Self-hosting the things you used to put on the cloud might be appealing for you. Problem is, you'd like to be able to access your devices from anywhere. The solution is a virtual private network, or VPN. If you work remotely, you almost certainly are familiar with the process of connecting to a VPN to access your organization's network assets. Individuals can set up the same.
There are plenty of commercial implementations of Wireguard. Probably the best-known (and best-regarded) is Tailscale. And Tailscale is indeed fantastic! But in the spirit of owning as much of our stack as possible, I'm going to show you how to implement a Wireguard-based network from scratch, without third-party tools.
An end-to-end encrypted collaborative office suite. Multiple users can work on the same document at the same time. Everything is encrypted end-to-end, including on disk. There's a full suite of applications: A rich text editor, spreadsheet, IDE, kanban, presentation slide editor, whiteboard, and buildable forms. Use theirs or stand up your own instance.
This is an open list of web crawlers associated with AI companies and the training of LLMs to block. We encourage you to contribute to and implement this list on your own site.
You can subscribe to updates the releases feed: https://github.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/releases.atom
If you just want to pull a robots.txt file: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ai-robots-txt/ai.robots.txt/refs/heads/main/robots.txt
Since 2014, Operation Safe Escape has been working with survivors of domestic violence, stalking, and harassment to help them find safety and freedom.
Operation Safe Escape is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, founded in 2016 with a single goal: to make sure that every person impacted by domestic violence has the resources, information, and confidence that they need to leave their abuser and stay safe once they do. We are an organization of security and safety professionals, volunteering our time and expertise to help people stay safe and live their best lives. And we do it all for free. We don’t change you to help you protect yourselves or your clients. We don’t change the people that come to us for help. We don’t make a profit, we’re just here because we want to help. We have experts in computer and mobile device security, forensics, physical security, tech support, OPSEC, OSINT, and online privacy.
We’ve participated in over 3,000 successful escapes, and we’re a trauma informed / survivor-centric organization. Every one of our volunteers have thorough background checks; safety and trust is paramount to us. We have over 100 volunteers with backgrounds in law enforcement, military, technology, advocacy, and other relevant skills that we can provide to your organization. No matter how skilled or knowledgeable the abuser or stalker is, we’re stronger when we all work together.
O&O ShutUp10++ means you have full control over which comfort functions under Windows 10 and Windows 11 you wish to use, and you decide when the passing on of your data goes too far. Using a very simple interface, you decide how Windows 10 and Windows 11 should respect your privacy by deciding which unwanted functions should be deactivated. This software is entirely free and does not have to be installed – it can be simply run directly and immediately on your PC. And it will not install or download retrospectively unwanted or unnecessary software, like so many other programs do these days!
Disable Windows Copilot+ Recall, alter your security settings, control location services, disable telemetry for Microsoft Office, deny transmission of user data and diagnostics. Free of charge for private users, companies and educational institutions. Supports all Microsoft Windows 11 and Windows 10 builds. Available in multiple languages.
Organic Maps is a free Android & iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers, drivers and cyclists based on OpenStreetMap data created by the community. It is a privacy-focused, open-source fork of Maps.me app (previously known as MapsWithMe), maintained by the same people who created MapsWithMe in 2011.
Organic Maps is one of the few applications nowadays that supports 100% of features without an active Internet connection. Install Organic Maps, download maps, throw away your SIM card, and go for a weeklong trip on a single battery charge without any byte sent to the network.
It looks like there is also a desktop version.
RACE (Resilient Anonymous Communications for Everyone) is a distributed system developed to provide resilient, secure, anonymous messaging. You can think of RACE in terms of a network two types of nodes: clients and servers. The clients are devices run by individual users who want to anonymously message one another; the servers are run by volunteer users or organizations that provide the infrastructure to enable anonymous client messaging. Uses special multi-party computation (MPC) algorithms to route messages without individual servers learning the metadata. The specific goals of the original RACE program were to enable up to 20% of the servers to be malicious and colluding without any client messaging metadata being leaked.
This extension allows you to spoof your browser "user-agent" string to a custom designation, making it impossible for websites to know specific details about your browsing arrangement.
You can easily set custom "user-agent" strings from the toolbar popup. The extension uses a two-factor technique to mimic your default "user-agent" string, which is the most reliable method. The extension does not use any resources when it is not spoofing the user-agent. The extension enables user-agent spoofing on specific domains only; it is conversely possible to exclude certain domains from spoofing. Check the Options page for more info. You can set per-site user-agent strings. There is an option to randomize user-agent strings. It is possible to set user-agent string for a single window; you can have a separate user-agent string for each browser window.
Documentation: https://webextension.org/listing/useragent-switcher.html
An ethically sourced, opt-in only data collection project. Published information is obfuscated to protect transmitters and contributors. Updating existing data requires information only available in physical range of a beacon. Multiple mobile apps for feeding the system can be found on the F-Droid repository.
Git repo: https://codeberg.org/beacondb/beacondb
Valetudo is an opinionated software solution for cloud-free vacuum robots installed on thousands of robots. Since it was started in 2018, it has matured to a reliable fire-and-forget solution that just works. The obvious upside of this is that all your data stays on your robot. It also means that you won’t need to have a working internet connection just to control your local vacuum robot anymore. Commands usually execute much faster and more reliable, as they don’t have to detour through some server in a datacenter far away from you, which might be overloaded or even on fire.
Furthermore, the robot will continue working even after the vendor has ended support for that model and shut down the corresponding servers. This is a huge issue with IoT devices. They brick all the time because the vendor gets sold, changes its business model, runs out of venture capital, is bankrupt, gets hacked, and more.
Multiple integrations with other self-hosted software for convenience.
