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nolite
Half of these services are run or maintained by private companies... This is fundamentally something that we can't trust.. trusting our security and privacy to an opaque organization. Any tool needs to be open source and transparent
mpconlen
The unfortunate reality seems to be that quality open source versions don't exist for a lot of these. I'd love to hear about alternatives that you know of though.
drdaeman
It doesn't matter privacy-wise if service without end-to-end encryption (like Burner, Pastebin or DuckDuckGo) uses FLOSS or not.
spindritf
> Internet Relay Chat (IRC) can be set up to encrypt all messages

Wouldn't SILC[1] be more appropriate than IRC? IRC can be made secure with OTR or FiSH but it's very much insecure by default.

Also, you're probably much safer with Tails[2] than with a manually configured Tor instance.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILC_%28protocol%29

[2] https://tails.boum.org/

mpconlen
These are both very good points.

The main reason I mentioned encrypting IRC instead of something like SILC is that many people already include irc in their daily workflow. Adding settings to a client you already use may be less intrusive than picking up a new protocol altogether.

imperialWicket
+1 Tails is an excellent and active project, it will install on a flash drive alongside an encrypted storage area that Tails will manage for you.
richardlblair
I appreciate that he wrote this up for the general population, but I don't feel this is really worthy of getting on the front page of hacker news.

I mean, is there anything on there you honestly didn't know?

zxcdw
I can say I've heard of all of the items but have I used them so I could say I know them? No. I would expect this to be the case for majority of HN readers, quite frankly.

And I'd consider myself rather paranoid even, at least among the social circles I'm part of.

surespot
surespot is a free and open source mobile messenger encrypting all messages end-to-end with 256 bit AES symmetric-key encryption using keys created with 521 bit ECDH shared secret derivation. www.surespot.me was built from the ground up to provide this exceptional security in an unobtrusive way, this is not a layer over something existing. surespot is like whatsapp but actually encrypted! group chat on the way.
forward_number
Please consider Forward-Phone-Number as a complimentary to Burner App service with phone numbers in 40+ countries and Bitcoin acceptance.

Here is a direct link: https://forward-phone-number.com

Disclosure: I work for them

systematical
I don't understand how setting up a VPN on my local network would secure the information. It seems like you'd need to sign up for one of these vpn services so the exit node was elsewhere. Am I missing something here?