I use vgy.me (UK, script to use it with ShareX or Dropshare, API)

I advocate an intelligence check, at least avoid that some politicians can go online.

Use an P2P chat and show the middle finger to the chat control. Official chats, like WhatsCrap and similar are anyway controled since ever.

I understand your point of view, but I can only speak mine. The advance of the far right in Europe and the rest of the world is more than worrying and must be fought, not facilitated. A company must also look at its image in the eyes of the public and show ethics and respect for the customer and user.

Mullvad is undoubtedly a technically good browser with excellent privacy-protecting features, but precisely for this reason it cannot be tolerated that its CEO supports a political party that promotes the exact opposite of what Mullvad claims to defend, because this takes away confidence in the future developments of this browser and what path it will take. The influence of someone who owns 50% of the company is surely not small and the influence and political orientation he has matters, even if it seems a good product.

Eg. Starlink, for sure very usefull to permit the connection in a lot of countries without infrastructure, in catastrophes, in trains, flights, etc. but I see also a worldwide network controlled by one person, Musk. Right populism always use the Honeypot methode for it’s advance.

No, the Mullvad company isn’t sponsoring a nazi party, but the company is owned by 50% of the one who did it, $500k, money gained with this company. This rest for me also at least 50% of trust in this company. Its not the same, if a company with 100 employees has an employee nazi, as when the owner is one. Because this mean, every money which pay the user for an service, 50% serve to support a nazi party. Stop fooling around with “he used his private money”, it’s money he earned with this company, by donations, VPN and services, paid by the users. Brendan Eich was fired by Mozilla for less.

FOSS nowadays is less and less a guarantee, since Google, M$, Amazon and Fakebook are one of the biggest contributers of FOSS (naturally all with their corresponding tracking APIs). Currently the company ethics, transparency and trust are a very important. At least for me, it’s not acceptable when a service is used to sponsor right wing or nazi parties. It’s not direct Mullvad, but their CEO paid by this product. Faschism is advancing in a creepy manner and at least I’m not willing to support it in any way.

PD. TOR was developed by the US army and secret services and they still owned the onion server. The future and free internet will not be the Onion, but I2P and decentralized networks, out of the reach from big brother corps.

With this the only European browser is Vivaldi, by its own structure as a cooperative, owned by the employees, quite far from the right. The only thing they sponsor is a local football club in Iceland.

I hope that KDE would improve one day its independent Konqueror browser (KHTML/ Qt engine, ancestor of WebKit and Blink, Linux only), to have some more alternatives in the EU. It works as browser AND file manager, but due to a good improvement very slow nowadays.

I use sometimes only an Proxy to skip country restrictions, I don’t use a VPN. If I need an VPN, I would probably use the SPN from the Portmaster which I use anyway.

Well Linux don’t have recall, but anyway depending on the apps you use (don’t forget that GitHub is owned by MS and for sur certain APIs also in FOSS). Firewalls and traffic monitors like Portmaster also are for Linux. Also Linux isn’t immune against spy- and logger malware.

To be clear, Windows as most used OS is traditional also the main target of malware, but since nowadays are more and more servers working on Linux (even those from MS itself), the panorama is changing. MS has therefore invested a lot of work in shielding Windows with an efficient sandbox system, secure boot and one of the best AV on the market included in Windows, even protecting against Root Kits.

While Linux, being less affected, has rested a little too much on its laurels and does not have really effective protection or an AV that deserves the name until today. The risk that malware can affect the system (which is free and easy to substitute) is certainly smaller in Linux, but not so for files and documents, nor for the Boot sector.

In the US MS send data to AtData (former Towerdata), among others, which use keyloggers and mouse movement logs, because this is irrelevant if you use decentralized networks or even the Onion, they know always what you do and what you post. Because of this is important to desactivate Recall and block coresponding telemetries. Portmaster, PiHole or similar nowadays is mandatory in any OS and network system.

That is the real problem with Windows, less the privacy (MS isn’t an advertising company like Google, they make money with their products, forced to use these, instead of user choice alternatives. and userdata to train their AIs, sharing bandwidth of the users for own use, this is the main issue of M$). Windows has all the M$ crap, AIs, EDGE, Bing, ads, OneDrive, Recall, etc. as default. You can desactivate all of these, but as I said before, it need advanced work diving through a ton of indocumented menus, submenus and registry entries (territory Comanche !!!). Luckily there are a lot of tutorials on the web which can help to eliminate all this crap.

For me it don’t do it. No EDGE nor Bing in my W11.

I tthink it is not so important which company bought another, if the other remain in control over their policy and headquarters. Kape is a global privacy-first digital security software provider company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

Agree, it will get harder to show those the middle finger, but until now there are always nice people which release alternatives to do it.

Cyber Ghost is a company from Bucharest and Germany, not from Israel

Founded in 2011 in Bucharest, Romania, CyberGhost is the creator of one of the world’s most reliable privacy and security solutions in the world. The company secures and anonymizes the online presence of millions of customers across the globe. CyberGhost defends privacy as a basic human right, being the first in the industry to publish a transparency report while building new user-oriented crypto-technology for the future.

The CyberGhost team is currently formed of over 70 professionals with a strong background in the IT field, based both in Romania and in Germany, the latter being responsible for most of the software development. With both teams united by a common credo for internet anonymity, CyberGhost is a major supporter and promoter of civil rights, a free society and an uncensored internet culture.

Cyber Ghost is also pretty good. One of the best in independent tests. Encrypted traffic, no logs, €1,59/month.

It’s a mess when the right wing control freaks are in the gov. The only thing a user can currently do is avoiding as much as possible these platforms, using instead eg. P2P for communications (https://otr.to/, https://github.com/michal-wrzosek/p2p-chat, https://mesh.im/, etc.). Because of this and big corps the internet is dying, I see the future only in decentralized networks, I2P or something like this for an communication without a big brother in the middle.

Oh yeah, EU and Spain need so much stuff bying from the US, only makes that US citizen pay 100% more for EU stuff, they need, eg machinery for manufacturing microchips, which are patented and manufactured in the Netherlands. Meanwhile the EU trading with China, Canada, Taiwan, India and building the Southern Common Market, which will be the worldwide biggest trading zone in history. The US, who is?Ah, yes, crappy cars, food and Levis, less if cientifics are leaving the US due to heavy cuts in science and research (exept military).

Agree, but at least is possible to turn Windows in an acceptable OS, but it need some work before. Way worse is the battle against the web hegemony of Google and other US big tech