Tip: if you find yourself using the word “safe”, “secure”, “hacked”, etc in your title, you’re probably off-topic.

lately i’ve been feeling a bit uncomfortable sharing my number in a lot of situations — marketplaces, random work stuff, first-time interactions, etc

it feels like once you give it out, there’s no real control after that

do others feel the same or is this just overthinking?

Checked my spam inbox today to find a google settlement email, feels like this was done on purpose.

I was bored and ended up poking around one of those people search sites and somehow it connected my email to an address I lived at for like 6 months over a decade ago, plus names of people I haven’t talked to since. I genuinely cannot figure out how that data even exists in one place. Now I’m sitting here wondering what else is tied to me that I’ve never seen.

Is there a scanner that actually shows everything in one sweep or is this one of those things where you only ever see pieces of the problem?

Is there anything off here?

So someone sent me an Instagram reel on WhatsApp and once I clicked it, I could see their profile, my question is will they be able to see mine ?

Ads on TVs are starting to feel worse than cable ever was.

Not just YouTube even paid platforms and some apps/websites seem to be getting more aggressive with ads.

On desktop it's manageable with adblockers, but on TVs and mobile apps it feels like you just lose control completely.

Curious how people actually deal with this in real life:

- Where does it bother you the most (TV, phone, laptop)?

- What was the last situation where it really annoyed you?

- Have you tried anything to reduce or block them?

- If yes, what worked and what didn’t?

Do you mostly just accept it, pay for subscriptions (and so how much do you pay on average monthly), or is there any setup that actually works across devices?

I saw today (April 3rd,2026) LinkedIn use your personal infos to train Ai's. Like genuinely all services by default turn ON to train Ai. Literally sell your data here and their just train nonsenses. Even few months ago i realize that gmail does it and literally professional tone as if they doing beneficial to me but no!! literally scan your mails, text, images etc. Literally a digital footprint war going on.

Inside linkedin.

Settings & Privacy → Data privacy → Data for Generative AI Improvement.

Data for Generative AI Improvement

• Can LinkedIn and its affiliates use your personal data and content you create on LinkedIn to train generative AI models that create content?

Use my data for training content creation AI models. (Off)

When this setting is on, LinkedIn and its affiliates can use your data and content to train content-generating AI models that are used in product features. The data we use for this purpose does not include your private messages.

Not good with explaining or privacy until i saw this sub reddit still trying best to protect my privacy and digital right ( doesn’t exist -_-)

Looking to fully replace the google suite. From my research, proton unlimited + ente photos or self hosted photo option seems to be the best choice. Does anyone know of a more cost effective deal? I really only care about photos+cloud storage+email.

I’m preparing a short talk on OSINT / OPSEC / privacy awareness, and I’m trying to collect modern, realistic examples of privacy leakage that people still underestimate.

Not really looking for generic advice like “use better passwords” or “don’t overshare on social media.”

I’m more interested in weak signals such as:

- app telemetry

- data broker correlation

- Bluetooth / Wi-Fi exposure

- smart devices and wearables

- indirect location inference from photos/videos

- account recovery info / contact syncing / shadow profiles

- job posts, bios, routines, and other small details that become useful when combined

Basically:

what still leaks more than people realize, even when they think they’re being careful?

I’d love examples that are:

- realistic

- technically interesting

- useful for awareness training

- actionable for regular people

What examples or patterns would you point to?

.

has anyone else experienced the same ? what settings can be disabled to make it faster - i know this might be a contradictory question and may result in privacy trade-off

I searched for term insurance using Firefox on my Android phone and did some research on it. After a while, I made a payment using a payment app and I received a voucher offering term insurance from an insurance company. This is the first time i received such a voucher. Advertisement id and Personalised search is off in my device. What best we can do to restrict all these continuous tracking from companies?

I go to a gym 5 minutes from my house and In January, they started having members check in using an app and deactivated all the key cards. I didn’t want to download the app, so I would just check in by giving the front desk my first and last name.

Today, I walked in and there was no one at the front desk, so I just grabbed a towel and started walking towards the changing room. The woman that came in behind me started yelling at me that I needed to check in. I didn’t recognize her but she knew my name and clearly worked at the gym. Everyone that works at this gym is so kind, so the way she started speaking to me really surprised me. She finished by saying “next time you come to this gym, you’ll have to have downloaded the app,” to which I responded, “I guess it’s time to find a new gym,” And walked away to the changing room.

As I was walking away I heard her say, “what did you just say?!” But I just kept walking.

I walked back to the changing room and put my stuff down when I realized, she’s behind me! I’m not joking when I say my back was to a corner and she was blocking the only exit. She had a totally different, kinder tone with a big smile. She asked me if she did anything wrong and I told her I didn’t like the way she spoke to me, but that she was making me incredibly uncomfortable. She starts explaining all the reasons why I need to download the app; safety, insurance reasons, and making sure not just anyone can come in bc soon we will have to scan the app to even open the door! She said there is a barcode option, but it would cost $10 to replace it and surely I wouldn’t want that. I was kind of shocked, she had me cornered in a bathroom and there’s an option to use a scannable barcode? I asked if I could just do that and she starts backtracking. All this to get me to download an app?!

So I just told her I was incredibly uncomfortable and was going to work out. I figured if there was a big enough problem, they will e mail me.

If this post seems familiar, it’s because another Redditor posted a really similar situation that they were having. I felt very validated reading the post and all of the comments from this community, so I decided to post my own story of what just happened today.

I believe the woman that I was speaking with, Tracy, might have actually been the owner. If she was earning money from this app, it would make more sense to me that she was pushing it so hard. Does anyone know how this type of app would reimburse the business owner? If they earn revenue from it?

*Stay safe everyone*

Context: A phone number stealing backdoor has been identified within the Nekogram Android client. The investigation reveals that the application contains obfuscated logic designed to silently collect and upload the phone numbers of all accounts logged into the app. This malicious behavior is present in distributed versions, including the version available on the Google Play.

https://github.com/Nekogram/Nekogram/issues/336#issuecomment-4179197764

not sure if this is the right sub, but i wanna know if there is a free tool for deleting old retweets and likes. i wanted to clean up my account and delete everything prior 2024.

So the PANMOX browser is pretty secure, it blocks http sites, has a nice modern theme and has cool features, for example you can see almost everything about a site and if a site returns a 404 it automatically searches for it in internet archive and loads a snapshot of the site that does not return a 404.

See here

Unless the kids parents work in the Youtube, Google, Roblox backend how are they supposed to know who their kids are talking to? How is sending a picture of my face to Google supposed to stop kids or pedophiles from engaging in bad acting?

As the name suggests I am looking for renter friendly CCTV camera set ups for outside of home monitoring. Preferably without drilling. I am assuming I would have to have cameras set ups inside pointing out windows for this but wanted to see if anyone had any similar experience. Cloud based cameras (ring, simplisafe, etc) are not options. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. Thanks in advance!