I do think when more chat control

discussions come up,

like they did last year, for example,

we all need to stay vigilant about that

and continue posting about that and

continue contacting representatives at

that time.

So in the future,

we'll continue to talk about chat control

if that's coming up and stuff, but...

But yeah,

I think before we move on to our

next story,

we should probably address a bit more

about where we are this week.

So Nate and I,

as we talked about on last week's show,

we are here in Austin, Texas.

EFF Austin is putting on an event that's

actually starting in a couple hours here

in this space.

So this will be...

build up and there will be speakers going

on here.

There's going to be music outside.

It's going to be fun.

All of this is going on during South

by Southwest.

Kind of an unofficial party together by

EFF.

So I don't know if any of you

watching are in Austin,

Texas and want to hop over in the

next two hours, but you certainly can.

Otherwise, Nate,

do you have anything else you want to

share about this event?

Yeah, I've got a

Yeah, so our EFF Austin's president,

Kevin Welch,

he said that we're fighting the

enshitification of South by Southwest and

providing an event in the spirit of the

original South by Southwest Interactive

that Hugh Forrest,

who is one of the co-founders of South

by Southwest Interactive and is actually

one of our keynote speakers here tonight,

he said that Hugh Forrest built over the

years

and we're providing a space of hope,

highlighting people fighting against and

shitification of tech and bad tech laws,

people who are building cool things with

tech and pushing back on bad policy.

So, yeah,

I know we have viewers all over the

country, and all over the world, really.

But, yeah,

if you happen to be in the Austin

area and you're free tonight,

we'll be here.

Well,

we'll be here all night in the sense

of the event.

It goes until ten, I think, local time.

So if you happen to be in the

area, definitely come say hi.

And, you know, if not, just,

Keep an eye out.

I think we're going to try to share

some of the stuff that we learned here

tonight, hopefully.

Yeah.

In the meantime,

do you want to talk to us about

this next story about what's going on with

removing custom ROM hurdles?

Yeah.

So this headline is,

Let's see if it would load.

Paying without Google,

new consortium wants to remove custom ROM

hurdles.

So basically,

a new coalition consisting of the groups

behind EOS, IOD, Apostrophe,

and Vala are pushing for unified

attestation,

which is a Google-free alternative to

Google Play integrity,

which we've talked about a bit on the

show and, of course,

on the Privacy Guides forum in the past.

which if they can do this it would

also potentially open the door to google

free nfc payment options on android which

would be great um this has long been

i think a pain point for many custom

os users and this plan proposal would be

released under an open source license

apache

I think that this could be huge because

we have certainly not only when it comes

to like tap to pay apps but also

just banking apps in general.

I think that we've seen and this comes

up a lot in like Graphene OS discussions.

A lot of banking apps are relying on

this Google Play API to determine like

whether your phone is secure and obviously

That only works on play certified devices

and you have to have all of this

invasive background system apps running

and You have to give a lot of

access to Google for them to give you

the okay,

okay to access your your own financial

information, right, so Yeah,

I think this could be a really great

thing,

if they can get this across the finish

line,

I think that it's going to be a

challenge for sure to get people to adopt

this technology,

especially if they can't get it into

Android first party.

Because we've seen,

like Graphene OS we'll talk about on their

website,

there is a way to run some sort

of attestations that's just built into

Android.

And they support that from a hardware

perspective.

And I'm not sure exactly how this is

going to go.

further than that existing option that

Graphene OS has.

But I think the fact that all of

these banking apps are not adopting that

means that,

or not adopting Graphene OS's alternative

option right now means that there's some

hurdle that we still have to overcome when

it comes to this.

So hopefully more of these custom ROM

developers banding together can

get us over the finish line to make

this more widespread.

But yeah, I don't know.

We'll see.

That's all I can say.

Did you have any thoughts on this story?

Not too much more.

Totally irrelevant,

but I just want to point out real

quick,

I just noticed at the bottom of this

page,

there is the Share on Mastodon button.

Oh, really?

Yeah,

which just came out a couple weeks ago.

There's now like an official Share on

Mastodon.

And this is a pretty big publication.

I don't know how it's pronounced,

but like heist.de.

It's a German publication.

I see them pop up a lot.

So that's really cool.

That is cool.

I will say on our own news articles

on our site,

we added that button

Oh, yeah.

We had that, like, same day.

You were on that.

So if you want to check it out,

you can do that.

But, yeah,

I hope to see other publications about

that.

Yeah.

But, yeah, in regards to the actual story,

I agree.

It's especially...

especially with the ROMs where you can't

lock the bootloader, like EOS and Lineage,

or maybe with EOE you can,

but like with Lineage, for example,

I know a lot of these banking apps

don't run at all,

which it's already frustrating enough that

when you move to one of these custom

ROMs,

you can't use like Google Pay or anything

anymore,

which is super frustrating because I've

actually...

I'm not going to lie,

ever since Privacy.com rolled out their

mobile pay cards,

I've been using Apple Pay like crazy.

Just because I have an iPhone,

it doesn't have a SIM card in it

or anything.

But I loaded a privacy card in there

and I'm like, cool,

now I don't have to use a debit

card.

And it's super,

super convenient and it's super nifty.

But there's nothing like that on a custom

phone, a custom Google,

or you know what I'm trying to say,

a custom operating system.

Yeah.

And I know some banks,

from what I'm told, some banks,

if they offer like, oh, in their app,

they have their own little payment.

You can use that.

But my bank is not one of them.

So I can't do that.

And it's just a real bummer.

So hopefully this is something that will

solve this issue.

And maybe we could start to see more

options in general.

Because it is crazy.

And our official recommendation is still

Graphene OS.

It's very secure.

It's very private.

But...

at the end of the day,

it's your phone.

And if you know the risks and if

you have a reason and it's your,

you fits your threat model and you want

to go with something else,

like it's your phone, you can do that.

And you should still have the ability to

use, uh, you know, your banking at,

like you said, like, Oh,

you can't even access your financial

information,

which is insane because it's your bank.

It's your account.

It's your phone.

Yeah, exactly.

But it's like, Oh,

because you don't have this proprietary

code or whatever running.

So yeah, that's,

I'm really glad to see this coming around.

And I really hope that, um,

that it will, uh,

It will work out and become a thing.

Yeah, Mr. Rabbit here said,

sounds amazing to finally have some nice

payment system on Graphene OS.

So yeah, pretty cool stuff.

Great.

Where are we?

I think we should probably talk about some

site updates from Privacy Guides.

So before we dive into our next topic,

DuckDuckGo,

let's give some quick updates about what

we've been working at at Privacy Guides

this week.

And for those of you who are new

to the show, who don't know,

Privacy Guides is a nonprofit which

researches and shares privacy-related

information.

