overview for unskilled5117

Can I use a yubikey with free-tier bitwarden? in c/bitwarden@discuss.tchncs.de

[–] unskilled5117 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yubikeys have a Totp functionality as far as I remember. You will find more information on their website. (Edit: this should be the needed instructions)

Never tried it but I am guessing, this is the way it should work: it‘s the same as any other TOTP authentication app, just that the string from which the totp is derived, needs to be stored on the yubikey. On Bitwarden you would use their free Totp tier, which should provide you with that string.

Honestly, i would pay the 10$/y to use WebAuthn, support Bitwardens development, and make my own life easier

Western desktops could learn from Linux Deepin 23 in c/linux@lemmy.world

[–] unskilled5117 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The dual root partitions we described in Deepin 20.5 are gone, but version 23 still sets up a moderately complex partitioning scheme, including an EFI system partition, a 1.5 GB /boot partition, a swap partition, and a 15 GB root partition, and the rest of the disk given to a partition labeled _dde_data. All are in plain old ext4 format, but there's some magic being done with the data partition that we didn't have time to trace. It appears to be mounted at multiple places, including /home, /var, /opt, and a mount point called /persistent beneath them all. We're not sure exactly how it's been done, but the distro has some kind of atomic installation facility with rollback.

Lack of proper documentation by Deepins Devs is enough of a red flag for me to never consider trying it.

Resume work from backup on another device? in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the detailed response! Yes, the what data and how to not create conflicts has been troubling me the most.

I think I might first narrow it down with test VMs first, to skip the transfer part, before I actually use it “in production“.

Privacy-Preserving Attribution: Testing for a New Era of Privacy in Digital Advertising in c/firefox@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

why would any corporation choose to sideline their current advertisement model by creating an extra solution that doesn't even tap 3% of the market

In its current form, I concur, you might be correct. But:

The current implementation of PPA in Firefox is a prototype, designed to validate the concept and inform ongoing standards work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).Source

So the point is to create a system that other browsers could adopt. The other thing that could drive this, is the GDPR compliance. PPA is compliant, while a lot of the other technologies aren’t, and businesses are feeling more pressure. There is a reason that Meta participated in parts of the development.

All I can say is: Dont let perfect be the enemy of good. This is so far only a test.

Edit: I found the time to look at your source article, I had actually read it before when it was posted a month back. I will comment on their views, some right, others which can be debated, and on other details were they are just wrong. In general privacyguides is a great resource but I find this particular opinion piece to be lacking.

Spoiler, because I it's a long comment already

First off, for a healthy debate I will define two things for me. Tracking = creating a profile, ad measurement = measuring the ads effectiveness. If an Ad can be measured without a profile about me being created, I don't consider it tracking.

This "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" (PPA) API adds another tool to the arsenal of tracking features that advertisers can use, which is thwarted by traditional content blocking extensions.

They assume that everyone uses a content blocker everywhere. Privacyguides and Mozilla have different target audiences. Privacyguides caters to people who are interested and have enough technical knowledge to try to prevent tracking. Mozilla is trying to cater to "normal"(in the sense of the majority) people who are not interested/ not knowledgable enough to do so. So there are two starting points. The "normal" who are already tracked by current advertising systems and privacy-focussed-people who try their best to prevent tracking. Privacy-focussed-people can just turn off PPA -> no more data gathered than before. But it is the "normal" people who have something to gain. If PPA replaces traditional ad tracking, less data and only anonymized data is gathered. The ads are measured, but users are not tracked. So it's not a tool added but a tool improved to provide greater privacy.

Mozilla constantly fails to understand the basic concept of consent. Firefox developers seem to see their position as shepherds, herding the uninformed masses towards choices they interpret to be "good for them." [...] One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default.

While I agree, that the communications could have been handled better, Mozilla has a point. Firefox isn't only meant for tech-enthusiast, but also for people who won't take the time or aren't able to grasp the concept of PPA without doing a lot of reading, and that's the majority. So Firefox developers are absolutely right to make choices, that they deem right for users. And that PPA is a challenging concept is proven by the author not fully grasping it themselves, as I will point out later.

The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavior to a data aggregation server (operated by Mozilla), then that server reports the aggregated data to an advertiser's server. The "advertising network" only receives aggregated data with differential privacy, but the aggregation server still knows the behavior of individual browsers! This is essentially a semantic trick Mozilla is trying to pull, by claiming the advertiser can't infer the behavior of individual browsers by re-defining part of the advertising network to not be the advertiser. [...]In this particular case, Mozilla and their partner behind this technology, the ISRG (responsible for Let's Encrypt), could trivially collude to compromise your privacy.

The aggregation server is actually two different servers by two different parties (Mozilla and ISRG). Yes in theory they could collude and combine the data (they are transparent about that). But why would they, they are trying to create a system that's better than before. I concur that trust has to be placed in them but you still have the option to turn it off and the alternatives is other ad tracking networks collecting the data with a profile about you being created.

Finally, there is no reason for this technology to exist in the first place, because tracking aggregate ad conversions like this can already be done by websites without cookies and without invading privacy, using basic web technology.

All an advertisement has to do is link to a unique URL

This is, were they are just plain wrong/dishonest. A Url would just be able to measure something if the add was clicked. PPA can measure ads that were seen but a purchase happened at a later time. This is what current tracking technology does but PPA can do it, without a profile about you being created, so a privacy gain.

