run sudo ss -tulpn, and have a look at the processes and their privileges listening for incoming connections. If one of them has a vulnerability, through which a third party can make that software do things it was not intended for… that’s pretty bad.
This can most easily happen with software whose developers are underresouced/careless/stubborn.

A recent case of that happening: https://www.evilsocket.net/2024/09/26/Attacking-UNIX-systems-via-CUPS-Part-I/
Tl;Dr, remote code execution vulnerability in software that most often runs as root, automatically.

I must mention though that their solution is not really efficient. Everyone’s app gets the phone number, its just not displayed anymore. This can be circumvented with a little modification of the app, which is easy because it’s open source.

Chinese vehicles sold in the US would have the same internet connectivity as a base 2007 Honda Civic. Surveillance by the Chinese would be practically impossible with those limitations.

yeah sure, we all know the us government blocks trackers of the bloatware built into chinese smartphones, chinese network routers, and all other things. Except they don’t.

Chinese vehicles sold in the US would have the same internet connectivity as a base 2007 Honda Civic.

I would even consider buying them, then. Honestly. It’s increasingly hard to find such cars.

I don’t have a firewall on my desktop or laptop

you are brave to use your laptop that way. or is it used as a stationary device?

but yes it is useful at home if you live with people who you don’t trust to be managing their computer safely

I think it’s fine to start with UFW on a desktop system at home to learn the very basics and get an idea on what ports you actually need. learning iptables/nftables is useful, but not necessary for a simple user at that level

no, not really. on linux that depends on the default policy of the corresponding chains, so it’s configurable. I don’t think all common distros default to reject either.

A firewall (at least in Linux) blocks everything inbound by default.

are you sure? I thought that at least UFW allows through some common LAN services

wireshark does not work for individual apps, it cannot make a difference between traffic of process a and b.

for example to make sure you have got drivers.

but then, you need software for less computer-like devices too, like a smart watch or earbuds. do you immediately reflash those too? and who will make the software?

the EU store regularly posts updates on stock

I’m not a US citizen, neither of them are safe in any amount. Speaking of that, my country has ever increasing chinese influence, imported by our most corrupt goverment ever, along with loans that we will pay for decades, if not for longer. Chinese surveillance tech is appearing everywhere, like hundres of hikvision cameras.

I don’t think I’m a minority here.

I also don’t want to buy a Tesla ever, neither travel in one, and I’m pretty confident with today’s climate that I won’t ever have a car.
I dont want to travel to the US, but to china even less so.
The wrongdoings of the US does not make china any better of an option.

oh you absolutely have to be worried about china. I don’t care specifically about anyone, and so I don’t care specifically about the US. Everyone having this much access is dangerous

The newish feature (less than a year) is that I think they do not require a phone number to set up a new account.

How do you do that? A few days ago I have registered again, and I didn’t see the option. Didn’t you perhaps mean that the app can hide phone numbers?

there is this approach where if the neighbor is loud, you first try to speak with them, and if they don’t care then you go to the police. have you heard of it?

I think a big part of the problem is that they didn’t show anyone a notification or an onboarding dialog or whatever about this feature, when it got introduced.

Firefox is still the superior browser in my opinion.

or the least bad, as I have been thinking about it lately

well, at least former versions are still GPL

(part 2) technically, though, the other part of it is still the case: if you haven’t set yo key backup and you lost your phone, don’t be surprised if you can’t recover all your messages

that must be a relatively new feature

I’m pretty sure anyone who believes that is quite misguided. tell me next that xiaomi phones and robot vacuums are privacy minded. we should also shift to wechat, right?

Telegram isn’t really an alternative, they don’t even use encryption by default, so it should be faster

even the user interface? the animations all over the app, scrolling between 2 consecutive messages of a room or anywhere in the settings? It’s not like element would encrypt the data at rest anyway. any and all menus of telegram are noticeably smoother, when not even looking for it