And we facilitate a community on our forum

and on Matrix where people can

ask questions,

and get advice about staying private

online and preserving their digital

rights.

So Nate has, as always,

been working very hard on the video side

of things,

so do you want to give us some

updates on how that's going?

Sure.

Me and Jordan both, it's not all me,

it's team effort, but speaking of that,

our private messaging video is now

available for Early Access members.

So if you are a member on YouTube,

which actually I do want to shout out,

somebody did join earlier today.

Joey Wardock became a member on YouTube.

We really appreciate that.

Thanks for joining.

And we also,

if you join on our forum,

then you can get early access to videos

as well.

So, yeah,

any one of those people can now go

ahead and view that right now.

And Jonah also rushed out in the sense

of quick turnaround.

Jonah put out a video about Proton's kill

switch on Apple devices and how that is

a little bit problematic.

And I think we're going to talk about

that a little more later in the show

as well.

But that is available publicly for

everyone who wants to go see it.

I'm sure probably some of you have seen

that video.

It definitely got some attention and we

made some changes to our site regarding

this.

So we updated our criteria around VPN kill

switches and we added a warning for

Proton.

Basically the gist of the video was that

the kill switch wasn't working on Mac OS

when you switch between servers.

So there's a brief period of time where

your IP could be exposed and Proton wasn't

very clear about that.

So the day after we published that video,

Proton responded on our form with a lot

of details and they also confirmed that

they were updating their documentation.

So now it's very clear that this can

happen both in their documentation for the

kill switch right now and in the upcoming

update of their ProtonVPN app on macOS.

It'll have a bolded warning basically when

you turn on the kill switch telling you

that this is happening.

And they also committed to fixing this

problem.

Hopefully this year they said,

I think they said

Spring or summer?

I know they said summer.

Spring and summer roadmap, I think.

Yeah, that's what I remember.

So hopefully it doesn't take too long for

them to do that,

but obviously it'll be a bit of work,

I think.

There's two things going on here.

It's tricky because Apple certainly

doesn't make it easy to make a kill

switch in the first place,

and they're kind of dealing within the

constraints of that.

But also,

I think the bigger issue that we had

was just how their documentation wasn't

clear so that people who are on Mac

OS

are affected and they might not even know.

Whereas now at least you know and you

can plan accordingly.

Other stuff on the site, as usual,

Freya has been putting out a lot of

news articles lately at privacyguides.org

slash news.

So there's been more news briefs about AI

agent threats, some new corona malware,

and a lot more.

So if you want to visit privacyguides.org

slash news,

that is a great way to keep up

with updates in this space because we try

to keep you and

informed on privacy and security.

All of the work that we do here

is made possible by our supporters.

You can sign up for a membership or

you can donate at privacyguides.org slash

donate or you can pick up some swag

at shop.privacyguides.org.

I think that's all for updates.

Let's talk about DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo.

Okay.

No,

this is actually pretty interesting stuff,

kind of complicated stuff in my opinion.

So this comes from their sub stack,

which I did not know they have.

I think they have a blog and a

sub stack.

um but this is uh this is actually

a pretty short video it's only about

thirteen minutes if you all want to go

watch it on your own time but um

it's uh it says why duck.go is building

its own web search index and actually if

you don't even want to watch the video

they do have the uh the transcript down

here but it says it was like um

unedited probably automatically generated

so uh personally i found it a little

bit hard to follow i ended up just

watching the video but um basically yeah

like the the title says duck.go is

building their own web search index um

The why is kind of confusing in my

opinion.

It seems to be motivated by AI.

It's something about wanting to like,

I think they're trying to like have more

control over the training data for their

AI summaries and stuff like that.

Which is a really weird reason,

in my opinion.

But I will admit,

one of my concerns with DuckDuckGo has

long been,

and this has just been kind of a

concern of mine in general in the privacy

space,

which is that a lot of these search

engines that we rely on,

like DuckDuckGo and Startpage,

they're not really their own search

engines.

they're meta search engines they're

basically a proxy for like Google or Bing

or somebody else and that really puts them

at the mercy of those companies like

DuckDuckGo caught a lot of slack a few

years ago for censoring things and some of

it I mean this has happened a couple

times so I'm not talking about every

single instance this has happened but in

some of these cases it's not that they

were censoring it it's that Bing was

censoring it and since Bing is their

primary search engine they censored it as

a result and

Yeah, it's just really...

it's,

it's not a good position to be in.

And so, um,

I'm a really big fan personally of like

brave search,

but I understand brave is a very

controversial company.

Uh,

Mojica I think is another like independent

one, but, um,

I know their UI is not always great.

So it's just the point being is that

it's,

it's really good to see more of these,

these search engines kind of like trying

to break out on their own and create,

even if I don't think AI is a

good reason to do it, you know,

it's kind of one of those, like,

don't know how we got here,

but I'm glad we're here kind of thing.

So I'm really happy to see them, uh,

um branching out on their own i think

my big question about this story is do

you know whether um they're gonna take an

approach kind of like what brave search

did where at least initially they were

kind of like doing a hybrid approach where

it was still based on google and bing

i wonder because duck ducko has worked

with thing for a long time yeah and

they do say i saw

in this video that they've been working on

this like indexing on their own for for

a few years now so yeah I saw

that too it's been it's been in the

works apparently for quite a while yeah I

don't know I don't know if you saw

or if they said in this video

whether it's going to be a hybrid approach

like that or not.

I do think it was interesting at the

end of this video,

they said if you have questions,

you can reach out to them.

They might try to address more of this

in the future,

so keeping up with these updates will

definitely be something we want to do.

Yeah, for sure.

I am actually,

my RSS feed is subscribed to their blog,

so hopefully I will see more.

I don't know why they didn't put this

on their blog, but yeah, no,

they didn't specifically address that,

but I noticed that too.

They just kind of casually slipped that in

there, like, yeah,

we've been working on this for a couple

years, and I'm like...

Okay, cool.

Which I get it.

You know, in...

I'm a really big Nine Inch Nails fan

and Trent Reznor over the years has been

involved in like so many other projects

and bands.

And he said in an interview one time,

he's like, yeah, we, we kind of,

cause I'm kind of getting the lore here,

but he was supposed to be in this

band called tapeworm.

That was like him.

And I think some of the guys from

tool and just like all these like really,

really big bands,

but it never materialized.

Nothing ever came out of it.

And so he straight up said in interviews,

he's like,

I learned from that incident to just keep

my mouth shut.

because so many people were disappointed

that nothing ever came out of tapeworm.

So I, I totally understand their whole,

like,

let's just keep this on the download until

we're ready.

But yeah, it's, it's surprising.

