2d ago

Recommend some open-source tools for privacy!

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/47032660

Discover Hidden Gems: Open-Source Software You Should Know About
We all love open-source software, but there are so many amazing projects out there that often go unnoticed. Let's change that! Share your favorite open-source software that you think more people should know about. Here’s how you can contribute:
Single Option Per Comment: Mention one open-source software per comment to be able to easily find the most popular software.
No Duplicates: Avoid duplicating software that has already been mentioned to ensure a wide variety of options.
Upvote What You Love: If you see a software that you also appreciate, upvote it to help others discover it more easily.
Check out last year's post for more inspiration: Last Year's Post
Let's create a comprehensive list of open-source software that everyone should know about!

I advise you to post any recommendations to the original post, I was just sharing it here so others can find it! I also wanna see those recs myself so that's the motive for posting this 😅

44 comments

Florisboard. Android keyboard, doesn't have spell checking yet but I've been using it for years, you might not need autocorrect as much as you think! (Note for Samsung users: Samsung Keyboard keeps adding items to its clipboard history whether it's default or not. Clipboard history is also accessible through Edge Panels. Your passwords might end up and sit there for a long time... you can use adb to disable com.samsung.android.app.clipboardedge and com.samsung.clipboardsaveservice.)
Delta Chat, for messaging. Sign-up is extremely easy using the default server, and I've convinced some of my contacts to join.
Surrey for the tangent, that might be my favourite comic of all time. I think it's an incredibly valuable lesson menu pepper still and always will need to learn at some point in their lives
- What??
I would simply reccomand GNU privacy guard (GPG) to encrypt files from the terminal. It works also on Android with Termux.
Immich!
Keeping personal photos off someone else's server and stopping google and apple from training their AI on your nudes.
Matrix is good for communication.
LibreWolf is what FireFox was supposed to be: no VPN ads, no telemetry, no AI, uBlockOrigin built in. It's literally the latest FF release, but with the crap ripped out and decent privacy installed.
https://librewolf.net/
- Honestly, soft forks of either Firefox or Chrome by a small team are a stop-gap hack and not anything truly effective at fixing the issues because they are entirely dependent on the large teams developing the upstream browsers. As hard as they work, they simply don't have the in-house expertise to develop the browser, and can even make mistakes when ripping things out. It's certainly a trade-off for better privacy now, but with other risks.
  Some of the more clean-slate browsers out there seem more interesting, even if they lack features, because the developers can actually make design decisions and develop codebase expertise.
- They went too far in pursuing their foolish dogma and castrated a decent browser to the point where you don't want to work with it at all. For example, they removed the interface element that allows you to save passwords, even though the password manager is still there.
- I'm still looking for a Librewolf or similar Android fork, has that ever made it close? I know the original project devs dont seem interested.
  
  Have you checked IronFox?
There is also signal-FOSS as an alternative to signal and Molly
Signal-FOSS
https://www.twinhelix.com/apps/signal-foss/
A fork of Signal for Android with proprietary Google binary blobs removed. Uses OpenStreetMap for maps and a websocket server connection, instead of Google Maps and Firebase Cloud Messaging.
add the repo to your app store to F-droid basic
https://fdroid.twinhelix.com/fdroid/repo/
The twinhelix repo is in the droidify and neostore repo list.
- I'm a bit confused. It says it connects to Signal's servers. Does this mean if I use Molly, I can still talk to people who are only using Signal?
  
  yes, you can still use signal, molly and signal-foss. I have signal on my desktop and some of my family have molly and some signal-Foss.
  The signal servers are primarily hosted on AWS with redundancies on Azure or Google Cloud. Molly and Siganl-FOSS use these too.
  The official Android app generally uses the proprietary Google Play Services, although it is designed to be able to work without them.
  Hence we use the signal-FOSS and Molly on our phones that do not have any google services.
  Like any AOSP rom, Lineage, there are no google play services.
  Its the google firebase that manages push notifications that seems to be the main privacy issue.
  MollySocket allows getting signal notifications via UnifiedPush, not google firebase,
  https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android
- It's not letting me register. When I have my VPN turned off it can't conbect to servers, and when I have it turned on I get swamped with recaptchas and the veriification code doesn't send
CoMaps, formerly known as Organic Maps.
- Not formerly known. CoMaps is different from Organic Maps. This is the same as saying “Librewolf, formerly known as Firefox”.
XMPP. It replaced WhatsApp in my family that signal failed to do.
- I'm curious, I've never had the chance to really use Signal much, and I've never used an XMPP client before. What made you dislike Signal and use XMPP instead? I wish I could convince my iMessage loving mom to jump to anything else.
  
