Jajaja, sí, soy Mexicano 😁
🥳 Muchas gracias!
Amazing work! Thanks a lot!! Took me a few days to get to it but I have upgraded now and it looks great 😄
Am I missing anything that makes this a horrible or unacceptably risky idea?
Yes, I am not 100℅ sure, but I think debt collectors. My little understanding is that the bank may not want to go through the hassle of sorting this out themselves if the debt is small and the applicable laws complex, in which case they can sell the debt to a debt collector. Whatever person or agency is motivated enough to buy that debt might have some good experience in getting paid back. They can annoy your family for a while, and they might know of some laws that they can use to put pressure.
If the timing is right, I would bring a mushroom grow bag with mushrooms sprouting.
If not… probably my radiacode gamma spectrometer and some of my radioactive items. Maybe a clock with radium painted dials and a piece of trinitite. I think that there are many different points of discussion that can be of interest to a broad audience (radioactivity, spectroscopy, electronics, US labor law story of the radium girls, nuclear explosions, background radiation… etc). As a bonus I can bring a UV flash light and show the radium fluorescence. Adults love UV flash lights.
I am also quite interested in this. It is not something that keeps me awake at night, and I am not particularly paranoid about it. But I find that working towards answering this question is a fun frame from which to learn about electronics, radio communications, and networking.
Since this appears to be something that is causing you some anxiety, I think it is better if I start by giving you some reassurance in that I have not yet managed to prove that any electronic device is spying on me via a hidden chip. I don’t think it is worth being paranoid about this.
I can explain some things that could be done to test whether a Linux computer spying. I am not suggesting that you try any of this. I am explaining this to you so that you can get some reassurance in the fact that, if devices were spying on us in this manner, it is likely that someone would have noticed by now.
The “spy” chip needs some way to communicate. One way a chip might communicate is via radio waves. So, the first step would be to remove the WiFi and Bluetooth dongles and any other pieces of hardware that may emit radio waves during normal operation. There is a tool called a “Spectrum Analyzer” that can be used to capture the presence of specific radio frequencies. These devices are now relatively affordable, like the tinySA, which can measure the presence of radio frequencies of up to 6 GHz.
One can make a Faraday cage, for example, by wrapping the PC with a copper-nickel coated polyester fabric to isolate the PC from the radio waves that are coming from the environment. The spectrum analyzer antennas can be placed right next to the PC and the device is left to measure continuously over several days. A script can monitor the output and keep a record of any RF signals.
Since phones are small, it is even easier to wrap them in the copper-nickel polyester fabric alongside with the spectrum analyzer antenna to check whether they emit any RF when they are off or in airplane mode with the WiFi and Bluetooth turned off.
What this experiment may allow you to conclude is that the spy chip is not communicating frequently with the external world via radio frequencies, at least not with frequencies <= 6 GHz.
Using frequencies higher 6 GHz for a low-power chip is not going be an effective method of transmitting a signal very far away. The chip could remain hidden and only emit the signal under certain rare conditions, or in response to a trigger. We can’t rule that out with this experiment, but it is unlikely.
A next step would be to test a wired connection. It could be that the spy chip can transmit the data over the internet. One can place a VPN Gateway in between their PC and the router, and use that gateway to route all the traffic to their own server using WireGuard. All network packets that leave through the PC’s ethernet connection can be captured and examined this way using Wireshark or tcpdump.
If one can show that the device is not secretly communicating via RF nor via the internet, I think it is unlikely that the device is spying on them.
And there’s the program to give certain power users the option of buying stock before it debuts on the public market.
I am curious about seeing how this plays out. Let’s say multiple users, who are inexperienced in investing, decide to buy-in… And then the stock price plummets shortly after IPO. I know very little about law and so I am only speculating here. I suspect that the users might have a legal case against Reddit on the basis that they were sold a risky asset under conditions generally reserved to experienced investors. The inexperienced users could not have been expected to fully understand the risk. Even if the users are given the S-1 form and asked to sign a legal document stating that they understand the risks, I don’t think that this would be enough for Reddit to not be liable.
Is the fact that I recognize this comment evidence that I use Lemmy a bit too much? 😅
Expatriate/expat
Maybe it is not a popular opinion. And perhaps calling it “bigotry” is too far. But I work in a different country from where I was born, and I consider myself an immigrant. I have however seen this trend of referring to educated professionals as “expats” to distinguish us from people who immigrate to escape conflicts and/or poverty. I don’t agree that this distinction is necessary or valuable, and I feel uncomfortable when I am described with that term. If I am called that, I usually chuckle and let people know that I’m an immigrant!!
I am not sure as I did not test this one. Maybe you can go in person and get a worker to get you access to the kiosk through your account to print the card. It is one of those massive chains with gyms in every corner. I think that by now they rely on their digital infrastructure and many of their workers are not trained to handle uncommon situations. At least I get that from some of my experiences, but I could be wrong, maybe if I would have called them could have helped me with this. It was just easier to get the app into my old phone, print a card, delete the app.
I will also pay close attention and see if I can catch that happening.
I think that it works, but for it to work you need to enable Google Play services. From what I understand, this is done in a sandboxed manner simulating a fake identity, so it is possible to do this while isolating Google from your phone to an extent. But I think that WhatsApp is in itself problematic and one of the direct offenders that I want to avoid, regardless of its reliance on Google Play services, and so I have not gone through this effort myself.
I made the switch when I got a new phone. So I kept both the old phone with android and the new phone with GrapheneOS. There was a transition period when I would bring both phones with me, just in case. Now my old phone is my “whatsapp” phone which I keep at home and turn on rarely. During the transition period I used my old phone number whenever I needed to provide my phone to use a service, but eventually I transitioned that to a VoIP. But, even then, many services will reject VoIP phone numbers, so I still make use of the old one.
I had to request a special scanner from my bank because the banking apps do not work with GrapheneOS. And I had to make sure that nothing important goes into my gmail anymore because google would request that I used my old phone 2FA in the most inconvenient moments, and also I don’t want to access google from my GrapheneOS phone.
I think that there are many annoyances that can and probably will happen if you try to jump right into GrapheneOS after having previously relied in the google/meta ecosystem. If you attempt to switch too quickly you might inadvertently lose access to your bank, and you might become suddenly unable to communicate with family and friends. My government’s online identification system requires that I use their app, which runs on google services, so I still have to use my old phone for that. And I have encountered situations in which the only reasonably convenient way to proceed is to download an app. For example, recently I registered for a gym that would then require me to use their google-store app so that I could identify myself when purchasing a physical card.
I think we might see one or more “trusted fediverse” groups emerge in the next few years, with instance admins making commitments to security controls, moderation, code of conduct, etc.
There is now at least one system in place for admins to vouch for other instances being non-malicious, and to report suspected instances. It is called the fediseer: https://gui.fediseer.com/
Do you see a random nickname from a stranger, or a nickname of an account that was previously logged into using the same computer?
What is an open account sharing channel?
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing
A botnet could have many unique accounts, and some could even appear like users. So I can’t rule it out. I also haven’t done a deeper dive into the accounts.
But when a post gets popular I would expect it to get at least a few downvotes, regardless of what it is.
There is one account that has a single comment from 5 months ago that is downvoting most posts and comments. That one is very suspicious
Other than that… No other accounts are as obvious. A few do have some reoccurrences but most of those votes do seem organic on first inspection.
Thank you being around, bringing this nice community here, and helping with the federation!! 😁