Tootfinder

A look at Phreeli, a privacy-focused phone carrier that lets users sign up with only a ZIP code and uses an encryption system based on "zero-knowledge proofs" (Andy Greenberg/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/new-anonymous-phone-carrier…

A New Anonymous Phone Carrier Lets You Sign Up With Nothing but a Zip Code
Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.

Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order.
Now he wants to sell you phone service
—without knowing almost anything about you.
https://www.wired.com/story/new-anonymous-phone-carrier-sign-up-wit…

A New Anonymous Phone Carrier Lets You Sign Up With Nothing but a Zip Code
Privacy stalwart Nicholas Merrill spent a decade fighting an FBI surveillance order. Now he wants to sell you phone service—without knowing almost anything about you.

The thing about a life-logger, is you input sensitive data about your life, lifestyle and activities, so privacy and data-integrity are some of the most important issues.
There can be no server, the data has to be yours and yours alone. Because you can’t tell what is happening to the data in a closed-source app, it must be completely free and open source.
You can’t trust a corporate diary, they must sell to anyone offering enough money.
So it is with my life log app, all data completely in your own device. No home server ever sees anything.
There is no home server. Just the code.
To achieve this Exocortex Log is a Progressive Web App. It downloads when you are online at the website and can be installed onto the homepage of your phone.
It keeps all data on the local device using indexdb.
This means you must be responsible for your own backups. Be sure to export and back up your data regularly. I have gaps in my ten year record where my phone was stolen and most recent backup was months prior.
Once installed it will work offline, airplane mode, no internet, down in the tube station at midnight, anywhere.
There's a blog on the website saying this and more: https://exocortexlog.com/news/articles/2025-12-06-release/

If you use "Fossify gallery" go to phone/Android/data/org.fossify.gallery/files/Pictures
And you may find your long lost Deleted photos that you cropped with it.
I don't think that's a good privacy features. They are deleted photos and they are still here..
Edit: these are the photos that were originally cropped to use as wallpaper and was deleted but Fossify gallery kept them anyway

Next week, on the 14th of October, the EU will attempt to push through a new law called "Chat Control." They claim this law is necessary to protect children from harmful individuals—and let’s be clear, protecting children is crucial. But here’s what’s really happening: the EU wants to scan every phone, tablet, and computer. This includes your photos, files, and every message you’ve sent or will send. 448 million people will be under 24/7 surveillance.
You might say, "I ha…

India backs off mandatory 'cyber safety' app after surveillance backlash https://therecord.media/india-drops-mandate-sanchar-saathi-app-privacy-surveillance

I’m not saying that this is good, but it recalled for me the ancient times when the phone company (there was only one) sent everyone a fat (in urban areas) book in tiny type on thin paper with everyone’s phone number, alphabetically by surname. Businesses were in their own book. You could also go to the reference section of the public library and use the book with all of the numbers in your area in numerical order.
Ancient times. The 1990s @…

Whilst waiting for weather to clear would love to spend some time prepping Loops/peertube clips, editing together music, text etc with some very short videos I've shot (very roughly -> don't expect BBC style nature documentaries), while in the middle of fieldwork.
EDIT: I just discovered @… have added creator mode to the @… app! Awesome work - will test it out right now. If it works from #Antarctica, guess it will work anywhere?
What are your recommendations for easy lightweight ideally #FOSS apps for video editing on an android phone? Don't mind paying but privacy is essential...
#HiveMind #FediRecommends

Google Safe Browsing has started blocking websites using #Mailcow for self-hosting email. Google calls them dangerous, and they're right: dangerous to their data-driven business model.
Yet most people still use #Google services. They talk about privacy, even attend

Figured out a cheap trick to blur a smartphone's camera:
1. Cut a piece of transparent adhesive tape.
2. Sandpaper it.
3. Attach on top of the camera.
Wanted to blur instead of covering the camera, because the phone interprets full cover as darkness and dims the screen.
#privacy #diy

Content Anonymization for Privacy in Long-form Audio
Cristina Aggazzotti, Ashi Garg, Zexin Cai, Nicholas Andrews
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12780 https://a…

Content Anonymization for Privacy in Long-form Audio
Voice anonymization techniques have been found to successfully obscure a speaker's acoustic identity in short, isolated utterances in benchmarks such as the VoicePrivacy Challenge. In practice, however, utterances seldom occur in isolation: long-form audio is commonplace in domains such as interviews, phone calls, and meetings. In these cases, many utterances from the same speaker are available, which pose a significantly greater privacy risk: given multiple utterances from the same speaker, an…

AI Eyes on the Road: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Traffic Surveillance
Ziming Wang, Shiwei Yang, Rebecca Currano, Morten Fjeld, David Sirkin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06480 h…

AI Eyes on the Road: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Traffic Surveillance
AI-powered road surveillance systems are increasingly proposed to monitor infractions such as speeding, phone use, and jaywalking. While these systems promise to enhance safety by discouraging dangerous behaviors, they also raise concerns about privacy, fairness, and potential misuse of personal data. Yet empirical research on how people perceive AI-enhanced monitoring of public spaces remains limited. We conducted an online survey ($N=720$) using a 3$\times$3 factorial design to examine percep…