Like when, you know,

like Beyonce is just like,

here's a whole album.

It's like, Whoa, what?

So yeah, that,

that really came out of nowhere,

but I think they probably will do the

whole hybrid thing for now.

Um, but I will be interested to see,

it would be cool if they do eventually,

um,

go full in on their own.

Like, Brave is kind of like,

ninety percent Brave at this point.

Yeah.

So...

Jordan said in the comments that they've

found Brave's custom search engine has

been not super great for people outside

the US,

so that could be something to consider.

I didn't know that.

Thank you for the perspective.

Yeah, we'll have to look more into that,

but...

Because I know DuckDuckGo right now,

they...

And sometimes this causes problems,

but they do, like,

have that country selector where you can

see, like,

country-specific search results.

DuckDuckGo is...

I've been using DuckDuckGo as my main

search engine for a while,

but it is kind of hit or miss

for me, especially with certain topics,

unfortunately.

Some things that really...

is dialed in on and can do super

well,

but I feel like it's a lot of

keyword-based searches rather than,

I don't know,

I have to look up a lot of

more technical stuff a lot of the time,

and just trying to find out the answer

to a question can be challenging if I

don't know exactly what to look up,

which some other search engines are better

at.

But yeah, it'll be cool.

iLook.gov, so it's exciting stuff.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean,

it's a win regardless whether you're a

DuckDuckGo user or not,

because they are probably the most popular

search engine outside of Google and Bing.

And then I did want to mention here,

the four, two, what is that?

Two, two,

four said Brave and Kagi are the only

exceptions I can think of when we were

talking about,

or when I was talking about how a

lot of them are meta search engines.

We don't officially recommend Kagi.

I don't know why.

Maybe we've just never looked at it or

anything,

but I have heard really good things about

it.

And

About a month ago,

Cory Doctorow gave an amazing interview on

the Jordan Harbinger show,

and he talked about Kagi a little bit.

That's been discussed on our forum for a

while.

I think one of the big things,

at least at the time,

was kind of a feeling amongst a lot

of people that

this sort of stuff should be available for

free because it's such an important thing

for like a lot of people to switch

over.

And so like kind of for the same

reason we have like, you know,

like a web browser has to be free.

It's kind of an access to information

thing, which is challenging.

But at the same time,

I know Kagi has been growing and popular

so much and a lot of people seem

to like it.

So it's probably time to take another.

look at that.

I think they do have the first hundred

searches are free or something,

which if you don't do a lot of

searches, that's probably pretty good.

But I know some days I do a

lot of searching too.

Some days that would probably work for me,

but then other days I would run into

that real quick.

How many searches do you all think you

do in a month?

I'm curious.

I feel like a hundred searches would be

quite difficult for me to work within.

It depends on the day.

If I'm researching for a video,

I'll blow through that in like an hour.

Yeah,

so there is a thread open on our

forum, like with most tools.

I think if anyone has any opinions they

want to share, definitely let us know,

because we should definitely take a look

at it again.

Google?

I think that's everything for DuckDuckGo.

In a minute,

we're going to start taking viewer

questions.

So if you've been holding on to any

questions about anything that we've talked

about or what's going on here or anything

else that you've seen in the community

this week,

you can go ahead and start leaving them

either on the forum thread for this show

or you can send them in the

chat for this live stream um pretty much

no matter what platform you're on we get

all of that combined into one feed here

so we should be able to catch any

comments you send in um but for now

let's check in on the community forum

there's always a lot of activity on the

forum of course but uh here's a few

of the week's most interesting discussions

of course

The remove Proton VPN discussion was quite

a big one and quite lengthy.

And that was eventually split off into a

couple different threads.

But basically,

this thread talked about a lot of issues

that people had with Proton,

especially that issue on macOS.

But there's also an open thread on some,

I'd say,

peculiarities with their Linux kill

switch.

And then the big question of like,

I think Proton has been aware of the

Mac OS issue at least for quite a

while.

Well, actually,

they've been aware of both of those issues

for a while,

but I don't think they weren't explicitly

saying the wrong thing about the Linux

situation.

Whereas on Mac OS,

they were pretty clear in their

documentation that switching servers,

the regular kill switch should protect

you,

and it doesn't because of Apple

limitations.

So I don't know if you are able

to pull up, not this thread,

but their reply.

I think it was in this Proton's misleading

marketing thread.

Was there a second reply to us that

I think would be good to pull up?

Give me just a minute to find that

one.

Here we go.

Do you want me to put it on

screen?

Yeah, I think so.

Okay, let me find it real quick.

It's post number forty-eight,

so I'll just scroll down quite a bit.

Yeah, give me a second.

If you have the sidebar pulled up.

Because they gave one response,

which was very timely,

and they did commit to fixing a lot

of these issues.

And they updated that documentation thread

that I showed in the video right away.

So that was good on them,

but I think their initial response still

left a lot of questions.

So they left another response,

which is this one, actually,

with this picture.

I mean,

that was the original one that you're

showing now, if that's on the screen.

Okay, here we go.

Yeah,

the original one was the one I showed.

Yeah.

So this is the second reply where they

showed exactly what they updated.

And they showed a screenshot of the next

update that I talked about.

So maybe you can make that screenshot

bigger.

I don't know.

But they basically say,

in the client itself,

your IP may be briefly visible when

switching servers.

And they include a link to their updated

documentation.

When that update is coming out,

I don't know.

But since it's coming out in the next

update,

they already have screenshots of it.

I'd imagine it should be pretty soon.

So I'm not too worried about that.

But I'm glad that they fixed a lot

of that stuff.

They also said that they're working on a

deeper fix.

It's already in progress.

In their post,

they said that we've been rebuilding our

network stack with a native WireGuard

implementation developed in-house that

includes a native kill switch,

maintaining the tunnel through server

switches.

And like they said in the other post,

the timeline for the fix is within the

first half of our spring-summer roadmap

cycle.

So if they are able to get that

done in the schedule that they're

providing,

I think that that would be great.

But yeah,

that was kind of the updates on all

of that.

I think their response is probably as good

as you could probably reasonably expect

given the situation.

I'm glad that it was quick,

although it took us making a video about

it for them to make these changes instead

of

acting on the various reports.

I think they said in one of these

posts that

Not a lot of people are on Mac

OS.

Yeah, I saw that post.

There wasn't a very clear demonstration of

this problem compared to what I did in

the video where I showed it.

I think there were a lot of reports,

but I didn't find any major reports or

reports that had gotten a lot of attention

or upvotes or anything on their subreddit.

But certainly the reports that there were

that I found and that other people in

our community found

They were responded to by Proton support

team.

There was also that remove Proton VPN

thread on our forum that was started in

December.

And I know Proton is somewhat active in

Proton related threats on our forum.

