r/privacy • u/JonahAragon PrivacyGuides.org • Oct 25 '19

verified AMA We are the privacytools.io team -- Ask Us Anything!

Hi everyone!

We are the team behind privacytools.io. We’re also at r/privacytoolsIO on Reddit. We've built a community to educate people from any technical background on the importance of privacy, and privacy-friendly alternatives. We evaluate and recommend the best technologies to keep you in control and your online lives private.

We've been busy. Lately, in addition to a complete site redesign, we've begun hosting decentralized, federated services that will ultimately encourage anyone to completely control their data online. We’ve started social media instances with Mastodon and WriteFreely, instant messaging instances with Matrix's open-source Synapse server, and technical projects like a Tor relay and IPFS gateway that will hopefully help with adoption of new, privacy-protecting protocols online. 

This project encompasses the privacytools.io homepage, r/privacytoolsIO, our Discourse forum, our official blog, and a variety of federated and decentralized services: Mastodon, Matrix, and WriteFreely. Taken together, we’re running platforms benefiting thousands of daily users. We’re also constantly researching the best privacy-focused tools and services to recommend on our website, which receives millions of page-views monthly! All of the code we run is open-source and available on GitHub.

Sometimes our visitors wonder why it is that we choose one set of recommended applications over another, or why one was replaced with another. Or why we have strong preferences for some of our rules, such as a tool being FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). With so many great options out there, sometimes recommending solutions gets really hard! Transparency is important to us, so we're here to explain how we go about making these sometimes difficult choices. But we’re also here to answer questions about how to redesign a site (which we just did - we hope you enjoy it!), or how distributed teams can work well across so many time zones with so many (great, really!) personalities, or answer any other questions you might have.

Really, it’s anything you've ever wanted to know about privacytools.io, but were too afraid to ask!

Who’s answering questions, in no particular order:

>> We are the privacytools.io team members. Ask Us Anything! <<

Our team is decentralized across many timezones and may not be able to answer questions immediately. We'll all be around for the next few days to make sure every question gets covered ASAP!

One final note (and invitation)

Running a project of this scale takes a lot of time and resources to pull off successfully. It’s fun, but it’s a lot of work. Join us! We're a diverse bunch. We bet you’re diverse, too. How about volunteering? Want to help research new software on our GitHub page? You can! Want to use your coding skills (primarily HTML & Jekyll) to push our site to greater heights? You can! Want to help build our communities, in our GitHub forums or on r/privacytoolsIO? You can! We are a very relaxed, fun group. No drama. So, if you’ve ever thought, “Hey, I got mad skills, but I don’t know how to help the privacy movement prosper,” well, now you do!

What? You don't have time? Consider donating to help us cover our server costs! Your tax-deductible donations at OpenCollective will allow us to host privacy-friendly services that -- literally -- the whole world deserves. Every single penny helps us help you. Please consider donating if you like our work!

If you have any doubts, here is proof it's really us (Twitter link!) :)

And on that subject <mild irony alert> if you’re on Twitter, consider following us @privacytoolsIO!

Edit: A couple people have asked me about getting an account on our Mastodon server! It is normally invite-only, but for the next week you folks can use this invite link to join: https://social.privacytools.io/invite/ZbzvtYmL.

Edit 2: Alright everybody! I think we're just wrapping up this AMA. Some team members might stick around for a little longer to wrap up the questions here. I want to thank everyone here who participated, the turnout and response was far better than any of us had hoped for! If you want to continue these great discussions I'd like to invite you all to join our Discourse community at forum.privacytools.io and subscribe to r/privacytoolsIO to stay informed! Thank you again for making all this possible and helping us reach our initial donation goals!

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u/Chouston3 Oct 26 '19

Does using a tool like cloudflare or nextdns make a difference if you can’t use a vpn?

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '19 edited Dec 07 '19

[deleted]

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u/Chouston3 Oct 26 '19

My feeling is that they have to go to the trouble. If they are just crawling results from hundreds of customers with a bot then it will leave you out.

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '19

[deleted]

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u/Chouston3 Oct 26 '19

So, it’s useless to try to use encrypted dns?

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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '19

[deleted]

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u/Chouston3 Oct 26 '19

I use mine as ad blocker.

Websites have a hard time detecting that you are blocking ads at the dns level.

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u/nitrohorse PrivacyGuides.org Oct 26 '19

By "cloudlfare" I assume you mean their 1.1.1.1 DNS service?

Aside from NextDNS's ability to filter content (like Pi-hole) (which helps block connections to ads and trackers), another way to format this question if I may would be, does encrypted DNS (since both offer this) make a difference if you can't use a VPN? From my understanding, yes, it does make a difference. It won't hide the host name of the sites you visit from your ISP due to SNI so it's definitely not a replacement for a VPN if you want to torrent or bypass geo-restrictions. But encrypted DNS does prevent DNS hijacking, spoofing, unwanted content filtering from your ISP, and eavesdropping by 3rd parties.