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GHOST 7mo ago 💬 29

Let's just cut the bullshit. If you really need / want #privacy. You don't need VPNs and hacker software that you have never heard of. You just need some simple hardware mods.

1. Buy a old laptop with cash or monero.

2. Open it up and remove the hard drive, camera, microphone, Bluetooth, and wifi card.

3. Put a drop of nail polish on the screws when you put it back together for anti-tampering.

4. Boot off a non persistent USB. Tails is the right answer.

5. Keep the USB on a lanyard and snatch it if things get hairy.

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aco 7mo ago

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Shawn 7mo ago 💬 1

Fren, odds of a normie doing this are somewhere between slim and none. Personally, I keep a Tails USB stick on me; big fan. But a solid VPN and a few good browser extensions are much more approachable.

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GHOST 7mo ago

I have written up several guides for that for those that need it. This is not for them. This is just for people who need to be full nemo

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librekitty 7mo ago

im all for privacy, but how useful will the laptop be after these steps?

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GHOST 7mo ago

Will do anything a regular laptop will do except save. This is based on need, not a want

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sister_sam 7mo ago

Not that many need that level of privacy all the time or even some of the time. Great when you do. There are many gradations along the way a low better than nothing. One of mine one level above Tails is Whonix.

And even with Tails it doesn't matter a whole lot what computer you boot it on.

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sargkinni 7mo ago

Useful tips for ensuring a lack of persistence for certain types of users. For most others the same hardware modifications with LUKS (assuming *nix) on all connected drives would be quite sound in the event of device seizure/loss.

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GHOST 7mo ago

Unless you were logged in...

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ABH3PO 7mo ago

VPNs are not really hacker software, they're the most user friendly privacy tech in existence right now. Also this is excessive, to the point of being highly inconvenient.

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ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 7mo ago

i just use wireguard and a cheap VPS that often gets used for other things like testing my servers and relays

and a far better privacy protection method than all this complicated spook type shit is just living far away from the cities where people are so chill that they mostly don't even lock their doors because nobody ever breaks in

all the glamorous hacker shit is pointless for the average person whose biggest threat is tax collectors and false accusations being perpetrated by bureaucrat thugs with badges

they don't have the budget to go find you in your cottage in the country. none of this cloak and dagger shit matters that much in the real world outside of the dystopia of modern cities.

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GHOST 7mo ago

Of course it is overkill. I have posted plenty of guides on VPNs and how to encrypt your drives for normies, this is not for them. This is for activists and journalists in authoritarian hell scapes that if they find out who they are talking to or about are going to get themselves killed or memory holed. Not everything is for the average consumer.

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ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 7mo ago

what's funny is how much this gets talked about instead of what is most needed

also, it begs the question about people who don't want to fight tyrants and live an actual life instead of being in a constant battle

not everyone wants to get involved in a war, mainly because it's not our war, it's a bankster war. these are bankster puppets they are fightning against. how about more guides on how to get out of the reach of tyrants and just survive with a bit of dignity while the whole shebang falls apart

this shit has been going on for over 120 years, it dates back at least to the mid 19th century when all of this shit was cooked up, including the propagandist Karl Marx whose philosophy has been central to most of the agitation process to maintain the left/right paradigm and divide people into political pens so they can distract them as they rob everyone blind and then pin the blame on the other side of the fence to each of their divided herd sheep.

how about break through the fence, and go somewhere that isn't strategic or full of essential resources for their forever war?

war is hell. who in their right mind wants to be part of a war being orchestrated like a theatre production?

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Low Information Voter 7mo ago 💬 2

What about firmware / hardware level threats like the Intel Management Engine?

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₿oniz23⚡️🏴‍☠️🇮🇹 7mo ago

Wow cool 😍💪

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Neigsndoig IQ 120 7mo ago

Just use as much FLOSS as possible, including GNU/Linux.

Problem solved.

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Tico 🇨🇷 7mo ago

Love Thinkpad

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shortwavesurfer2009 7mo ago

You should also remove the battery or if you don't want to do that use a buskill that will automatically shut the machine down if it is snatched away from you. No battery would make it slightly more inconvenient to use, but it would make it a hell of a lot safer because if it was ever taken away from you, they would not get very far with it before it shut down.

Come to think of it, I'd probably do both. That way, if they were to arrest you, but leave the laptop plugged in because they noticed there's no battery, they still wouldn't get anything because the buskill would have shut the system down.

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GHOST 7mo ago 💬 1

If you pull the USB the system is gone even without turning it off. The lanyard is for easy access to yank. Test it out

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shortwavesurfer2009 7mo ago

I haven't actually used Tails because my computer actually doesn't support it. It's one of the very few that doesn't. So when you yank the USB, does it automatically trigger a shutdown sequence? Or does it leave the system booted and just would put it into a weird state? Because in that second frame, you might be able to get stuff from the RAM or programs that are already open.

I have pulled live USBs before, and since a lot of the system is loaded into the RAM, it still operates on a limited basis.

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GHOST 7mo ago

Tails does not. You get a frozen distorted screen that could be a issue but nothing saved

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HODLudek 6mo ago

Solid advice for a paranoid