Thoughts, stories and ideas

Proton's Data Analysis 2026: The Breaches Nobody Reports

Most of what we know about data breaches comes from companies admitting they've been breached. That's a bit like measuring crime by counting confessions.

News August 12, 2026

Your iPhone's Tor Browser is leaking your real IP?!

Somewhere on your iPhone right now, there may be a browser you installed specifically because you did not want websites to know who you are. Maybe it routes your traffic through Tor. Maybe it gives every tab its own separate identity. Maybe you're just using Apple's own iCloud Private Relay and trusting the marketing. Whichever it is, you made a deliberate choice to hide your IP address, and you probably assumed the software honored it.

News August 5, 2026

De-Googling your Android-Phone: GrapheneOS and the Art of Trading Convenience for Control

So you've decided you want your Android phone to stop reporting back to Google like it's filing a detailed daily briefing about your life. Smart move. But here's the plot twist: actually removing Google from Android is kind of like removing sugar from candy. You get the product, but you lose some of what made it fun in the first place. Let's talk about what that actually looks like when you go the GrapheneOS route.

General July 29, 2026

A Face for Access: Google raises Privacy Concerns as usual!

Google has introduced a new account recovery option that lets users use a selfie video as a way to get back into their accounts. The feature is designed for situations where someone loses access to their device and needs another way to sign in.

News July 23, 2026

How X's "Transparency Plan" saves its ass from the EU

On July 15, 2026, the European Union announced it had accepted an action plan from Elon Musk's X to comply with transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act. The announcement was framed as a triumph of regulatory oversight. But for anyone genuinely concerned about privacy, what the EU actually accepted was a masterclass in corporate BS. One that mistakes transparency for protection and cedes the real power to the very company that violated privacy rules in the first place.

News July 15, 2026

How Google convinced a Judge Surveillance is legal

On July 8, 2026, a federal judge in California dismissed a lawsuit against Google alleging that the tech giant's artificial intelligence platform Gemini was tracking users' communications without their knowledge or consent. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Noel Wise didn't declare Google innocent of wrongdoing. It simply found that the plaintiffs hadn't presented sufficient evidence of direct harm to their own data. This seemingly technical legal distinction masks a far more troubling reality: the architecture of modern privacy litigation makes it nearly impossible for ordinary users to hold powerful corporations accountable, even when those companies possess unprecedented access to our most intimate information.

News July 9, 2026