Some people might say that Mozilla should just block ads outright to prevent any tracking. The problem is that the Internet is funded by ads. Mozilla themselves through their connection to Google is. Privacyguides is right to point out that there is a conflict of interest. But what Mozilla is trying to achieve is to prevent tracking (profile creation about you) and not ads. I am in favor of that. I like services to exist, because they fund themselves through ads, I just don't want to be tracked.

Privacy-Preserving Attribution: Testing for a New Era of Privacy in Digital Advertising in c/firefox@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Advertisement is not free. It's a trick that looks free if you ignore the entire way it functions.

It doesn't take an expert understanding of economics to see that any belief that advertisement allows for a free Internet is smoke and mirrors. The money comes from somewhere, notably from you.

I think thats kind of obvious that the money has to be coming from somewhere. The ads are what funds large parts of the internet. Someone is paying for it, either the people buying stuff because of the ads or the businesses buying the ads.

Whichever way it is, maybe both, it has the side effect of distributing the cost of the Internet. The alternative without ads would be everyone paying for every little thing on the internet, does anyone think, that that scenario is realistic? That would also mean the cost is solely on the people and nothing coming from corporations.

Privacy-Preserving Attribution: Testing for a New Era of Privacy in Digital Advertising in c/firefox@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (10 children)

Companies get extra data through Firefox

You mean extra data compared to them using any other advertising model, like google advertising? Do you have a source for that?

Because that is what PPA has to be compared to, and not to no ad measurement at all. It‘s meant to be replacing other advertising measurement techniques.

The comparison chart looks like it‘s copied from somewhere, would you mind sharing? I wouldn‘t mind a deeper dive into the topic.

Privacy-Preserving Attribution: Testing for a New Era of Privacy in Digital Advertising in c/firefox@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (13 children)

I will say it again: The way i read it, it sounds like the companies will get some general data if their ads work, without a profile about you being created. I am fine with that.

Just imagine what a boon it would be for the “normal“ less tech savvy, if advertisers switched to a more privacy respecting technology like this.

If more privacy focused people don't like it, they can simply disable it by ticking one box, without negative consequences (unlike content blockers and similar techniques where a website can penalize you, turned off PPA is not detectable).

It has no downsides as far as I am concerned. It doesn’t give advertisers additional data that they wouldn’t already be able to get, it just creates the option of measuring their ads in a privacy respecting way.

Deepin OS 23: Review | Stunning AI-Powered Features and a Gorgeous UI! in c/linux@programming.dev

[–] unskilled5117 5 points 3 months ago

Does anyone know why they switched to this new packaging format, especially since they, as far as i can tell, were using flatpak before? I cant find any explanation on it in blog posts or release notes. In general i find the information they provide on implementations (atomic updates etc.) rather minimal.

Lastpass Family - Privacy alternative in c/privacy@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Passkeys have been available in Bitwardens mobile apps for some time: https://bitwarden.com/help/storing-passkeys/

Fedora 41 Change Proposal: Self Encrypting Drives Support in the Installer (self-contained) in c/linux@programming.dev

[–] unskilled5117 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Some SATA and NVMe devices support hardware encryption (TCG OPAL2 standard) and with the latest cryptsetup LUKS devices can be configured to use hardware encryption to encrypt the data either by itself or together with the existing dm-crypt software encryption. Support for this feature was added in the latest cryptsetup upstream release and we’d like to provide an option for users to use this feature when installing Fedora with disk encryption.

As this is an expert option, it will be available only through the kickstart interface. […] There will be two new options to select either hardware encryption only or hardware encryption in combination with software encryption (analogous to the --hw-opal-only and --hw-opal options used when configuring hardware encryption with cryptsetup).

Firefox added ad tracking and has already turned it on without asking you in c/privacy@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I personally am fine with making it opt-out, but I think it should be handled differently. This technology requires users trust, to have any chance of being successful. Enabling it without informing the user is not the way to gain it.

I would have put a little pop up explaining that they are trying to create a privacy preserving technology to measure ads with the goal of replacing privacy invasive technology. If the user doesn’t like it, it can be disabled in the settings afterwards.

Firefox added ad tracking and has already turned it on without asking you in c/privacy@lemmy.ml

[–] unskilled5117 137 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (40 children)

I haven’t looked into the technicals much further than the support page.

The way i read it, it sounds like the companies will get some general data if their ads work without a profile about you being created. I would be fine with that. What I don’t like is the lack of communication to users about it being enabled.

PPA does not involve websites tracking you. Instead, your browser is in control. This means strong privacy safeguards, including the option to not participate.

Privacy-preserving attribution works as follows:

Websites that show you ads can ask Firefox to remember these ads. When this happens, Firefox stores an “impression” which contains a little bit of information about the ad, including a destination website.

If you visit the destination website and do something that the website considers to be important enough to count (a “conversion”), that website can ask Firefox to generate a report. The destination website specifies what ads it is interested in.

Firefox creates a report based on what the website asks, but does not give the result to the website. Instead, Firefox encrypts the report and anonymously submits it using the Distributed Aggregation Protocol (DAP) to an “aggregation service”.

Your results are combined with many similar reports by the aggregation service. The destination website periodically receives a summary of the reports. The summary includes noise that provides differential privacy.

This approach has a lot of advantages over legacy attribution methods, which involve many companies learning a lot about what you do online.

PPA does not involve sending information about your browsing activities to anyone. This includes Mozilla and our DAP partner (ISRG). Advertisers only receive aggregate information that answers basic questions about the effectiveness of their advertising.

This all gets very technical, but we have additional reading for anyone interested in the details about how this works, like our announcement from February 2022 and this technical explainer.