Can we have a training class so I can understand what y'all have be talking about. I think I like it but I can't wrap my brain around the entirety of the discussion....
Bump
Can we have a training class so I can understand what y'all have be talking about. I think I like it but I can't wrap my brain around the entirety of the discussion....
Holy smokes it is unbelievable that we are having these types of conversations, no longer as a hypothetical.
Yup. Just install Tails and am using it now on my laptop. Pretty nice so far.
Tagging. I've been thinking about a VPN for years and just never got around to doing it. That may change soon.
I have a question about payment. My reason for setting up a free Proton mail account was to have some personal identity protection. Now I am seriously considering doing like Norton and just paying for the service and simply stop using gmail/hotmail/yahoo.
However is it still possible to remain somewhat a anonymous with a paid account?
Do any of you recommend trying to pay for ProtonMail/VPN anonymously? I setup a Privacy.com virtual credit card using my real name, but I don’t think you have to use your real name when creating the virtual credit cards.
Is this something that I shouldn’t worry about and just my debit card?
ProtonVPN is working on fixing a bug causing Windows blue screen crashes affecting customers using the latest versions of the company's Windows client software.
The BSOD crashes don't affect all users and are caused due to conflicts with unnamed antivirus software solutions.
"We have received reports that in particular circumstances the latest versions of ProtonVPN Windows clients (the stable version 1.18.2, and the early access version 1.18.3) might lead to Blue Screen crashes in Windows, due to a conflict with certain antiviruses," ProtonVPN said.
"We are actively working on a fix that will be made available as soon as possible," the company added in the status incident ticket opened over the weekend.
Impacted customers are advised to disable their antivirus to prevent system crashes or to downgrade their ProtonVPN client.
"If you are affected by this situation we advise to either temporary disable the antivirus that might enter into conflict while using ProtonVPN, or to downgrade to the previous stable version," the company said.
...
I've pretty much decided we are going to start moving all of our emails to Proton at some point, therefore it looks like their VPN is where we'll go to.
I'm still only using the VPN and just haven't had the time or emotional energy to deal with switching stuff over.
Plus, still being immersed in government ecosystems that make use of Google tools, it really would be best for me to first make an intermediary jump to a Gmail account and ditch the AOL run account.
That being said, the VPN is easy to use. The lag on my desktop is noticeable at times, not terrible, but noticeable. It does play hell with things like remembering passwords, getting lit up with CAPTCHAs on sites, and so forth.
That is amplified buy also using Brave browser and a TOR window when using MDShooters and ARFCOM which is where I usually armor up the most.
It's absolutely transparent on my phone on either public wifi or cell data. It's impressive there.
The email switchover is daunting, but I’ve come to believe it’s probably a good decision, so I’m going to plow ahead. Like anything else if you listen to some people you would be creating a separate alias and or a forwarding address for every single online business/website that you need to register for. I’m not going that far, but what I’m doing now is downright sloppy and careless. If someone did happen to hack my gmail account I could really be screwed.
The other thing I was debating was how to pay for the Proton Services. I tried to use a visa gift card but they will not accept that form of payment. I am toying with the idea of bitcoin but still a bit of a PITA. I don’t know if there is really any risk just using my own visa debit card, maybe that’a just me overthinking this too much.
I’ll post a followup in a few weeks after I make some progress.
I moved this response here because I figured it was more applicable to the VPN discussion. I downloaded it last night, which takes about an hour from their server. The website totally walks you through the entire setup. Installation takes about 10min onto a USB drive or you can burn to DVD if you want.
Here is the Tails OS on my laptop. For windows you just restart while holding down the Shift key to enable a special menu to boot from USB.
It takes about 90sec to boot up then maybe another 60sec for Tor to do some background connection to the internet. However once its done it looks like a fairly basic interface. There are a surprising number of built in apps. Email, word processor, file management, tor browser. There appears to be no access to my actual PC files while using this. However there is space on the USB drive to save encrypted files. All of this would fit on a 1gb thumb drive. I’m using 64gb.
Once you shut it off nothing is saved unless you choose to save it in the encrypted file locker. It seems like a really secure way to access the internet without any way to expose your own personal data to intruders. If you need to disconnect quickly you can just yank the USB right from the PC and pull the plug.
In already have an encrypted thumb drive where I save my personal info and things like instructions for my wife if tomorrow I got hit by a meteor on the way home from work. I’m envisioning that I’m going to actually modify that with Tails. Then the files wouldn’t solely rely on MS word/ Excel or windows at all. Everything would be totally self contained. I also have an old windows tablet pc that I might flash with this as well. It would be really usefull to remain
In the go bag.
I would really like some others to check this out and weigh in. I will take a deeper look probably this weekend.
YouTube Video Explaining Tails
YouTube Video demonstrating installation and setup