Obviously,

they replied to us on our forum.

So that thread did have a lot of

attention.

And I feel like

It's strange and probably not great,

in my opinion,

that nobody in their support team seemed

to have escalated this problem or been

like, hey,

can we have an engineer at least look

into this?

Because I think if they had,

it's an extremely easy problem to

reproduce.

And you can do it on pretty much

any Mac configuration.

So yeah.

A bit disappointing.

I think that they acknowledge that in

their reply to us.

They basically said they don't have a

satisfying answer to that question.

So they can't really justify it or

anything.

But yeah, there certainly was a gap.

I hope,

I guess the most we can hope for

in regards to that is just that they

do better in the future about issues like

this and try to address them more quickly.

But yeah,

all of these discussions on Proton,

I wouldn't consider them fully resolved.

They're still ongoing in our community.

It's tricky.

So it's tricky because I feel like a

lot of the problems that we've seen with

ProtonVPN in particular is stuff on their

client side, their software isn't great.

But the service that they provide,

which is the main thing for a VPN,

it's quality.

And they have a free option,

which is nice for people.

And they have a wide server selection.

And all of that stuff on the service

server operator side of things is good.

And so it's hard to say we shouldn't

recommend ProtonVPN at all.

But if you're offering a client like this

with your VPN service,

I do think that there needs to be

some level of quality control there and

certainly more accurate documentation on

all of that.

So I'm glad they updated it.

But yeah, like I said, ongoing.

If anyone has ProtonVPN opinions,

feel free to share them on our forum.

In any of these discussions,

there's just a lot going on with them.

But that's kind of the update for now.

We'll see what their follow through is

like.

Yeah, it was a really good statement.

I was really impressed with it,

especially just the things like you said,

why this wasn't surfaced more clearly to

users sooner.

We don't have a satisfying answer,

just taking accountability like that.

I think there are some very valid reasons

complaints with Proton.

Their Linux support is always very slow

and lagging.

Proton VPN on Linux is not a great

experience.

But it's like you said, they do provide.

They're the only ones left that still do

port forwarding,

which is kind of a niche thing.

But they are the only ones that have

a free tier.

They have a huge server selection,

like you said.

So they do have a lot of redeeming

qualities.

It's just, yeah.

You know, it occurs to me,

since they're notorious for not having

feature parity between apps,

why didn't they just remove the kill

switch on the Mac app entirely?

Honestly.

That would have been such an easy fix.

And nobody would have been shocked.

It's just like, oh,

there's Proton not having this feature on

Mac.

For all the trash I talk, though.

But yeah, no.

So it's good to see them responding to

this.

It is unfortunate that it kind of took

you having to make a video and privacy

guides having to call them out.

It's really unfortunate that it's personal

rant here,

but it's frustrating that sometimes

privacy companies behave just like big

tech companies where Signal had this thing

where the private keys were being stored

unencrypted on Windows.

And they made a very valid argument when

they're like, well,

if your machine is compromised,

there's nothing we can do about that.

But it's like, yes,

But also, the fix is so easy.

Why wouldn't you just roll it out?

And it basically had to blow up into

a whole thing before they finally did it.

And it's just really frustrating when we

have to see companies shamed into acting

like this.

And it's like,

you're supposed to be better than this.

We just got a comment from Mr.

Rabbit here.

Port forwarding is very niche.

And that is true, but I will say,

I think...

BitTorrent in particular is a good reason

that you would want to have port

forwarding.

And there's a lot of very legitimate

reasons you would want to use torrenting.

I mean,

even mundane reasons like downloading

Linux,

you can alleviate bandwidth from those

servers.

In my case,

I seed a lot of Qwix's libraries,

so pretty much anything you can download

for Qwix to have offline,

like Wikipedia or any of the other stuff

in their library,

I pretty much have all of those hosted,

and I seed all of them on BitTorrent.

And the thing with torrents is...

Even if you're downloading things that are

perfectly legal,

you might not necessarily want everyone to

know what you're downloading.

And there are certainly websites out there

where you can enter an IP address,

and they'll show you everything that's

been downloaded on that IP address.

And so that's certainly a privacy concern.

And I think that port forwarding has a

use case.

So just to go ahead and put it

out there,

the four two two four said VPNs on

iOS also have a big problem with leaking

traffic to this day.

Apple has some big room for improvement on

all platforms.

That's why IVP and kill switches on iOS

don't do anything.

That is true.

If you are an iOS user,

you should know.

And I think Proton has even reported this

to Apple in the past.

that kill switches on iOS are practically

useless.

And Apple, especially on iOS,

has really hamstrung them.

As far as I know,

there's really no way around that,

unfortunately.

And the thing is with Proton,

their iOS implementation and their macOS

implementation is pretty much identical.

These exist in the same source code

repository on GitHub,

where the app that they release on both

platforms is the same.

And that certainly makes development

easier.

It means that they're not taking advantage

of all the tools that are available on

macOS that aren't on iOS,

which is a whole argument that's going on

now.

People are pretty split between whether

they should be going above and beyond

because they're on macOS or whether they

should be doing it according to what Apple

tells developers to do.

There's certainly good arguments for both

sides,

but if you're only using Apple's

Approved api's to like create network

tunnels like this on mac os there are

exactly the same problems as there are on

ios and so like this point about ios

vpn apps leaking traffic like that totally

applies to mac os apps and it just

happens that ivpn and mullved they um

implement, I would say,

a bit of a hackier solution to kind

of plug all those gaps, basically.

So their kill switch on macOS is certainly

much better than Proton.

And if you really need this kill switch

functionality,

especially if you switch servers a lot,

it's probably worth switching to one of

those providers if you're on macOS.

But

I would say that the biggest problem with

the whole ProtonVPN thing wasn't whether

their kill switch worked or not,

because they are working within Apple's

limitations in this case.

I think the big problem was just that

it was very not clear.

In fact, they said the opposite.

They said it would work when you're

switching servers, and it...

And it didn't.

And I think that people definitely could

have been affected by that.

And so that was the main thing.

It was more of a documentation issue for

me.

And I'm glad that they at least fixed

that.

And I'm also happy that they are exploring

ways to improve the kill switch in

general.

That is a longer term fix,

but it'll still be good to see.

And I'm glad they did both.

I got one more before we move on

from Jordan here.

And this might be kind of speculation,

but it says,

were there any changes that will be made

to the website after the response?

Where are we at with that?

Yeah, so that's a good question.

We made a few changes already.

Basically, right now,

and this is more of a temporary thing,

but we are making it clear that this

specific kill switch criteria is only

going to...

We're only going to really consider it on

the operating systems that we recommend

because, like we just said,

it's very hard to do this properly on

Apple platforms in the first place.