OpenRecall is a fully open-source, privacy-first alternative to proprietary solutions like Microsoft's Windows Recall or Limitless' Rewind.ai. With OpenRecall, you can easily access your digital history, enhancing your memory and productivity without compromising your privacy.
OpenRecall captures your digital history through regularly taken screenshots. The text and images within these screenshots are analyzed and made searchable, allowing you to quickly find specific information by typing relevant keywords into OpenRecall. You can also manually scroll back through your history to revisit past activities.
OpenRecall is 100% open-source, allowing you to audit the source code for potential backdoors or privacy-invading features. Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, giving you the freedom to use it on your preferred operating system. Your data is stored locally on your device, and you have the option (soon to be implemented) to encrypt it with a password for added security. No cloud integration is required. OpenRecall is designed to work with a wide range of hardware, unlike proprietary solutions that may require specific certified devices.
Awesome Tor is a curated list of resources, tools, and applications related to the Tor network. This product is produced independently from the Tor anonymity software and carries no guarantee from The Tor Project about quality, suitability or anything else.
Win11Debloat is a simple, easy to use and lightweight powershell script that can remove pre-installed Windows bloatware apps, disable telemetry and declutter the experience by disabling or removing intrusive interface elements, ads and more. No need to painstakingly go through all the settings yourself, or remove apps one by one. Win11Debloat makes the process quick and easy!
You can pick and choose exactly which modifications you want the script to make, or use the default settings. If you are unhappy with any of the changes you can easily revert them by using the registry files that are included in the 'Regfiles' folder. All of the apps that are removed can be reinstalled from the Microsoft store.
Works with Windows 10 and 11.
EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance project shines a light on the surveillance technologies that law enforcement agencies routinely deploy in our communities. These resources are designed for advocacy organizations, journalists, defense attorneys, policymakers, and members of the public who often are not getting the straight story from police representatives or the vendors marketing this equipment.
Whether it’s phone-based location tracking, ubiquitous video recording, biometric data collection, or police access to people’s smart devices, law enforcement agencies follow closely behind their counterparts in the military and intelligence services in acquiring privacy-invasive technologies and getting access to consumer data. Just as analog surveillance historically has been used as a tool for oppression, we must understand the threat posed by emerging technologies to successfully defend civil liberties and civil rights in the digital age.
The first messaging platform operating without user identifiers of any kind - 100% private by design! iOS, Android and desktop apps! The channel through which you share the link does not have to be secure - it is enough that you can confirm who sent you the message and that your SimpleX connection is established.
SimpleX is a client-server network with a unique network topology that uses redundant, disposable message relay nodes to asynchronously pass messages via unidirectional (simplex) message queues, providing recipient and sender anonymity.
Unlike P2P networks, all messages are passed through one or several server nodes, that do not even need to have persistence. In fact, the current SMP server implementation uses in-memory message storage, persisting only the queue records. SimpleX provides better metadata protection than P2P designs, as no global participant identifiers are used to deliver messages, and avoids the problems of P2P networks.
Unlike federated networks, the server nodes do not have records of the users, do not communicate with each other and do not store messages after they are delivered to the recipients. There is no way to discover the full list of servers participating in SimpleX network. This design avoids the problem of metadata visibility that all federated networks have and better protects from the network-wide attacks.
Tinfoil Chat (TFC) is a FOSS+FHD peer-to-peer messaging system that relies on high assurance hardware architecture to protect users from passive collection, MITM attacks and most importantly, remote key exfiltration. TFC is designed for people with one of the most complex threat models: Organized crime groups and nation state hackers who bypass end-to-end encryption of traditional secure messaging apps by hacking the endpoint.
TFC uses XChaCha20-Poly1305 end-to-end encryption with deniable authentication to protect all messages and files sent to individual recipients and groups. The symmetric keys are either pre-shared, or exchanged using X448, the base-10 fingerprints of which are verified via an out-of-band channel. TFC provides per-message forward secrecy with BLAKE2b based hash ratchet. All persistent user data is encrypted locally using XChaCha20-Poly1305, the key of which is derived from password and salt using Argon2id, the parameters of which are automatically tuned according to best practices. Key generation of TFC relies on Linux kernel's getrandom(), a syscall for its ChaCha20 based CSPRNG.
An open-source alternative frontend for YouTube which is efficient by design.
YouTube has an extremely invasive privacy policy which relies on using user data in unethical ways. You give them a lot of data - ranging from ideas, music taste, content, political opinions, and much more than you think. By using Piped, you can freely watch and listen to content without the fear of prying eyes watching everything you are doing. Doesn't seem to require a database on the back-end. Claims to be a PWA.
Use the Dockerfile as instructions to build manually. Upload dist/ to shared hosting. Done.
VeilidChat is a chat application written for the Veilid distributed application platform. It has a familiar and simple interface and is designed for private, and secure person-to-person communications.
Requires a local clone of the Veilid source code to compile.
For more information about VeilidChat: https://veilid.chat/
This is a free communication tool that is designed for simplicity, privacy, and security. All interaction between you and your online peers is encrypted. There is no record of your conversation once you all leave.
Serverless, decentralized, ephemeral. Peer to peer whenever possible. Explicitly designed to be self-hostable. Public and private rooms. Audio and video chat. File transfer.
This is a Chrome and Firefox browser extension that strips Google Analytics (i.e. Urchin Tracking Monitor) parameters, and various other click tracking tokens, from URL query strings. This is done before the web request is made and results in both more private browsing as well as more aesthetically pleasing URLs.
Aware of Facebook, Google, Hubspot, Instagram, Mailchimp, Marketo, Microsoft, Olytics, Wicked Reports, Yahoo, Yandex, and a few generic URIs.