In case anyone wounders: I do some redundancy in terms of #DNS and other services, and have a curated list of 29 DNS Servers which are all #DualStack [#IPv4 & #IPv6] of which I'm using 10 each to enshure stability and reliability as well as redundancy.

• And if you wounder: I did explicitly exclude both Google DNS and Cloudflare for #privacy, #DataProtection and #ITsec reasons!

Plus #decentralization is important and neither #Google nor #ClownFlare should get any more traffic!

#CloudFlare

If you were wondering what Imran Ahmed of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate has done to get his US visa revoked?

It seems the Trump administration objects to; People drawing the attention of lawmakers to how US big tech spins a profit.

Google has become a prime funder of violent racist antisemitic content on the internet.

#Google #Hate #ImranAhmed #CCDH

https://urbanists.video/w/eBy3D2egxVdgfX491AHp62

"I announced my divorce on Instagram and then AI impersonated me."

https://eiratansey.com/2025/12/20/i-announced-my-divorce-on-instagram-and-then-ai-impersonated-me/

#tech #technology #BigTech #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #LLM #LLMs #MachineLearning #GenAI #generativeAI #AISlop #Meta #Google #gemini #OpenAI #ChatGPT #anthropic #claude

🆕 blog! “Contactless Payments with GrapheneOS”

Google's monopolistic stranglehold on Android results in poor experience for power-users, and artificially restricts choice for those who have older phones. For example, Google Wallet is the de facto way to use NFC payments on Android. There's one problem though - it only works with Google's Android. If you have…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/06/contactless-payments-with-grapheneos/
⸻
#android #google #GrapheneOS #nfc

Way too overcomplicated and loosey defined.

#DigitalSovereignty is quite simple to define when you understand few #cybernetic concepts and #sovereignty itself.

First, the use value of data (and #personalData in particular) grows (at least) exponentially, doubling with each new bit you collect on a person, a community and so on.

Second, the copying data leaves no evidence.

By these simple postulates, it follows that no nation can claim digital sovereignty if any person or corporation that responds to external laws can access (directly or indarectly) or prevent access to data about their citizens, companies or organization.

That's it.

This is the basic building block of any real sovereignty, since without it, people cannot be citizens or sudite, just users.

On top of "digital sovereignty" we can then build a democratic national cyberspace, or a oppressive one.

To make it democratic we should also add a political priciple: "No data access without representation".

But as long as, say, #Google and #Apple can access any data on any smartphone by simply pushing a #backdoor in a system update of a specific user or group, and #Microsoft can do the same with most pc and laptop... as long both Google, Microsoft, #Cloudflare, #IBM and #Amazon can access data they host and elaborate "in the cloud", there is no ownership, no control and for sure there can be no #trust in them.

Sure #opensource is not enough: if #RedHat can technically uploas a backdoored opensource #Linux kernel image (or whatever), to a #EU organization that enabled automatic updates on their data centers, talking about trust and "digital sovereignty" is just smoke in the eyes, even if they send the backdoor's sources along with the kernel image to comply with #GPL.

In other terms, there is no way that the #GMAFIA can provide #DigitalSovereigntyAsAService to #EuropeanUnion.

Just give the Epstein files to Google and let them OCR and index them. #Google can do something useful for a change.

The #UK government reportedly will “encourage” #Apple and #Google to prevent phones from displaying #nude images except when users verify that they are adults.

The forthcoming push for nudity-blocking systems was reported by the Financial Times today. The report said the UK won’t institute a legal requirement “for now.” But asking companies to block nude images could be the first step toward making it mandatory if the gov doesn’t get what it wants.
#ageverification

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/uk-to-encourage-apple-and-google-to-put-nudity-blocking-systems-on-phones/

Fancy a digital chastity belt?

The UK government wants Apple and Google to stop you from taking or sending pics of your bits.

Intrusive scanning tech on your phone would block nudes unless you verify your age with biometrics or official ID.

It's creepy mission creep.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/uk-to-encourage-apple-and-google-to-put-nudity-blocking-systems-on-phones/

#surveillance #ageverification #privacy #digitalrights #ukpolitics #ukpol #apple #google

from #TheCrux

"#Google is going to build three under-sea cables in #PapuaNewGuinea, funded by #Australia under a newly-signed mutual defence treaty.

