SAsaikatsg·Sep 28, 2026Submission
2 points · Open discussionprivacyguides
privacyguides.org
Markdown2021–2026
privacyguides / privacyguides.org
privacyguides.org
Protect your data against global mass surveillance programs.
6Distinct people
8Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
4.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Protect your data against global mass surveillance programs.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about how fingerprinting and anti-fingerprinting techniques work. I highly recommend reading this article, it is still WIP btw:…
ementally used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year8 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-11-29 20:41:35 UTC to 2026-09-28 16:18:22 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
8 sourcesOk I checked privacyguides.
Here’s where it was added to PrivacyGuides - https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/issues/36.... The person opening the issue is the CEO of ente. So the CEO of ente gets his company mentioned in PrivacyGuides back when it was new and that makes it more legit?
In Ensu – Ente’s Local LLM appThere seems to be a lot of misconceptions about how fingerprinting and anti-fingerprinting techniques work.
I highly recommend reading this article, it is still WIP btw: https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/blob/e81b...
In Canvas FingerprintingIf I submitted PRs re-writing every privacy list/gist on Github. yeah you know where I'm going with that I'm sure.
Privacy Guides, is a community project, we accept community contributions, which are then verified before being merged with the main repository.
We are now looking at translation of our content https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/discussio... which is exciting because we feel there really many resources in languages other than English.
In Privacy-Respecting Software> ... and yet it's still the ONLY cross-messenger system, not everybody uses group chats, and not everybody cares about status updates or whatever.
There is Matrix. The issue is that people don't know what actions are E2EE and what is not.
> That's not what it's for, and email is not "real time communication". I have an archive of email going back 30 years. Forward secrecy is not always a win.
It was listed under the "encrypted messaging" section.
> That's an awfully strong statement to make without a threat model...
It's not, its that browsers have evolved to the point where a lot of those extensions are unessary and actually are counter to privacy, modifying your fingerprint to be unique.
> ... but you list "social networks", which are intrinsically "not private" in their very purpose, just like video sharing...
As it happens we're remo
Read the rest
ving those sections for this very reason https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/discussio...
According to the PR[1] it is because it doesn't use end-to-end encryption.
[1]: https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/pull/192
In Privacy-Respecting SoftwareThe problem with lists like this is they really are just a "here's 100 open source products", without any criteria or individual evaluation. It is often just parrots repeating what other parrots say.
Something which is clearly alpha-state isn't usable to regular users shouldn't have a "recommendation". Then you get sub optimal recommendations, listing some projects which are unmaintained etc.
With the cleanup at https://privacyguides.org, (since we split from PTIO) we've removed a lot of things, and gone down the part of actually providing guidance rather than "use this software to make you magically more private".
I think it's important to think privately, modify behavior rather than rely on technology to do it all for you.
Looking at this particular list there are some bad choices:
- LessPass: We explicitly removed deterministic passwor
Read the rest
d managers https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/pull/323, https://tonyarcieri.com/4-fatal-flaws-in-deterministic-passw...
- AndOTP: Uses PBKDF2 and a heap of rounds that is unbelievably slow when you have a number of OTPs. Aegis uses Argon, which doesn't have this problem, and we think it's code is developed by someone who is security conscientious.
- Qwant: https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/pull/342#..., we removed due to "due to bad privacy policies data is collected and shared with third parties"
- Silence: Unmaintained, uses SS7 network, should never be recommended.
- Off-The-Record: Doesn't cover group chats or other side channels, such as status updates, VOIP. In general XMPP isn't particularly "privacy friendly" https://web.archive.org/web/20211215132539/https://infosec-h...
- PGP: NO. It has no forward secrecy, it's a terrible way to encrypt real time communication.
- Matrix + Riot client: Seriously, it's been "Element" for ages now, makes me think the author really isn't up to date with current events.
- Ricochet: Unmaintained, (2016) domain dead, Only supported .onion HSv2
- Tox + qTox: Developed wrong. They developed the software then decided to write the spec afterwards. There's also https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/issues/426
- Mailfence: Last email I sent to them they don't use any kind of disk encryption
- CriptText, these things really don't help, they are walled, in that everyone has to be on a centralized service to get the benefit. E2EE that comes with web-apps can often be dangerous as it can change, have vulnerabilities introduced after an audit etc.
- TorBirdy: Unmaintained
- Mumble: Not really private
- Linphone: Not really private
- Rocket Chat: Experimental E2EE
- Browser Extensions: NO JUST NO. https://blog.privacyguides.org/2021/12/01/firefox-privacy-20...
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
- Video Platforms: These are not private
- RSS Clients: There are better options
- Mobile Operating Systems: Options without Verified Boot. NO. https://source.android.com/security/verifiedboot
- Linux recommendations: Those are also awful and don't have any threat model in mind.
I'm going to stop now, it's basically every bad thing that was ever on PTIO, that we removed. Basically there are terrible recommendations with a few good ones sprinkled in.
This list is *not* maintained!
> For DNS, we're used to not worrying about private systems at all. You probably have or know somebody who has, a Pi-Hole, which deliberately trashes DNS in order to reduce the amount of advertising you see. It can't trash my DNS this way, and it couldn't trash DNS for somebody using say, Google's DoH servers, so we don't fret about it.
Just yesterday, I got banned by gatekeepers at privacyguides.org for pointing out the disconnect between their "must support DNSSEC" stance and the content-blocking scenarios made possible by services like Pi-Hole.
I wish I was as eloquent and convincing as you are.
[0] https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/discussio...
In For DNSSEC (2015)