I have changed my email more than once, just as part of customizing my online identity and all that.

and that obviously required me to login into any accounts I had and updating the email associated with them.

the most common workflow I have found is
login -> navigate to settings page -> edit the email field to the new email -> go to the inbox for the new email -> click confirm on confirmation email

then you can go to that website and do the forgot password, provide your email and change the password and get complete control.

I have always found that workflow weird cause it's the most prevalent one I have come across and seems so susceptible to tampering.

if someone leaves their laptop unattended for 3-4 minutes in public while visiting a bathroom (which happened often in the library of my university), there was nothing preventing me from going to their Facebook or whatever account they had open on their computer, changing the email to my own email and then clicking confirm on my inbox once I am back at my desk.

and most people don't have 2FA so that would effectively give me control of their account.
Hell, my university once had a potential data breach and they were 99.999% sure the data was not actually accessed by a malicious actor but still sent a mass email saying that they were advising everyone to change their passwords. a classmate of mine in the software systems program's attitude was basically "oh well, who cares?" and I just facepalmed internally.

there are maybe 3 websites I have come across that instead first send a confirmation email to your current inbox and after you confirm on that, then you get a confirmation email on the new email inbox. which isn't perfect but I feel like it's a bit more sensical and the best you can do without involving 2FA.

even then, that's also susceptible to the situation I described above if the user is always logged into their email.

I find it odd that websites don't prompt for a password as part of the email update process (or better yet 2FA with an app as even prompting for a password isn't a guarantee if the user has the password manager as an extension in their browser and they recently unlocked it before leaving their session unattended) to ensure that email changes are always done by the account owner.

I went down the path of thinking about switching to Passkeys but it seems like more hassle than it is worth, so I hoped this community could tell me if I am crazy.

I use Bitwarden to generate and save passwords for anything important and always use an authentication app when the option is present. I never use the same password. Sadly, most Canadian banks are awful and only allow SMS 2FA if anything at all. That said, of the two banks I primarily use, one does allow an authentication app and the other uses its own app to send authentication codes.

I always read that Passkeys are better for people who are lazy/bad with their passwords. For someone like me, is the security practically the same or is there still some benefit to switching everything I can to Passkeys?

I am planning to use Plaid API and have a spring boot backend but given that I will be storing my financial information (such as whatever the Plaid API needs me to store to use their endpoints as well as just the transactions on my credit and chequing account), the security of the data is obviously crucial. and I think my problem is I don't know what I don't know.

I have a basic idea of what kind of things I need to protect against.

1. WIll have to use Spring security (or whatever is best) for thing like protecting against xss and csrf
2. I need to ensure that the PostgreSQL database is encrypted

but beyond that, I don't know much about the nuances of each type of security and customizations I should be on the look-out for. wonder if there's a trustworthy resource for at least detailing for me the kind of security I need to implement on either the Spring or PostgreSQL side of things?

As the years go by, I’ve become increasingly annoyed (I choose that word intentionally) at the thought that there’s some “record” of my activity on the Internet somewhere, which was probably put together by my ISP. I “don’t have anything to hide” (other than perhaps the one or other ROM or movie that I download), but I also don’t want to randomly get fined or put in prison if, in a few years, our governments decide to retroactively criminalize certain activities (I’m thinking mostly about piracy).

I’m not tech savvy though. That’s not because I haven’t tried. I have. I spent countless hours reading about how one can keep one’s activity on the Internet “private”. To my knowledge, it isn’t actually possible. I mean, even if I didn’t use my real name anywhere, or didn’t have any social media accounts (thankfully, I don’t), just the fact that I have to use an ISP to surf the web means that at least they are “spying” on me.

So, I’m approaching all of you wonderful, tech savvy people (rather than ChatGPT or a search engine) to ask you if there’s something that I’m missing, and if there is a way (preferably a fool-proof one) to stop my ISP (or “anyone” for that matter) from collecting data on my activity on the Internet (particularly when I download ROMs or movies, which is the only “illegal” thing that I ever do).

My thoughts are that apps can have end-to-end encryption, but if the app on the end is still connected to someone's servers, there's nothing stopping them from pulling the contents of the chat after it's been decrypted on the other end. What options do we have for messaging that don't have this issue? I understand that anything that I can see can still get taken by the OS, etc., but I'm curious about that first step.

Today I got an email from ebay.

It says:

We wanted to let you know that your eBay account has been permanently suspended because of activity that we believe was putting the eBay community at risk...

Well this is weird because I don't use ebay. I sold some things there over 10 years ago. Since then I may have logged in once or twice. Maybe I reset my password a few years ago to make it more secure. So I couldn't have violated any of their policies.

This is a concern to me because I assume someone has been using my account. I assume they have been logging into it and scamming other people. And the account is linked to my email so the scammer has that. So I don't know if someone found out my address info, credit card, or something else. But I can't login to ebay and change my email or check account history because my account is suspended.

So I contacted customer support and they replied a few hours later that I'm banned for life and the reason can't be told to me.

By the way, I did not reply to the original email or click any links in it. I went directly to the ebay site and contacted customer support through that. I'm sure it wasn't a phishing attempt, it's really ebay and they really banned my account (which I haven't been using).