And we would probably argue that if you

are this concerned about privacy,

it's

It's usually good to explore alternatives

to Apple and certainly Windows.

And so we're really focused on making sure

these kill switches work on recommended

Android ROMs like Graphene OS and also all

of the Linux distros we recommend versus

every single platform under the sun.

that is just kind of temporary for now

because it is an open question as to

what we should actually do about all of

this we'll probably expand this um to go

back to including all operating systems

but we might uh say that using the

os provided kill switch is acceptable um

regardless of whether that kill switch is

good like on apple's

operating system, it's not good.

But that's more of a platform issue with

macOS that I think macOS users need to

be aware of.

But as long as you're not lying about

how your kill switch works,

we might find that acceptable.

But there are certainly some arguments

that they should be going above and beyond

and using undocumented or unsupported

features if they make the kill switch

better, like Mulvet and IVPN currently do.

And so if you want to chime in

on that discussion,

you can join in on the forum.

I don't know.

what direction we'll go in yet,

but I think a lot of people right

now are leaning towards the first approach

where ProtonVPN stays on the site because,

like I said earlier,

It's not only a matter of evaluating these

clients,

but we're also looking at the server side

of things.

And I think that ProtonVPN does a lot

of things well,

even if we're not super happy with some

of the stuff going on with their clients.

And especially because it's a free

alternative for a lot of people,

or a budget alternative,

especially if you already have Proton

Unlimited.

Expanding access to using a VPN at all

is super important.

And there aren't really any free VPN

providers that come to mind that could

really replace Proton in this space.

So I think that's a really good reason

to keep them on the site.

Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Certainly,

we'll add more warnings about this.

Proton added those warnings to their

documentation,

but we added warnings in the latest site

update as well.

So that should be clear to people about

what's going on on macOS.

And we can make those warnings stronger,

or we can change our criteria accordingly.

But yeah, no subplans.

But that's where we're at now.

At the very least, for the time being,

it should be clear.

what's going on on macOS so that people

are aware.

Yeah, over on the new oil,

I do recommend a handful of free VPNs

like RiseUp and Calix.

But I even mentioned in the notes that

I'm like, yeah,

they're severely limited in features

compared to what you're going to get on

something like even Proton's free plan.

It's just so hard to beat.

There's certainly a difference between

like these nonprofit projects and like a

commercial endeavor, right?

And that's what I mentioned.

I'm like,

these are great if you absolutely need a

VPN for something and you absolutely can't

afford it,

but you're going to take a real feature

hit.

as a result.

In terms of even the number of servers

available.

You can't even pick the servers.

It just connects you to the fastest,

closest one.

Those tools to me are more anti-censorship

tools.

They're super useful for people who can't

access the internet normally or need...

one of these less popular VPNs that aren't

like probably blocked by less services,

honestly, but might be slower,

definitely don't have all the features.

Whereas there's a lot of VPN use cases

that don't require or like that aren't

censorship circumvention.

And so for all of that stuff,

ProtonVPN usually makes more sense.

And not to like beat a dead horse,

but what you were saying about like,

you know, they're, they're not perfect,

but they still provide a valuable service.

I mean, that's,

I think that's true of anything on,

in the privacy space.

Like there is no perfect service and you

know, everything has pros and cons.

And so, yeah.

It's tough.

But I think that will take us into

our Q&A, if I understand correctly.

Yes, it is time.

All right,

so now we're going to take some viewer

questions.

This chair moves,

and it throws me off every time I

scoot forward.

Yeah, these are cool chairs.

I like them.

Okay,

so we'll start with questions on our forum

from our paying members,

and you can become a member again by

going to privacyguides.org and clicking

the red heart icon in the top right

corner of the page.

So I don't know if we had any

member questions.

No, we didn't have any member questions,

but we did have some questions on the

forum this week.

So let's see here.

We had a note about chat control.

I think there was a question here.

No.

Okay, but we did have this question here.

What are your thoughts on piracy when it

comes to trying to stay private whilst

gaming?

I think I mean privacy.

What are your thoughts on privacy when it

comes to trying to stay private while

gaming?

Yeah, I'll read this before I answer that.

No, no.

I think they're asking if piracy is

acceptable to avoid these.

Got you.

Yeah, okay.

Because they mentioned that most

storefronts download your data in the same

way as other sites, or collect your data,

excuse me.

specifically your interest while browsing

the store and your play time of owned

games.

You say,

I haven't found a store that allows you

to make accounts relatively anonymously

and pay with something like Monero.

GOG seems to be the best option when

it comes to not having your gameplay

tracked because they do sell DRM-free

games,

but you still need to use their

storefront.

And then their library is a lot smaller

compared to like Steam, for example.

A lot of publishers don't want to release

DRM-free files or they have exclusivity

deals.

So it seems the only way to play

games privately,

similar to other media shows,

is to get them illegitimately.

Well, I will say that...

Yeah, first off, Jordan reminded me,

thank you here, that Fria did,

I think last week or the week before,

write an article about how to game

privately.

Not piracy.

Yeah.

That's a separate topic,

but if you are a gamer and you

want to learn about private gaming,

there is a good article about that, yeah.

Yeah,

so I would check that out for sure.

I will say that me personally,

this is my personal view,

and I'm going to end up defending this

one for weeks like last time I said

this.

I...

I gotta be honest.

I think piracy is theft.

And I think all the arguments I hear...

Like, I hear you.

It is messed up that you don't actually

own it, right?

Like,

you buy a thing and you get a

license.

And there's been so many stories about,

like, Amazon pulled, ironically,

NineteenEightyFour out of people's

libraries because of a licensing dispute.

But at the end of the day,

when we're talking about games,

games are a luxury.

And...

At the end of the day,

and this is another argument people make,

that they're like, oh,

but the studio gets most of the money,

but you're still not paying for it.

So my thing is, and here's my thing,

find a way to support the maker.

If it's an indie game,

find some way to pay them and support

them and let them know that you want

more of these games.

You just want them on a more

privacy-respecting platform or something

like that.

Yeah.

The best example I can come up with

is music, personally.

And I say this as a musician.

If you're going to pirate my music,

the least you can do is go to

a show, go to the merch store.

Do something to still show that you

appreciate it and you are trying to

support them.

So that is my personal opinion.

I'm also not going to endorse crimes on

a recording.

I'm just going to say that.

So I don't think piracy is the way

to go.

I think you make really valid points.

It would be really cool to see a

game store that allows you to pay with

crypto, especially something like Monero,

or doesn't track everything you do.

I don't know of any.

I don't know how hard it would be

to make some kind of a storefront like

that.

But...

I will say in my personal opinion,

I think the only exception is probably

like games that are no longer in print.

