Due to financial problems, throughout my privacy journey I have only used free tools to enhance my privacy. I was recently thinking about the question: If I had the money to give back to the services I’ve used, which ones would I donate to? Here is my personal list, which is still a WIP:

I will definitely donate to:

I will most likely donate to:

I may donate to:

I may add more as I think of them. Please leave your ideas!

    • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      5 months ago

      Donating to for-profit companies isn’t inherently bad. While there is more value in donating to non-profit companies, I support all causes equally and want to show my support accordingly.

        • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
          0·
          4 months ago

          By donating I am wanting to support specific projects within the company that align with my privacy values, and a donation would directly target that. By donating, I can help more than simply buying a product, especially if there is a low profit margin for products. For example, if a company sold a product that cost them $45 to manufacture for $50, buying that product would only give the company $5 in profit, compared to if I had donated all $50. That maximizes the impact of my donation. Furthermore, I may support a certain initiative but not personally have the need to buy their products. For example, I support Nitrokey’s implementation of the Nitrokey, but I already have a Yubikey, and so I wouldn’t have a need to buy a Nitrokey. Not to mention, donations are taxed less heavily on the company than sales are in some places. Donations also help raise awareness for a company, and helps me push my personal beliefs about privacy.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Yah, let’s make sure to shit on the company making the only browser that even tries to preserve user privacy because the company does 1% of the shitty things Google does.

      If we try hard enough, they might succumb to the constant attacks from Microsoft, Google and Apple and we’ll be left with the browser engine we deserve.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        0·
        4 months ago

        I want Mozilla to make a browser that preserves privacy. They keep making it worse. And I don’t see how giving them money is helping them improve.

        And my comment won’t cost them any money either, as @Matt@lemdro.id pointed out:

        Plus donations to Mozilla cannot even be used for Firefox development due to the structure of the foundation and corporation.

    • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      5 months ago

      Thanks for the info! A lot of the services on my list offer paid services that are used as a source of income, but I want to support those just the same. Mozilla has been an iffy choice to add to my donation list. They are the developers of Firefox, which has been forked to create the most private browsers (Tor, Mullvad, etc.), but on the other hand their business practices (Google as a default search engine, Firefox Pocket, etc.) are not very good. As such, I will move them to the honorable mentions section (since I don’t actively use stock Firefox) until further notice.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        0·
        5 months ago

        I don’t think Mozilla should be deprived of money, and Firefox (or a lightly modified fork like Librewolf) is and probably always will be my default browser… But they’re getting plenty of money from elsewhere, so they probably don’t need ours.

        • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
          0·
          5 months ago

          If Firefox no longer got maintained, it would be very difficult for downstream projects (Librewolf, etc.) to keep up, because they would be doing the work of hardening the browser AND fixing bugs that are upstream (that Mozilla would otherwise fix). This is one of the reasons GrapheneOS is as good as it is, Google does the heavy lifting of developing AOSP, and GrapheneOS hardens it and makes it as private as they can.

        • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.comEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          A good chuck of that money is google ad money… i personally would like to see a Firefox that has no Google money in it at all.

    • Matt@lemdro.idEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Plus donations to Mozilla cannot even be used for Firefox development due to the structure of the foundation and corporation.

  • Sarcasmo220@lemmy.ml
    0·
    4 months ago

    Its cool to see people thinking about how to donate when they can. I think about it as well, and when I have donated I think most if not all fall into your list.

    • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      Can you think of any that may not be on my list? It’s always good to try making your own, even if they’re on my list!

    • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      Whonix is a unique operating system focused on privacy, security, and anonymity. Rather than being a standalone operating system, Whonix is unique in that it needs a “host” operating system to run Whonix as a virtual machine within the operating system. That means that if Whonix got compromised, the rest of your system stays untouched. Whonix isn’t like a standard VM, however, but I don’t know the specifics on how to properly explain that. Anyways, one cool feature of Whonix is that, like Tails, it routes all traffic through Tor.

  • desoxyraptor@lemmy.tedomum.net
    0·
    5 months ago

    Which of these are tax deductible in the EU? In the US? Making the surveillance states lose out on some tax that funds their schemes, to pay developers trying to make our privacy more attainable is great.

    • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      5 months ago

      Ouch, tough break. I’ll still leave them on my list in case anything changes, but that will move them down a few notches. Thanks for the info!

      • Joël de Bruijn@lemmy.ml
        0·
        5 months ago

        F-Droid changed the label to Non-Free Network Services because just linking from a POI to a booking site alone (without affiliate linking etc) isn’t the privacy nightmare fdroid wants it to.

        I could use OM my whole life without clicking links from POI and never is anything exchanged with Kayak or OM.

        If one does a booking at Kayak then sure Kayak takes all kind of PII. OM wouldnt know btw.

        Non free network label is assigned because OM app is dependent on OM providing mapdata. And one cant change that.

  • delirious_owl@discuss.online
    0·
    5 months ago

    Problem loading page

    The page does not work without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to use privacy.sexy. Don’t worry; privacy.sexy is secure, transparent, and open-source.

    What is privacy.sexy?

    • Charger8232@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      5 months ago

      Here is the GitHub page! privacy.sexy is a service that lets you customize and automatically generate a script that will harden the privacy of your computer operating system. i.e. it makes a script that disables telemetry, clears cache, etc. automatically.