Any suggestions? In my opinion eBay has not used proper security and is exposing me to risk by not giving more information about what has happened.

Hello everyone! I have been currently debating switching email providers. I have been with Proton for a few years now (free user), but I have become increasingly disappointed. Firstly, I am not exactly a fan of the “we have apps for everything” model, particularly the integration of a password manager is just strange and the crypto wallet feels a bit nauseating, as I have my reservations about cryptocurrency. Consolidating all of my services in a company such as Proton feels misguided if the goal is to avoid walled gardens from the tech giants. There are also some other more recent things that have come up in relation to Proton that just make me question the legitimacy of Proton's “guiding moral imperative” as a privacy focussed company.

Moving on from that, I have mostly settled on two options due to their

• low cost
• generally adequate security (I understand email's limitations on this front, I just want something to be secure enough)
• transparency reports
• location of operation

The main thing I am struggling with here are the pros and cons between the two platforms.

Posteo seems to be less ideal of an email provider because they do not support ARC and lack a good DMARC policy. BUT they claim to support encryption with their calendars, but does this even matter if you are accessing the calendars with CalDAV (which I do not beliece is an E2EE connection)?

I think I trust Mailbox.org more when it comes to security, but I think their contacts / calendar situation is somewhat worse, and their French translation seems … lacking in spots (not that it matters to me much, but still is somewhat jarring for me).

I could just ignore the contacts/calendar problem, and use something like EteSync, but that would become just another thing to pay for, and another app to operate (if I need to use the WebDav bridge).

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated, I am really hoping this inspires some interesting conversations! And of course, feel free to tell me about better options if I have overlooked something. Have a lovely day :)

I get that it’s supposed to make things more secure, but it feels like a constant chore every time I try to log in somewhere. Grab a code from my phone. Check my email. Open an authenticator app. Repeat this process for every single account, over and over.

I know there are tools like YubiKey that are supposed to make 2FA easier, but the reality is that most websites don’t even support them.

I already use a password manager, and all my passwords are long, randomized, and secure. Is there something I am missing that makes this easier, or is this just as infuriating for everyone else?

Hi all. I need to set up an outdoor CCTV camera and since there seem to be a hundred different brands and as many pitfalls I'm wondering if anyone here can help me navigate that minefield. I have zero experience.

I have the following basic requirements:

• Waterproof: It's outdoors, it will be rained on, plus there will often be high humidity, pollen and dust. It should not get fogged up. (IP66 or higher I think?) This also means there shouldn't be exposed plugs, otherwise it's not really waterproof.
• NOT battery powered. If there's a battery power option, battery degradation shouldn't prevent the camera from working, since otherwise that will massively impact longevity. I'm looking for something that can be wired directly to AC power.
• Wifi support: Comms cannot be wired in this installation. Norm will probably be n (2.4ghz) but ac+ should ideally be supported for future proofing.
• I probably can't buy it if it's not available in Europe (this often excludes some american startups).

With regard to what happens to the footage:

• I think IP streaming would be ideal?
• Abso-fucking-lutely no "cloud" based services. I have no interest in having to bounce footage through the US or china, or paying a monthly fee for unnecessary nonsense. I'm afraid of brands not being clear about this being a requirement before I spend my money.
• Some brands seem to have their own "server"/hub hardware? Why? No! I already own computers, so I don't need to waste money on a proprietary unitasker for talking to my camera.
• I think there are some open standards for camera streaming and open source software for handling the cameras. Support for these would be great. I'm accepting software recommendations too.
• I'm not in theory opposed to SD card support, but I'd rather not have to use local storage at all, and don't mind if it's not an option. If a setup requires storing in an SD card and then reading from it that's not the worst, I suppose (it's not that expensive to replace dead SD cards once every few years).

Optional bells and whistles:

• There is some illumination in the location at night, but some form of night vision would be highly desirable. Optional built in lights are probably also a good idea.
• Microphone is a nice plus.
• Motion detection and human tracking are a nice plus. The camera doesn't have to rotate 360 degrees; probably a ~60 degree angle of vision would be plenty. At the extreme, I'd say more than ~120 degrees is literally useless due to obstacles. (Obviously if an ideal solution has full rotation, I'll just take it.)
• Resolution+framerate (bitrate) can be as high as wireless-n can comfortably handle, but I don't really think I need more than 1080p.

Thanks in advance if anyone knows enough to be able to help.

This Lifehacker article recommending Ente Auth reminded me that I am looking to migrate off Authy to something else.

I thought I would see what Tilderinos are using:

• What do you use, and do you like it?
• How do you deal with syncing?
• Do you only generate codes on your phone, or do you use a desktop app too?
• What questions should I be asking that I didn't ask?

Could someone please recommend a text messaging app for Android that is reasonably secure?

Verizon is discontinuing their native texting (SMS) app. They recommend switching to Google Messages, but I would not like Google to have access to my entire text messaging history. I tried Signal, but my old messages don't transfer over (minor problem), and almost none of my family are willing to switch to Signal (big problem). When I search for advice, I get a bunch of AI slop articles and advertisements. So I figured I might have better luck asking here: Is there any text messaging app for Android that works well and isn't going to hoover up all my data?