Like there's an old Jurassic Park game

that I love playing where it's like you

basically build your own Jurassic Park.

That thing has been gone for years.

So like,

I don't think anyone's going to sell it

to you.

Yeah, exactly.

And like you can find them used on

eBay,

but they're like a hundred bucks a copy.

And I'm like, okay,

I think maybe we'll visit the high fees

for this one.

That's definitely not going to the

developer.

For sure.

So that's personally my opinion is the

main issue I take with piracy is that

one way or another,

you're still not showing support for the

product itself.

And I think as long as you can

find a way to do that, you know,

yeah, that's my two cents.

Yeah.

Yeah, retro games is definitely different,

because that's more of an archival thing.

To me,

I think that it's morally correct to

preserve art, actually.

But all of this other like piracy of

modern games, it's like cyberpunk,

certainly an ethical question.

And yeah, I totally agree.

I think

mean ironically like gabe newell had that

quote about how piracy is a service

problem um because people wouldn't pirate

games if like it was super convenient to

just buy them because i think people

really like that convenience we saw that

you know when steam and netflix were first

coming out and they were competitors to

like the mainstream platforms it was like

oh yeah it's super easy to on netflix

subscribe and see all the movies they're

on steam you can just quickly buy a

game i was gonna say honestly like music

streaming

Made me stop pirating music.

Music is definitely the best example.

I think a lot of people could learn

at least this lesson from the music

industry because almost nobody really

pirates music these days because it's so

affordable and easy to stream on pretty

much any platform.

It's nice that there aren't really a lot

of exclusive songs that are stuck on

certain platforms that you have to switch

between.

It's all just kind of a universal system.

I haven't seen that a lot lately.

I remember some big...

headline ones years ago,

but I don't know what the current status

is.

But it's certainly not like a Netflix

versus Hulu situation where they're

completely different now and you have to

buy a million streaming services.

I think that's why people are going back

to piracy.

In this case,

it's not really a pricing concern because

obviously it's still very convenient and

cheap to just buy games on Steam,

for example,

but the privacy concern is real and

Kind of similarly to all those pricing

concerns,

I think that a big way to avoid

piracy would be to encourage more

developers to, like you said,

adopt other platforms like GOG,

for example, is a better one,

even though it's not perfect,

but it's not like tracking your gameplay

and you can...

use it DRM-free, so you can use it,

play games offline, all that stuff.

Ideally, yeah,

you would purchase from a platform like

that versus something like Steam if you're

concerned about privacy.

But yeah, getting adoption is tough.

I do kind of have to agree with

you that it is a bit of a

luxury.

Personally,

I wouldn't think it's right to

not support game developers,

especially in these trying times.

If it's someone like EA,

make up your own mind about that.

But if it's an EA,

I wouldn't really encourage that.

I don't think it's right.

That's just me, though.

I will say,

I definitely know it only goes so far,

but I really think...

think um what's the word i'm looking for

like respectful feedback i think will

really go a long way and i mean

obviously like yeah with somebody like ea

it's going to take a lot of emails

to get there but especially with some of

the smaller developers and studios if you

send them an email and it's all about

how you say it you know if you're

just like you guys suck like okay they're

not gonna listen to you but if you

email them and you're like hey i want

you to know i really want to buy

your game but like i am morally opposed

to steam and i will never buy a

game from them

And it would be really cool if you

guys were on like GOG or like sold

the game directly or something.

If they get enough of those emails,

they're going to listen.

And again, you know, yeah,

with somebody like a big AAA studio,

it's going to take a lot of emails.

But with the smaller studios,

it may not take much.

And it may not be that hard for

them to like, oh,

let me try selling this on GOG and

see if it gets a good response.

And if it does,

then maybe they'll keep doing it.

So I don't know,

because I guess I'm thinking in the

process that like...

Like,

they don't know what they don't know,

so if they just see, like,

this game isn't selling,

they don't know how many sales they're

missing out on and why,

unless somebody messages them and say,

hey,

I'm not buying your game for this reason.

So, yeah, just a thought.

I don't know how well that would work,

but...

I saw this comment from Anbi Damara in

our chat talking about how Steam,

when you buy a digital license,

they never revoke it.

If you buy a game that's no longer

sold or taken away,

you still have a copy on Steam.

And that is true.

I wonder how that works for most games

if Steam went away, though.

That'd be my concern with the whole DRM

thing because Steam is still licensing it.

It's a similar case with old games.

iOS games,

because the Apple App Store works the same

way, which is nice,

but it's still reliant on downloading and

validating these purchases from a

centralized app store.

So there's privacy concerns with that,

and there's also longevity concerns.

Who knows if Steam will be around in

fifteen years?

Can't imagine they're going anywhere,

but you never know.

I mean,

people say that about a lot of companies,

and then they disappear.

Well,

and another unfortunate thing that I can

attest to is just because you buy the

game from Steam,

the developer is under no obligation to

make sure it works on future operating

systems.

Yeah.

So Knights of the Old Republic won.

Thankfully,

and probably two for all I know.

Thankfully,

I can still play that one on Switch

because one and two were on sale for

like ten bucks one time.

And I was like, sweet.

But yeah,

they're not available on Windows Eleven

because they just they never updated it.

They never ported it to newer Windows.

And there's like hacks on YouTube.

They're like, download this file.

And I'm like,

I'm not downloading a random file from a

YouTuber.

But yeah, that's something to think about,

too.

But you're not wrong.

Like KOTOR is still in my Steam library.

I just can't play it.

Can't play it.

So.

going back to the beginning here I will

say not that I want to encourage piracy

either but also like

some an approach that i think that i

felt like morally right about even if it's

not legally right uh and i'm not saying

i do this but i feel like it's

morally right like if you buy uh something

like if you buy a game or like

um the case i'm thinking of was like

if you buy a dvd or a blu-ray

from a store and then you also pirate

it just as yeah for convenience purposes

like yeah like that's different and i

think if you could like i agree

if you're really going to go down this

piracy path, which is your decision,

if you can also buy the game and

just don't use that platform that might be

privacy invasive for playing games or

anything else, something to think about.

Yeah, personally, I'm not opposed to that,

but

So going back to some of our earlier

questions we got, Dr. Warface says,

do you suggest email alias services for

things like utilities,

like Waterphone and Electric?

And also,

do you guys suggest an app for investing

like Schwab or Fidelity?

I guess in regards to the first one,

yeah.

I do use aliasing services for pretty much

everything.

But what I've started doing a lot more

lately is switching to custom domains.

Just because that way if...

It's kind of as portable as you can

get, right?

I use SimpleLogin,

but if SimpleLogin goes away or I want

to switch to another service,

almost all email providers have the whole

wildcard domain,

so I don't even need to really import

my aliases.

