I’ve found its very common for Europeans to be under the dillusion that the govt is their friend, and has their best intentions in mind…

Gotcha, so you mean actual (credit) as a funding source vs debit? Can you link that? I didn’t see that in the comparison, I’d possibly consider that.

I can do that now with Capital One, but having that all together would be nice. Kinda surprising, I’d think those habitual wrongful charge back types would wreck that for everybody.

How would expect them to do it? I can’t see how they wouldn’t link to you card if you expect to spend money. Moneys got to come from somewhere. Auth tokens are the safest way of doing that, prior to them upgrading to that it was done through ACH, which is not only slow, it’s much more dangerous for the user since they have actual checking acct info. Auth tokens don’t work that way, and even if there was a breach, your checking acct info isn’t there, only a token they can’t use. The way they’re doing it is the smartest way for both speed, and your acct safety.

Only on the free plan, but verify that. Even if you did do it on the free plan it’s still very much worth it. You still have the protection of different cards for different people, the fact they lock to who you use them with, the ability to set spending limits, burner cards that only work once, the ability to pause or delete cards at will etc. All of that is a huge win either way, even if the transaction info goes to the bank. But even then that’s an option.

Honoring a warrant doesn’t mean much, when there’s nothing to turn over than a connection IP and some timestamps, vs all the traffic that could be there otherwise. That’s been proven multiple times with zero knowledge VPN providers.

They can’t make them starting doing things there system isn’t made to do just because they want them to, not how warrants work. Again, been proven many times over at this point. Knowing that you connected at a time, exited from a shared IP, with a bunch of nonsense in the middle keeps you pretty safe. That ignoring that’s even harder when that zero knowledge provider is ina country like Switzerland where it takes VERY direct reasons to have a judge approve a warrant in the first place, dragnets aren’t allowed there, and even then, nothing useful comes back.

A country like Russia wouldn’t kick back info, but their spying is at China level, so you’ve already lost there.

The ol’ True Caller scam! Don’t forget all the people that add email addys to the phones contact list…and then give every app that asks for permissions full roam.

But I’m “paranoid” because 90% of people only get my VoIP number and non important email.

One an occupation or two when I know somebody really sucks I’ll give them a forwarder LOL.

No, I joined before it all changed and the only difference was how many card a month you can make. Currently, I believe they push the real transaction info to your bank so they’ll show normally on your bank statements, where mine just say privacy.com, as well as the browser addon and web app, which are are all now a paid feature.

That said though, the $10/mo is worth it for what you get in the end. My whole purchasing life would change without it.

It’s a transfer of trust either way, point being you don’t have physical control over it, and therefore have no idea what’s actually happening on the other end, you’re not hosting it, they are, you’re just administering it.Russia is NO fan of privacy, arguably worse than the US, and now talking about banning all VPN use.

My server is in my house physically. I’d never host my own VPN because I could never compete with what commercial ones in privacy respecting countries can do, let alone needing more outsourced servers for changing my location all over the place, which I do regularly.

If you’re in one of those, yes. There’s tons of websites that list what they are and compare them against others, but basically all of them (that I’ve seen) have all the basics like not sharing your info without consent, right to data deletion, how they can share your data when they do etc.

Nix is awesome for experienced Linux users, AND that want to constantly play with their config file. If you do things and install things at the user level (which way too many do) then you’ve removed the benefit. That said, do it right, and recovering, moving, or duplicating your system could possibly be any faster/smoother.

Not saying it’s hard to learn, but if you’re not used to the CLI and editing config files, I’d start with it in a VM. If you decide you like it after you’ve totally set it up there, then the magic of Nix comes when you install it for real and just redeploy an exact clone thanks to the config file.

The time to ditch DDG came when they started gatekeeping during the first Russia thing, COVID, etc.

CA isn’t the only state with GDPR like privacy laws.

California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, Utah, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Oregon, Montana, and Texas.

I do the same, obviously all bullshit info, email forwarders for the acct, VPN, and it’s cookies containerized so it can’t go snooping, and make sure your browser isn’t successfully being fingerprinted or it’s all pointless.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Never fuck up and don’t hop on without a VPN, or from it’s proper container. As said, just minimizing, not removing.

What kind of phone do you have? Do you use social media? Do you use the same email address everywhere? They don’t know anything you didn’t willingly give out. It’s not a random website, it’s a website that bought you via your browsing practices.

Its (incredibly) rare for me to use a card online if it’s not privacy. I also used them constantly in real life thanks to places that have apps that let you add CC’s. My gym, Supermarket, Gas at Kroger, Car wash, etc.

Gotcha, your own server makes it better clearly, but you originally said it was on a VPS.

To be clear though just because I’m anal, you mean YOUR server? Not a VPS you pay somebody else to use? As in you can physically touch it if you want?

You’re taking something simple and making it complicated. Go with known trusted VPNs that have a history of proving themselves. Mullvad, iVPN, Proton (most of their history is with the email, but that means something) they’re all priced pretty close, no need for insane scrutiny.

Unless you’re buying kilos of fentanyl and automatic weapons off the dark web, don’t overthink it. Absent that, if your goal is simply hiding your IP and appearing in a different city somewhere, just grab a trusted one.

That 100% correct, literally no different than just using your ISP at that point, zero control over the hardware and no ability to control the IP.

And in doing so you have a never ending list of logs that you can’t control. Fine if you only want to hide location, but useless other than that. 1 LE request and every log will be in there hands in 5mins.

The people that just learned about him get screwed with the old episodes not being available, but for those of us listening for a while now, he didn’t have a lot more to cover anymore, the last year has basically been retouching on old stuff.

He made starting up a privacy podcast useless, now, somebody may step up. Although he’d be hard to beat.