Vivaldi is horribly flawed, not least from the privacy perspective — you’re better off using Brave, Comodo Dragon, anything else. Firefox, is best .. (with the proper addons/extensions to manage your privacy and security, attention paid to why they are important and how they work, you’ll be as safe as anyone can be) — there’s a reason the Tor Browser Bundle is based on Firefox and not on any of the others.
Dropbox? Ah, yes, the people who promised privacy, gave unfettered access to your data to their employees and, when found out, didn’t fix the problem but simply changed their Ts&Cs instead. Use Tresorit instead.
Telegram was designed by two mathematicians with no crypto experience who thought they could do it better than everyone else, so they rolled their own crypto and kept it secret from everyone.
What is the first rule of crypto? That’s right … you never roll your own.
What is the second rule of crypto? You guessed it … whether you think you’ve come up with something superior or rely on tried and tested approaches, you always open source it so that it may be independently audited for flaws.
Go to Wikipedia and look up the comparison of messaging clients — you’ll see a multitude of reasons not to use Telegram … starting with the two above, but they’re enough reason on their own.
Until Telegram has been independently audited and given a clean bill of health, do not use it.
Although there have been improvements made in the last six months, twelve months, eighteen months, two years … the only one offering a clean bill of health without the need to tie your account to your real world identity is Signal — all the others either have serious failings or else, like Threema, compromise your privacy by tying your account to your real self.
I investigate them all every six months and keep an eye on any announcements in the meantime — have done for years now.
If you’re using any of the Google suite of products (Sheets, Docs, Youtube, Maps, etc.) then this article was a complete waste of time — none of the other stuff matters, because you’re giving them unfettered access to your location, your financials, your thinking and correspondence.
On PC/laptop, use Libreoffice.
On mobile/cellular use WPS Office.
Don’t use apps when you can use a webbrowser (Firefox or TBB) —fullscreen Youtube vids are fullscreen Youtube vids whether you use an app that gathers all your viewing habits and sends them to the mother ship or a webbrowser that you have told not to load any of the trackers or reporting ‘services’.
On PC, use linux in preference to Windows.
On mobile, root your phone and install Magisk and MicroG.
If you’re not confident enough for that, use LineageOS.
At the very least install a firewall such as NetPatch Firewall or NetGuard and lock down all apps that don’t need to be sending your data back to Google — your calculator does not need to do that, no matter what Google might like you to believe to the contrary (there’s no way knowing the details of your arithmetical calculations will help them improve its performance)