The projected cost of $120 million will be paid by the Australian public as part of its diplomatic efforts to counter China’s influence in the region.

It is unclear who will end up owning the assets purchased with public money, but I suspect it won’t be the public."

i'm afraid you're right @daedalus

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/google-build-subsea-cables-papua-new-guinea-under-australia-defence-treaty-2025-12-12/

Did #Google allow their obsolete IP prefix to be used like this, in a private hotspot deployment? Won’t even mention the total lack of #IPv6 , as usual on 99,9999999% of places I go 😐

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An iPhone Wi-Fi settings screenshot, where the obsolete IP addresses contain 192.178.0.0/16 prefix which belongs to Google Inc. and there are no IPv6 addresses assigned

The U.S.A. Department of War Crimes has an office whose logo resembles a group of people in a circle doing something intimate, and Secretary of Battlefield Ops Leaks #PeteHegseth has announced that the entire U.S.A. military should effectively shoot itself in the head by pushing Skynet … erm … #Google BullshitNet onto every computer.

https://www.ai.mil/Latest/News-Press/PR-View/Article/4355177/the-war-department-unleashes-ai-on-new-genaimil-platform/

When the toady underlings use phrases like "manifest destiny" (q.v.) it's not going to end well.

#USPolitics #TheTerminator #fascism

Just did a major #Google data purge and it feels good. I've deleted more than half of my accumulated Google data so far.

Another #HowTo, this time how to use #Signal on #Android without giving it broad media permissions.

Signal does not use the 2 possible secure methods of accessint photos that Android offers, and clones #Whatsapp in that regard.

By insisting on needing access to read all your images, while being a complex app connected to the internet, and the only official versions containing proprietary #Google #blobs.

Links:
- https://community.signalusers.org/t/46828
- https://community.signalusers.org/t/55725

Other messengers like #SimpleX, #Element, #ElementX, #Fluffychat, #Conversations, #Threema and more save themselves the effort and just use the builtin options, improving security by design and unnecessary code bloat.

So, how can I use Signal without trusting it with all my images?

1. Use the "Share" Portal.

That is the obvious one, and a very nice feature on Android. It allows to share any media to an application and giving it access to only that.

This also works across the #WorkProfile or #PrivateSpace and can be used by Apps like #SaveTo to transfer files.

The workflow is often slower than just using the media chooser portal, but it works. It is what I use since years.

2. Android hacks

But this is not all. Setting a profile picture or group profile picture does not work through the share portal. So we use a Feature specific to Androids Sandbox:

- All apps can save files to various default directories like Pictures, Movies, Music, Downloads, Documents; without having read access to it.
- And all apps can access files they themself saved there.

Combining these two features, you can send a picture to Signal and use the "Save locally" button to save it from within the app.

The result is that this picture will be visible in Signals internal gallery and can be selected for profile and group pictures.

Obvious downsides are
- it is a stupid workflow
- it duplicates images that you need to delete manually afterwards
- pictures might be compressed twice, losing quality

But for this very limited purpose, it is kinda fine.

Still, @signalapp please solve this very old issue!

@signal@lemmy.ml @signal@lemmy.blahaj.zone

I've had admin powers at 5+ companies' Google Workspace/G Suite over the past decade or so. Every single one had groups which were misconfigured, often so anyone in the whole company could join without approval or see the message history at https://groups.google.com without being a member at all.

This is because for any sensible configuration of Google Groups when using it for email groups you have to use the "Custom" permissions mode. The default Public mode doesn't allow external people to email the group, but does allow the whole company to see all the messages. The default Team mode, has the same problem of everyone being able to see all the messages.

Also let's not forget that dangerous little "Anyone in the organisation can join" toggle at the bottom which is on by default. So any random new starter can join your confidential company directors group and get all the emails sent to it.

Giving Google the benefit of the doubt here, I think the reasoning might be that Google Groups is intended as a kind of company forum, not for private email groups. However that isn't how anyone uses it in my experience...

#security #infosec #google #googleworkspace

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Screenshot of the default Google Group settings for team mode

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Screenshot of the default Google Group settings for public mode