I move the domain to the new provider,

and I just turn on wildcard,

and as I start getting emails,

they'll start coming in.

So that's kind of my logic.

Yeah,

there's always a backup if you're using a

custom domain.

Mm-hmm.

I do the exact same approach, I think,

for especially the stuff mentioned in this

comment here.

I would do the same thing where I

use simple login aliases as well,

but I use a custom domain for any

of that in-person stuff, basically,

where the privacy concern about...

people tying those email addresses

together is not a huge concern,

because they already have this other

information.

And so there is some safety in using

a custom domain, like you said.

But there's also a privacy risk,

because if you're the only person using

this domain,

then it's very easy to see if these

accounts are connected just based on the

domain.

So you lose that advantage of using a

simple login.com alias,

which is unfortunate.

But that's kind of the trade-off you make.

I definitely,

especially if you can get a custom domain,

I definitely recommend using email aliases

for every single service you use.

That's definitely what I do,

and that's mainly to serve as a quick

way to prevent people from

correlating your accounts,

but also just I mean,

services get data breaches all the time.

And you don't want like your email address

to match between those data breaches.

Obviously,

if you're interested in finding out

exactly how often that happens,

Nate publishes the data breach.

Roundup roundup everywhere.

He's like starts in our losing my words

today.

It's been a long roundup.

Yes.

We still have a few hours to go

because the party hasn't even started yet

here.

But yeah, Data Breach Roundup,

you can get that emailed to you to

keep up with all the data breaches.

I think there are a lot more than

people would expect.

I think you'd agree.

Oh, yeah.

And then just real quick, Dr.

Warface also asked,

what's our opinions on Windscribe and do

we want to add them down the line?

I mean,

that's exactly what the forum is for,

you know.

I think people have brought up Windscribe

in the past.

That discussion has been going on for a

while.

I don't know what the current status on

it is.

But last I heard,

there were issues with them not having

released the source code for their current

clients yet.

And there were also issues with them not

having released the audits for their

current clients yet.

All of their audits are outdated,

I believe.

They're either outdated or they're

inaccessible.

I don't remember which.

But either way, they don't...

They didn't meet what we wanted to see

at the time.

So yeah.

I think we'll continue to look at it.

We should probably look at it again,

but I haven't seen that thread brought up

recently on the forum.

If anyone has new information about

Windscribe,

if I said something that's wrong,

I haven't looked into this for at least

a few months,

so you can leave a comment on the

Windscribe thread and we can look into it.

But yeah,

I'll try to remember to look into that

again.

But as far as I know right now,

nothing has really changed from what's

been shared over there on the forum.

So I would take a look at that

if you're interested in Windscribe and you

want to

Learn more about it.

Cool.

I wanted to address one real quick from

Leonardo Leo.

You say,

I see many privacy advocates using Mac OS.

As a privacy advocate,

I think you should use Linux.

I want to point out,

and this is a very privileged thing,

but I know this applies to Jonah too,

we have multiple devices.

And so in my case,

I primarily use cubes,

which I'm very open about is like super

overkill for most people.

Multiple devices.

Multiple devices.

And so for me,

like this here is a Windows device.

And yes, I cry internally every day.

But this is also my device because I

mentioned a second ago,

I primarily use cubes.

Cubes cannot video edit, okay?

Especially the one I've got.

It's just not there.

And it's great for like browsing the

internet and communicating.

But like this is for...

production.

This is for editing videos,

which are all going to be public anyways,

so it doesn't matter.

All of that kind of stuff.

It's different uses for different things.

I think for people who can't have multiple

devices,

I think we would all agree that Mac

is way more private and secure than

Windows.

If somebody was like,

I have programs that just won't run on

Linux, given the choice between the two,

I would personally recommend a Mac.

Again, there's a premium there.

If they have the money,

I would recommend a Mac.

But

It's a, you know, yeah,

my point being is like, I think, yeah,

we agree with you.

I don't think we're advocating for people

to use Mac.

It's just...

You know,

different things for different use cases.

I do like their hardware, though.

I will say I have two MacBook Pros.

I have this M for MacBook Pro and

I have an M one MacBook Pro and

I use Linux on that one because I

think it's the nicest Linux machine.

Um, but yeah,

in terms of multiple devices,

I switched between that and I mainly use

this one for writing and videos and the

other one for all the other stuff.

So cool.

Um,

I guess in response to what I said,

how convenient is it to set up a

custom domain?

A lot of them have documentation to do

it.

Personally, I think it's super easy.

Take a look at the form again here.

It always updates constantly.

I wish I could get all my work

done on GrapheneOS desktop mode.

That would be interesting.

Yeah,

I'm waiting for the desktop mode for

Androids to come out.

They have some form of desktop mode right

now.

I haven't given it a try.

I know some other people on our team

have given it a try.

And I don't know what the latest is

on that.

I got a comment from Mr.

Rabbit asking about moderation on the

form.

I'm not sure I totally understand this

question because I don't think we have

heavy-handed moderation in the first

place.

I think the moderation on the form is

going pretty well.

But there are some discussions about that

going on.

And we're going to post an update on

the form when we know more about what

we want to do.

So yeah, I think

Kind of all I could say, really.

I don't think it's a huge issue.

I'll be honest, I have nothing to add.

I don't really spend a lot of time

on the forum just because I'm so busy

with other stuff.

If somebody calls attention to a specific

post or something, I'll go look at it.

And, you know,

I go in every week to, like,

pull what are the hot topics for the

podcast.

But even then, I just, like,

We were actually talking about this

beforehand.

I sort by basically what topics are hot

right now, and I'm like, oh,

these would be good things to talk about.

We really put Nate to work over at

Privacy Cats.

He doesn't have a lot of time to

just chat with everyone.

I like to be busy, though,

and it's fun.

It's a good job.

I like this job.

Configuration.

Hey, the new MacBook Neo is a catch.

I said this on our forum,

but I'll say it again here.

I think if the Asahi Linux team...

knows what they're doing and also if they

have the resources which is no guarantee

because obviously it's a small open source

project so they might not be able to

do this but if they can Linux on

the new MacBook Neo would be crazy I

think so many people would would buy that

that would be especially if you're just

like web browsing and stuff and you want

to avoid Mac OS but you don't need

a super

I don't even want to say that because

the MacBook Neo is surprisingly powerful.

But unless you're doing video editing,

it's probably not for you.

But I think a lot of people just

basically need Chromebook-like hardware.

A lot of things are done in the

web browser these days.

And being able to install Linux on that

device would be huge.

Because, I mean,

it's certainly better than a Chromebook.

