I don’t think this is a good idea still. First - the very fact that you bought crypto can be suspicious. Second - then your anonymity depends on the assumption that Monero wouldn’t have flaws found in it later, which is just not a good approach with any technology, no matter how well-regarded. And third, most mundane - introduces yet another place from where your ID can leak.
Yes, they can block the protocols. The VPN protocols are pretty easily detected by DPI, and they might just not care about breaking things (like what I’ve seen). There are ways to obfuscate such traffic, though.
using it purely for tunneling without detection by my ISP. Anonymity would be more of a bonus.
I feel like people like you and me end up helping people who actually need anonymity - by creating a larger crowd :)
can’t go online if your webcam is off
I think spoofing a webcam should be pretty easy.
I wonder if Tor and I2P’s other hops could eventually be obfuscated like bridges are now, so that a network could entirely exist within plain sight without being as blatant.
Thus this feature is a “nice-to-have” that should not be relied on.
No. That’s why I wouldn’t trust protections that depend on something serverside, like encryption in the web client.
…Yes, I just said that.
The comments below say “local transit app”, but I don’t get it - those could be proprietary and pretty invasive. So instead, I use the “undesired” maps in the browser. Both for when public transit arrives and for more up-to-date information on businesses.
Doesn’t seem to work on my phone, even thouvgh I have given it the permissions it asked…
I checked that (together with the clearnet link) a few times recently, got a nondescript error like “sorry something went wrong” every time.
Conversations is a good client for mobile. Pretty much on par with Whatsapp in ease of use.
I prefer it because of resilience. A centralized service can be weakened, geoblocked or shut down by proposals like Chat Control. Decentralized protocols are much safer in such an environment, especially if there is variety in clients and servers.
Not necessarily. Some of them are able to use UnifiedPush so no need in a background service, and some of them (like Conversations) have background services whose battery use is negligeable.
Similarly, there’s Signal-Cli. Normally, Signal only allows signups from smartphones, which is weird, because not all smartphones can run privacy-preserving OSes while pretty much anything can run Linux. This one is the only client I’ve seen that allows desktop signup. IDK if they broke it now, but worked a while ago.
Most of the mainstream social media is blocked where I am. Good news: a huge part of even uneducated population does indeed learn to evade censorship. Bad news: they tend use the most easily-accessible services, which are sketchy, like reselling the users’ IPs as residential proxies.
They can’t force ISPs to block all of the VPN protocols in general
They very much can, I’ve seen it happen last year. The main protocols are VERY easily recognizable by DPI. However, there are obfuscation methods that can get through even Chinese Firewall, and they’re constantly improving.
I find Pipepipe way more convenient for Youtube. However, Grayjay is what I use to have convenient Spotify on mobile.