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WhatsApp’s new ‘Strict Account Settings’ Adds Lockdown-Style Protection Against Spyware |CyberScoop
While safety activists are still whining about 2 billion people in the world getting communications privacy: The “Strict Account Settings” feature will roll out in the coming weeks and once enabled, will allow users to limit features in certain ways, such as blocking attachments and media from others not in a user’s contact list. https://cyberscoop.com/whatsapp-strict-account-settings-lockdown-style-spyware-protection/
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One-Ended Encryption / OEE | JP Aumasson
Bravo, this is a very necessary tool for certain people: You’d have to be braindead to believe AES is secure in 2026. When we analyzed how AES implemented its “encryption”, we found multiple attack vectors. Use OEE instead https://github.com/veorq/oee
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“The UK war on VPNs is an embarrassment” | Jimmy Wales
Quote: The UK war on VPNs is an embarassment. For child safety, we should be teaching children about Internet safety – including why you should use a VPN to protect your privacy, block malware, etc. To keep children safe, we are legislating to prevent them being safer online? Mad. https://x.com/jimmy_wales/status/2015799679762448515?s=20
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“Much of what people want to solve with the [online safety act] is actually [better] solved with a search warrant and an arrest” | Preston Byrne
Truth; see also embedded commentary from Graham Smith: Much of what people want to solve with the OSA is actually solved with a search warrant and an arrest. Because the OSA is the flagship online safety law, however, everyone wants it – and Ofcom – to solve all of the online problems.
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Content Moderation History: do we all remember 2013-19 when online sociology pundits were everywhere expounding the need to block streaming/sharing of video of people being murdered?
It began in the wake of various atrocities (civil unrest, government oppression, rioting, live streamed mass shootings) and over generalisations which tended to cite Facebook as at least the “amplifier” if not the “cause” of violence, especially due to risk of “copycats”. The Christchurch mosque shootings were one such atrocity, and we can draw a
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“[In the modern era] what threats do VPNs protect against?”
Answer, to a limited extent: jingoistic patriotism, xenophobic populism, theories of speech as a “harm” demanding “duties of care”, state-mandated enumeration of citizens in doomed attempts to negate online anonymity, and attempts to limit or censor access to apps and websites and content. Not “people in the coffee shop may be spying on your banking
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Microsoft Gave FBI BitLocker Encryption Keys, Exposing Privacy Flaw | Forbes
This is the future of which GCHQ wants for all global encryption: “Microsoft confirmed to Forbes that it does provide BitLocker recovery keys if it receives a valid legal order. “While key recovery offers convenience, it also carries a risk of unwanted access, so Microsoft believes customers are in the best position to decide… how
Fediverse reactions
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Anarchist Calisthenics: teaching people to break misconceived little rules before they have to break the totalitarian big ones
Online Censorship, Age Verification & Social Media Bans are misconceived, illiberal, mass-harmful little rules that we must teach our teens to circumvent, so they have context, understanding & wherewithal to break big totalitarian ones they’ll eventually encounter. Of course they will need to learn & understand what the rules were trying to achieve as well
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Britons, Parents: be aware: if they Age-Verify Social Media & VPNs, next up will be free supermarket & cafe Wi-Fi; no more “click one button & connect to the internet”
…instead you will be standing in Tesco, Morrison’s or Sainsbury’s, pulling faces at the camera or hunting for passwords whilst your screaming toddler is attacking the chocolate bars and running off into the crowd. “But if it saves a teenager from seeing depressing Instagram posts it’s a worthy price to pay” — no it’s not,
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Gammons, Boomers & Musk-fixated ideologues in Lords seek ban on online anonymity, pursue Age Verification for Social Media & VPNs
It’s amazing how most of the illiberal stuff coming out of the House Of Lords nowadays comes from ostensible Liberal Democrats & their (ahem) peers: Online safety campaigner Baroness Kidron, another peer supporting the ban, said she worried the government’s consultation would become the “playground of the tech lobbyist”. “The government has shown it will
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“Keir Starmer is hell-bent on destroying your right to a private life” | …I absolutely detest that the mainstream parliamentary parties are sitting on their hands regarding this matter
We shouldn’t have to be reading this written by somebody from Reform, published in the Telegraph. Where are the LibDems defending privacy? “Who could object to stopping these most heinous crimes? But make no mistake: this is “client-side scanning”. Messages will be analysed on your device, before encryption, meaning true end-to-end privacy evaporates. Every text,
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