[HN Gopher] Go FOSS: Information is power
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Go FOSS: Information is power
Author : rapnie
Score : 100 points
Date : 2023-01-15 09:35 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gofoss.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (gofoss.net)
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| I'm happy to see such well crafted website. I will save some time
| to work on a translation into Brazilian Portuguese. Brazil is
| under an escalating process of judiciary dictatorship in which a
| significant portion of the population will suffer oppression from
| the government at levels never seen in country's recent history.
| FOSS and strong cryptography must be Brazilians digital tooth
| brush and paste from now on.
|
| In case you do or will do business with Brazil soon, I recommend
| watching recent Glen Greenwald videos in Rumble about what's
| going on in the country.
| [deleted]
| O1111OOO wrote:
| Lots of things I like about the site. For one, I value that
| privacy has been highlighted.
|
| On a slight negative... they feature Firefox but it requires so
| much work to tweak. I feel this is a reflex recommendation though
| I do, very much, like that FF allows itself to be tweaked.
|
| On the Desktop... I much prefer LibreWolf - which I didn't see
| listed. It is what Firefox should be.
|
| On mobile, I prefer DuckDuckGo's Android browser (also not
| listed). Firefox mobile comes bundled with 3 tracking companies -
| each collecting a mountain of information! Why must you always
| shoot yourself in the foot, Mozilla? It's never ending.
|
| DDG is not only open source
| (https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android) but it also does
| <strike>not have a single tracker</strike> (thanks for this,
| byyll). If that wasn't enough, it comes with a module called App
| Tracking Protection. It's brilliant. It blocks trackers from
| other apps. I cannot recommend this enough. The sheer amount of
| information collected from apps on your phone...
|
| I have had apps at 30 attempts in the first few seconds and reach
| 1,000 tracking attempts within 1/2 an hour. Every single item -
| from contacts to specific location - is constantly being polled,
| collected and transmitted by multiple companies.
|
| Every app seems to be running spyware from various multiple
| companies - even my banking app. DDG's Android Browser helps stop
| this.
|
| Wall of text, time to stop. Nice site, love that it's not afraid
| to be technical because, unfortunately, it's necessary at times.
| byyll wrote:
| > it does not have a single tracker [...] it blocks trackers
| from other apps
|
| Except when it's Microsoft:
| https://nitter.fly.dev/yegg/status/1528838579455250434
| gofoss wrote:
| Hi, thanks for the feedback :)
|
| Librewolf is great, I use it everyday. It's mentionned in the
| "Firefox vs Chrome" drop-down menu, alongside Tor, Ungoogled
| Chromium & others.
|
| We also mention Mull, Fennec & Bromite for Android. Preferred
| over DDG, which had some fallouts lately.
|
| Regarding FF - Yes, much tweaking is required to get things
| right. Yes, Mozilla made some questionable technical choices in
| the past. Yes, Mozilla Corporation earns most of its revenues
| from Google. Also yes: in a browser landscape dominated by
| Google, Firefox currently seems to be the only independent
| contender worth mentioning.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| To me, this website makes FOSS seem like the only way to keep
| your data private. FOSS software can still have trackers in it,
| and it can absolutely be backdoored. Unless you're auditing the
| source code and building it yourself, you're trusting the
| developers as much as any other piece of software.
| gofoss wrote:
| Hi, Georg from https://gofoss.net here.
|
| I'm not a security expert. Heck, I'm not even a hacker. So take
| this comment with a pinch of salt.
|
| For all its merits, Free Software is not free from criticism.
| This includes security vulnerabilities.
|
| On the flip side, keeping the source code a secret doesn't
| necessarily increase security. Arguing that closed source code
| is vastly more secure than FOSS conveniently omits the fact
| that proprietary stacks are increasingly built on top of open
| source code.
|
| Sure, FOSS is not immune to security breaches. But neither are
| proprietary solutions, as illustrated by the leaks of a billion
| people's data from Facebook, LinkedIn and Clubhouse. Or the
| spectacular security attacks against SolarWind and Colonial
| Pipeline.
|
| I do believe that Free Software is instrumental in promoting
| online privacy. For nearly forty years, FOSS has been
| encouraging developers to audit the code, fix issues and ensure
| nothing shady goes on in the background.