  I had no issue with signal (except phone number verification) but according to my family members signal uses a lot of ram and battery. Non of them have Google play services. XMPP doesn't use that much resources and it's simple, no unnecessary bloat.
I recommend my python script, Tonto2.
https://pypi.org/project/tonto2/
What does Tonto2 do?
It keeps lists.
You can use lists to keep in touch with family, friends, and cow-orkers.
Tonto2 keeps four kinds of lists:
You can use an address list to keep track of contacts' phone numbers, mailing addresses, and eMail addresses.
You can use a calendar to remind you about events and appointments including date, time, and duration. You can add notes about finding the location and other prerequisites to attendance.
You can keep separate passwords in a password list for every website you visit and every piece of gear you own.
You can keep links to favorite websites in a bookmark list.
Additionally you can make a list of bibliographic entries for writing research papers and for saving well-formatted footnotes for Web sites, but this is an arcane topic that will probably not be of general interest.
The information in these lists is at your fingertips.
You own it, and you can keep it. You can share it piecemeal with other people and computers without having to trust anyone or any thing with the whole enchilada. This is the idea of Tonto2.
- Tell me more about these cow orks.
VeraCrypt, Clonezilla, Joplin, Futo voice and Futo keyboard, Sentry, Wasted, Untracker, WTMP app, Fossify app suite.
- Futo Voice and Futo Keyboard are rad and getting better (Swipe needs more time in the oven). Ive used VeraCrypt for a while and dig it
  
  I haven't ever found a better open source keyboard or voice type than futo. It really is that good. With so many languages. I'm unsure why some of them got downvoted but oh well. I'm sure there's a ton more to add that are privacy focused open source apps but those were off my head.
The best Portmaster (Windows, Linux) and InVizible Pro for Android and forks (LinageOS, /e/OS....), apart common sense (PEBCAK license)
- Do you find Portmaster to be viable? I've seen it around and read a couple brief articles about it. I've just never found anyone who uses it. I use MalwareBytes Firewall Control from Binsoft (Alexandru Dicu - https://www.binisoft.org/). It's fairly bare bones but it does the trick. I'm always looking for something better. I do have the whole network behind a standalone pFsense box. I just needed something local on the machine to silence chatty programs and services.
  
  Malwarebyte may be also valid, better than nothing, but Malwarebyte is proprietary soft, not OpenSource like Portmaster, which also include DNS crypt and custimizable dynamic filters, Optional also an SPN service (paid), something like an VPN on steroids, which permits multilevel tunneling, individual for every app.
GNU Jami, when I can get it to work and not jank up the sound too much. https://jami.net/
(Simple) DNSCrypt: https://www.dnscrypt.org/
OnionShare
I advise you to post any recommendations to the original post, I was just sharing it here so others can find it! I also wanna see those recs myself so that's the motive for posting this 😅
Picocrypt, which is an encryption tool for files and folders. It's a 3MB application that utilizes XChaCha20 as its encryption algorithm. It isn't developed anymore, but it's well worth it regardless.
Neigsendoig, my producer, just started using it, learning how it works.
Oh shit, I'm doing this with my granddaughter! She's not 2 yet so I need to wait a bit but I'm doing it!
open keychain - foss to to track pgp keys and generate them
- Okay, just curious, does anyone else have a bug preventing them from using Openkeychain? Whenever I try to confirm a key, it simply gets stuck at the "My Key:" selection drop-down. There's a 8 year old GitHub issue that was started and it never got solved...
  And like, there's no alternatives for this app are there? It seems Thunderbird defaults to them.
  EDIT: I've been trying to create a keypair from Open keychain and simply export the pair to my laptop to use it there but any key it generates is unable to be imported by both gpg and Thunderbird. It seems I'm not the only one having this issue, meanwhile the project seems to be no longer maintained. What do I do? Give up on using Thunderbird on mobile?
  
  I used deltachat and sent an auto crypt setup message, and k-9 handed it off to open keychain just fine. k9 is being merged with Thunderbird Mobile so this should work fine... for mobile. but man was it a hassle getting the keys to my desktop

44 comments