Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
view the rest of the comments
Should the encryption keys be... encrypted?
With what? Where would you store the encryption key for the encryption key on a desktop system where it would not be accessible to an attacker?
Perhaps there could be a pin or password that must be entered every time to decrypt it into memory.
As the article states, currently all processes are able to read the file which contains the key. Instead, you could store the key in the macOS Keychain (and Linux/Windows equivalents), which AFAIK is a list of all sorts of sensitive data (think WiFi passwords etc.), encrypted with your user password. I believe the Keychain also only let's certain processes see certain entries, so the Signal Desktop App could see only its own encryption key, whereas for example iMessage would only see the iMessage encryption key.
There is no single keychain on Linux, and supposedly on Windows too. Signal would need to either support a few dozens of password managers or require a specific one, both options terrible in their own way. This isn't something that can be done without making broad assumptions about the user's system.
I'm not too knowledgeable on that topic, but doesn't Linux store WiFi or smb-share passwords in some keychain?
Edit: missread your comment a little, I'm guessing you meant that there are multiple different keychains on Linux
Either multiple different keychains or even you can have no keychain-like application in your system at all.
The WiFi passwords are usually stored in
/etc/NetworkManageras plain files. Granted, they are not accessible directly by non-root users as they are being managed by the NetworkManager daemon, but there is nothing generic for such a thing. Signal rolling a similar daemon for itself would be an overkill. The big desktop environments (GNOME, KDE...) usually have their own keychain-like programs that the programs provided by these environments use, but that only solves this problem for the users of these specific environments.To me it's perfectly expected the Signal encryption keys are readable by my user account.
Wifi passwords are piss easy to read out well at least on windows.
Only if you're logged in as an Administrator though. A "standard" user account can't access WiFi passwords on Windows.
Because a non admin account is the default right? Right?
UAC prompts you since vista if you want to let a process elevate it's rights to be able to do that
Luckily nobody ever just clicks through those.
Something you know, something you have, something you are.
3FA:
You could also start with just one of these
Nope, I'm out. I'm not giving my unchangeable biological data to the Computer Gods because A) Fuck that and B) the police in my country can compel the use of biometrics to unlock things but cannot compel you to give up your pass as it is protected by the first amendment. Yes I think the bios should be protected too but that isn't the reality in which I live.
From the person you replied to, emphasis mine:
I'm cool with non-biometrics.
(Though "3fa" and "could also" does imply he meant to use all three in concert, but that "just one" would be better than none.)
Yeah that factor may not be wanted. But it is a security factor, because only you have it.
You could hash it securely so the computer gods dont know your fingerprint. And you could only use it in addition to another factor.
Isn't the idea that not everyone has access to your biometrics?
There's honestly no need to make computers ask people for piss scans:
A password
Access to the password
The person who knows the password
A password can be cracked and is often very bad.
But that can be said of any of the other such called factors:
So its not really an argument against passwords (or passkeys, or passwordless, or whatever marketing want to call them these days).
My yubikey can be stolen but good luck guessing my PIN in the 3 to 9 tries allowed before it self destructs.
luck? I have a $5* wrench.
* (Actually a $7 wrench. Inflation is murder around here.)
If you have me... you win. My technology however will never betray me.
Most people just need to fear their passwords being cracked remotely. In masses.
If your threat model is being known, people stealing your stuff to login to your things, this is very high.
Yo dawg