For lesser mortals with less technical skills, this Wired Guide to protecting oneself from government surveillance might be useful. Not exactly a Digital Plan B, but adjacent.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-wired-guide-to-protecting-yourself-from-government-surveillance/ Venky On Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 7:10 PM Chris Kantarjiev via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote: > Aleric, > > You might consider interpolating a pfSense gateway box between your ISP > and your home network - it does pretty much all the things you asked for, > except perhaps piHole. I've found my little box from netgate to be very > reliable and worry-free. > > It can also make living with dynamic DNS a lot easier, handling the task > of updating your DNS entry when the IP changes. I'm not using that feature > at the moment, but am considering giving up my block of static IPs since a) > I only use one any more and b) it adds about 25% to my monthly bill. > > On October 24, 2025 3:01:08 AM PDT, Alaric Snell-Pym via Silklist < > [email protected]> wrote: > >On 29/07/2025 11:37, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist wrote: > >> What are the ways in which silklisters keep an escape route from Big > Tech? > > > >I am a nerd, so I run my own server. I have broadband from a "nerd ISP" > that assigns a static IP address and unfiltered Internet access, so I can > accept incoming connections to my own IP at home. This goes into my own > equipment (which is a fascinating story in itself; despairing of the > unreliability of the traditional "old desktop PC under the stairs" > approach, I built a metal chassis that holds a PC motherboard, a rack of > drive bays, a power supply, and a UPS (battery backup thing), and > physically mounted it to the wall so it can't get knocked about), which > runs my own software. > > > >Much has been written about how this is a hard thing to do, requiring > specialist knowledge. And yes, it does, but that strikes me as fixable. For > much less effort than it takes to make a Linux distribution, one could > build on an existing Linux distribution to make a simple > plug-in-a-USB-stick-and-boot installation process to turn a spare PC into a > personal Internet server, asking only the bare minimum of questions. I'm > surprised that such a thing doesn't exist, or if it does exist, nobody has > heard of it. Please pleasantly surprise me if you know of one, so I can > publicise it :-) > > > >Despite the common stereotype, I find running email pretty easy. I set up > SPF when that became popular, but my mail system basically Just Works. > Postfix delivering mail to Unix accounts and IMAP-UW for people to pick it > up; the one fiddly thing is that my setup for sending email is only usable > from within the home network as I've not gotten round to setting up proper > authenticated SMTP on the submission port. I'm the only one who uses this > system to send email from laptops outside the home, and I use an SSH tunnel > into the home network to do so (ssh -D 1080 -p <not the default SSH port> > <my external hostname>, then tell Thunderbird to use localhost as a SOCKS > proxy). Fixing that is on the TODO list, and has been for years... Perhaps > the fact that I relay outgoing email via my ISP's mail server is why I > don't have the deliverability issues everyone mentions? I gather there's > paid outgoing-SMTP servers people whose ISPs don't run a mail relay can > use? I'm not so worried about using a > shared service for something like outgoing SMTP that stores no state, and > the biggest pain of switching to another is updating my SPF records. > Nonetheless, the efforts of running even direct-delivery SMTP should be > done once, and that configuration rolled out as part of a plug-and-play > mail server setup anyone can use rather than needing to do it themselves! > Come on, tech industry, we know how to solve these problems! Why is it > still hard? > > > >It's not too hard to get a domain name pointed at your IP; the hard part > (and probably why this isn't a mainstream thing) is the difficulty of > getting a static IP. The most accessible means for most people is probably > one of the many non-US-big-tech VPS providers out there, but ISPs who give > you a static IP aren't unheard of (so having the personal-server-distro > thing have an option to be a PPPoE router and also provide DNS/DHCP/NAT for > a home network, with integrated "PiHole"-style ad filtering and providing a > VPN service for when you're on the go, would be neat) > > > >My backups go to a tiny computer with a large USB disk attached, in a > different building. I keep my wife and eldest child informed as to where > the instructions to take over the whole shebang can be found, in a document > that also explains all the household finances, where the bodies are buried, > etc. > > > >Anyway, on that I run email, Web, IRC, and stuff like version control > system repos. > > > >Also, I partake in the Fediverse - I don't run my own Mastodon server; > I'd like to but it's a faff, and the fact that one can migrate between > servers means I'm less *worried* about that. > > > >> > >> Udhay > >> > > > -- > Silklist mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist >
-- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