Both in terms of being able to use

Linux and also just the hardware battery

life performance.

yeah I mean you know I was interested

in it but then I thought about it

I'm like yeah that might be kind of

a tough tough order for for video editing

but it gigs around is a bit tough

yeah I'd hope to yeah and also the

the screen size like because I sent it

to I know my my sister has I

think she's still on Windows X and hasn't

I don't think her computer can do XI

and I've tried to get her to switch

to Linux she's a little worried about it

so I'm actually gonna see her in a

few months and

or in a few weeks, I think.

And I'm going to see if like, Hey,

can I install Linux on your computer?

Can I walk you through this?

But, um,

so I sent her the MacBook Neo thing.

Cause I'm like, Hey,

this is relatively cheap.

It's like,

if all you're doing is browsing the

internet, it works great.

I know you'll have to get used to

Mac, but I trust you.

You'll, you'll be fine.

But, uh, she immediately,

and not like angry,

but the first thing she noticed,

she's like, Oh, yeah, that's fair.

I will agree with you on that.

So it would be cool if they had

like even a

Yeah, I don't know.

It's cool.

I like it.

It's just, unfortunately, I want one.

It's like that phone we talked about a

couple weeks ago that runs Linux, Android,

and Windows.

I want it.

I don't need it,

but I want it just because I think

it's cool and I like the idea.

As Jordan just said in the chat, yeah,

Asahi Linux is still limited to M.I.

and M.I.

And that's the main reason I bring up

the whole resources thing because I don't

really...

fully know what the status of the Asahi

Linux project is.

I agree,

it seems kind of like it's stalled,

and I hope that's not really the case.

But I don't keep up with it too

much in terms of what the developers are

doing, unfortunately.

So it could be anything.

But yeah,

if they are able to support newer stuff,

that would be fantastic.

But yeah, we'll see.

I think it's a bummer that it's still

limited to M.One.

And maybe,

I believe they support the M.One MacBook

Air.

So probably if you're looking for a Linux

laptop now and like the MacBook Neo is

convincing,

I think the M.One MacBook Air is probably

around the same price as the Neo and

it's the same performance.

So a lot of options.

Probably in a few minutes.

Okay.

Jordan said thirteen is a nice size.

I mean, yeah, it's great for travel.

Yeah.

I don't know.

That may sound very counterintuitive to

get a laptop and not travel,

but I am that kind of person.

configuration set,

I bet it would be a game changer

in most education systems.

I can tell you from the perspective of

having done IT for a large education

system in Minnesota,

it definitely will not be a big game

changer for at least K-level.

I think it'll be huge for college students

for sure.

Maybe some high schools will adopt it,

especially if they want to show off,

which definitely some schools do.

But

Repairability-wise, I think... Nope.

Repairability-wise,

replacing a screen on a Chromebook is

like, I don't know,

twenty bucks or something,

whereas the screen on a MacBook Neo,

I don't even know what you're going to

do.

The other thing is,

and the more important thing, I think,

in education is that management of macOS

devices is

such a disaster, really.

It's just really a pain to do any

of that stuff on a large scale.

And unfortunately,

Chromebooks provide a very compelling

value proposition to schools because you

can buy so many of them for cheaper

than the Neosto.

And that includes management through

Google.

And it includes usually a warranty that

covers all these repairs.

And it still ends up being less than

five hundred bucks per device.

Which is unfortunate,

but that's the reality.

I think for a lot of school systems,

it's very hard to convince them to do

the most private option as opposed to the

cheapest option you possibly can.

That usually ends up how most schools and

some government programs end up being in

general.

Oh, well.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly like this commenter just said.

They will continue to just buy e-waste.

I think they're getting ready to open

doors.

Yeah,

I think we'll probably start wrapping up

this stream because, like we said earlier,

we're at EFF Austin right now.

They have this party going on.

It starts at six.

But the place that we're at now opens

at...

Five, so a few minutes ago.

So people are starting to mill in.

We'll see how many people show up at

this thing.

I think it'll be pretty cool, though.

I think it's going to be good.

We have a very cool space here.

I wish we could record here all the

time and just go up to...

I don't know how often they do events

like this with speakers, but...

Yeah,

we're at the Butterfly Bar in Austin,

Vortex.

I want to share the list of speakers

at this event here.

At six o'clock, Hugh Forrest,

former president of South by Southwest,

is speaking.

Then at six thirty-five, Dr.

Sharon Strover.

Then there's a bit of a break for

music, I believe.

And then at eight o'clock,

there's a panel of the Austin Technology

Commission.

And then at eight,

there's a talk from John Lipkowski.

And then pretty much in that seven to

nine period,

there will be musicians outside on the

main stage.

And yeah, a lot of stuff going on.

They have a bar here, food, food truck,

all that stuff.

We'll see who shows up.

There should be some other

hands-on stuff and other smaller events

going on.

All kinds of cool stuff.

It's a very cool event, and obviously,

you know, it starts in fifty minutes,

but I don't know if any of you

plan to make it,

or if you're in Austin.

We talked about it a bit last week,

of course, and I mean, if you're local,

there's certainly still time to stop by.

I think you can come by anytime,

because it's open until ten p.m.,

so

there's stuff going on all night.

And we'll be here.

And yeah, as far as those talks go,

we're definitely hoping to talk with some

of the speakers as well or get some

of that content available.

So we can hopefully share some of the

stuff that we saw here.

But we will keep everyone posted on what

that looks like probably next week.

Yep.

I got nothing on.

All right.

You want to do the outro?

Sure.

All right.

All right.

So all the updates from this week in

privacy will be shared on the blog every

week.

That post is actually live now.

So sign up for the newsletter or subscribe

with your favorite RSS reader if you want

to stay tuned.

I would like to remind everyone we send

that actually right before we start the

stream.

So that's a good reminder that the stream

is starting and it's got all the sources

and everything we talked about in there.

For people who prefer audio,

we will offer a podcast available on all

podcast platforms and RSS yet again.

And this video will be synced to PeerTube

soon.

Privacy Guides is an impartial nonprofit

organization that is focused on building a

strong privacy advocacy community and

delivering the best digital privacy and

consumer technology rights advice on the

internet.

If you want to support our mission,

then you can make a donation on our

website, privacyguides.org.

To make a donation,

click the red heart icon located in the

top right corner of the page.

You can contribute using standard fiat

currency, such as a debit or credit card,

or you can opt to donate anonymously using

Monero or your favorite cryptocurrency.

Becoming a paid member unlocks exclusive

perks like early access to video content,

priority during the livestream Q&A,

and you'll get a cool badge on your

profile on the Privacy Guides forum,

and of course, the warm,

fuzzy feeling of supporting independent

media.

So thank you all so much for watching,

and we will be back next week.

Or maybe we'll see you tonight.

Who knows?

Hopefully, yes.