Sergey Shkundaleu @archit3ct@social.ssbx.dev

Article stating that Meta earning a fortune from fraudulent ads. Ads has no real purpose other than to track you across the internet, those are small beacons of data that you take with you everywhere you go on the Internet. Solid reason to use ad-blockers, especially if particular platform does not care about protecting you from fraudsters and you are better off DIY.
Link: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/

Total surveillance is here, ALPR can track all of your car movements and unfortunately technology being used for warrant-less surveillance. Check out this article.
Link:https://proton.me/blog/ai-license-plate-reader
#privacy

There are a lot of talks about abundance in the age of AI. But let's take a deeper look into a subject. Whole theory hinges on the idea that AI will create so much wealth that some form of universal basic income will be introduced in the future. However, if you think such measure would require wealth redistribution and for any non-human entity we call "corporation" profit is a sole purpose of it's existence. Prove me wrong!

Meta and Alibaba launched AI powered glasses back in September, one could think that those would face exactly the same fate as all previous smart glasses, however this time market is bit different, you can do much more with AI powered continuously run camera. As Dutch journalist Alexander Klöpping demonstrated that you can use them for example for real time face recognition on public data for example. That's going to be a nightmare.
#privacy

I've learned today that there is a privacy focused cell phone provider. However they missing key difference between anonymity and privacy, it's more appropriate to call them an anonymity focused provider, they only require 9 digits zipcode. Looks interesting though! #privacy

When was the last time you reviewed apps on your phone? Apps typically collect lots of data, if you don't need app right now, delete it you can install it later when you need it. It's a simple hygiene that will dramatically improve your privacy. #punkprivacy

Here is a good article on what happens if deal too good to be true: when buying all in one "streaming device" with promise to get access to streaming content. So best case scenario is device just part of a botnet that is for sale ...
Link:https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-streaming-box-part-of-a-botnet/
#cybersecurity

Interesting story from EFF, apparently school issued laptops may be spying on everything kids do at home. Not the first time, and won't be the last time. If you have kids beware and have a conversation with them about it and privacy.
Link:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/eff-arizona-federal-court-protect-public-school-students-surveillance-and
#privacy

Do you use Echo devices by Amazon? Do you know that they typically come with Sidewalk bridge turned on by default? Amazon Sidewalk is a mesh network that uses LoRa among other things for long distance communication. Sidewalk device in a bridge mode will share it's Internet connection with some random device, sometimes half a mile away. While it's low bandwidth did you really signed up for that when you bought it? If not - disable it.
#punkprivacy

Data sovereignty is typically discussed in a context of a state nation, however we need to rethink approach and look at it from a standpoint of an individual to avoid situations where individuals is forced to give up on privacy just to participate in a society. Example often involve kids at school who forced to use educational systems that won't work without giving advertisement platforms access to their data.
#privacy

Authors of "AI 20227" paper were right in one aspect ... end of the story. Critics of the paper had only concern on time to reach super intelligence. However I'd suggest even if we never reach super intelligence and AI stagnates end of the story is inevitable: humans would always reach for a simplest solution and thus degrade own cognitive abilities over time. Check out research about writing essay using LLM vs search vs nothing. More we rely SOLELY on AI more we loose that game of life. Think!

How do you distinguish 0 from O in your password manager? Well it has to be of a different color. Here is KeepassXC journey: dev introduced code in 2021 and it made it into release in 2024. Post on X https://x.com/WolframRoesler/status/1452928493549981696 and link to GItHub issue https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/4099

I have decided to have little browser war or showdown. I have heard of Brave being positioned as browser with built in tracker blocking capabilitiees, so I ran it along side Firefox with Wireshark analyzing DNS protocol. Results ... my network DNS server won blocking more than both of them :D but Brave held firm second place, where my DNS having less work when I went to cnn.com of all places.

It's been a while since I wrote on my own blog, I could name lot's of excuses as to why, but what's the point. So I've decided to go back to writing. Here is article about setting up noVNC, because I was not able to find any cohesive documentation on that online. https://sergeysh.com/2025/08/15/Setting-up-novnc-on-astrophotography-pc/

Here you go, proof that tracking won't stop until you delete "social media" apps off of your phone. Think again do you need app to communicate with your real friends instead of calling them? #punkprivacy #privacy
Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are-de-anonymizing-android-users-web-browsing-identifiers/