|
| Ultimately, FOSS is not only about technology. It's about
| social, political and economic emancipation.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| The fact you have access to the source code and CAN audit
| software and modify it (ie to remove trackers) makes it much
| more balanced relationship.
|
| Note you do not have to do it yourself you can rely on someone
| to do it for you (there is no monopoly here)
|
| If you use Oracle you have no choice you Have to trust Oracle -
| if you use PostgreSQL you can chose to choose to PostgreSQL
| Global development team or of many commercial and community
| vendors who provide PostgreSQL builds for you.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Note you do not have to do it yourself you can rely on
| someone to do it for you (there is no monopoly here)
|
| Which is why the "but but but you can access the source"
| argument the FOSS people put up is such bullshit.
|
| I mean: a) Let's be honest, with most FOSS
| projects, security is an afterthought, assuming it was ever
| thought of at all. Very few go to the extents of OpenBSD or,
| indeed, anywhere remotely near it. Most don't even have any
| security bods on the team to start with. b) If
| you're relying on someone else to audit it, then its no
| different to employing someone to blackbox fuzz test some
| closed source software and attach some monitors to your
| network to watch for undocumented exfiltration. c)
| If you're relying on someone else to audit it, then that
| "someone else" with sufficient skills will come with $$$
| attached. d) If you're reviewing it yourself,
| assuming you can speak the relevant programming language in
| the first place, there are few people who can speak a
| programming language well enough for the purposes of security
| auditing. e) If you're relying on "the community" to
| review it, then well, we all know how your average open
| source community is ... lots of infighting, lots of egos
| amongst the core maintainers, and occasionally some work gets
| done in the middle.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting closed-source is some
| panacea. But I am also equally enlightened enough to know
| that FOSS is not the panacea either.
|
| Both have their strengths, both have their weaknesses. And
| certainly in terms of code security, neither is perfect by
| any means.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Most, if not all, closed source software builds on open
| source software at this point, if not directly then at
| least in the tooling around the development process
| (compilers/interpreters, version control, build systems,
| etc.). I doubt that most developers of closed source
| software have audited their _entire_ tech stack.
|
| So in the end you have all the same problems with
| proprietary software as you describe for foss, but you
| don't even have the opportunity to audit the source code
| yourself, should you want to.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I am curious if there are any organizations (formal or
| informal) that audit popular FLOSS projects for such issues.
| rapnie wrote:
| F-Droid looks to be doing this for their appstore.
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/docs/
| gofoss wrote:
| Also https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Unless you 're auditing the source code and building it
| yourself, you're trusting the developers as much as any other
| piece of software._
|
| Not sure, but I would not be surprised if some of these
| nightmarish supply chain attacks are open-source.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Unless you're auditing the source code and building it
| yourself, you're trusting the developers as much as any other
| piece of software.
|
| The thing is that you probably have to trust someone at some
| point. Better focus on those that have a good track record.
| jacooper wrote:
| This looks very similar to https://privacyguides.org
|
| But FOSS focused instead of privacy focused(PG rarely feature
| closed source software anyway)
| poulpy123 wrote:
| France is bacon
| gofoss wrote:
| I'm Erica
| tete wrote:
| I don't think it's a good idea to claim that VPNs increase
| privacy or security, because...
|
| Advertisement companies don't rely on IPs.
|
| Now the VPN provider is watching you (and everyone that hacked
| them, they have deal with, etc.).
|
| There is no inherently added security.
|
| Tor is specifically made to work around some of these issues, but
| still every now and then has exits tracking users.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| FOSS is the future!
| m3nu wrote:
| Giving only one option per category may not be enough. There are
| usually several great FOSS apps for each, targeting different
| uses. Some more choices here: https://github.com/awesome-
| selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
|
| The other issue is that most users won't maintain their own
| server or keep up with security updates and such. That's why I
| launched https://pikapods.com, which allows anyone to run FOSS
| apps with a few clicks, while supporting app authors via our
| revenue share. Our 'app store' is here:
| https://www.pikapods.com/apps
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(page generated 2023-01-15 23:01 UTC)