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One of the important things to realize these days is that when you turn a device off, it may not actually be turning off. Instead, it might go into a standby or low-power mode and keep working in some way depending on the device, while looking like it is not functioning anymore. It’s especially important to keep this in mind when you care about privacy and security. Read more ⟶

There are important things that you probably don’t know or realize about the SIM card in your device. Especially if you care about security and privacy, you should know that using a secure device with a secure and privacy-oriented operating system and applications, still make you vulnerable when there’s a SIM card installed in the device. Read more ⟶

A while back I blogged about how the criminal US Government has spies in major (tech) companies. It was clear from that post that if you work at Big Tech companies or companies doing any kind of sensitive work, some of your co-workers are probably connected to 3-letter agencies such as the NSA, CIA and even Mossad. These days the problem is only getting worse; let’s take a look at some examples. Read more ⟶

Many people don’t realize how the information being collected about them can ultimately be turned against them, putting them at a disadvantage. Even when it comes to trivial or seemingly innocent information, you can’t even begin to imagine how that information might be used against you in unexpected, indirect, or creative ways. Read more ⟶

The Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the U.S. House of Representatives informed staff on Monday, June 23th 2025 that they are not allowed to use WhatsApp. They may not download the app on their smartphones or desktop computers and must remove it from their devices if it’s already installed. The CAO cited a lack of transparency regarding WhatsApp’s privacy and security as the reason for the ban. Read more ⟶

I’ve been telling everyone for a few years now not to use Telegram because it lacks end-to-end (E2E) encryption by default and cannot be trusted. Without E2E encryption enabled by default, Telegram is able to read and monitor most one-on-one communications on their servers. On top of that, group chats are never E2E encrypted so Telegram can monitor and read all communications in group chats. Read more ⟶

I recently purchased a new SIM card from a local telecom company in Suriname. I was assigned a ‘new’ phone number with this SIM card. After inserting the SIM card into a phone, I installed WhatsApp and tried to activate a WhatsApp account with the ‘new’ phone number. To my surprise, another person’s profile picture and status text appeared in ‘my’ WhatsApp account after activation. Read more ⟶

In the past I’ve warned multiple times not to use hardware and software from Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei, and more examples keep piling up showing why that’s a bad idea. Read more ⟶

WhatsApp has given users an ultimatum to agree to sharing more information with Facebook before February 8th 2021 if they want to continue using the application. As I’ve written about ever since August 2019, Mark Fuckerberg planned to integrate WhatsApp and Instagram much more with Facebook, and this also included advertising and sharing of (user) data. The coming change to WhatsApp will be an even bigger violation of users’ privacy. Read more ⟶

Apple appears to have become the monster that they initially set out to fight. Read more ⟶

Shortly after the new “national security law” became active in Hong Kong a few weeks ago, I saw a spike in traffic on the QuantumGate GitHub repository. It might have been just coincidence, but it seemed to me that perhaps people in Hong Kong and China were looking for alternative ways to hide their Internet traffic from the local criminal governments. Read more ⟶

I’ve just published the first alpha release for QuantumGate on GitHub. You can head on over to the releases page to download and try it. This version (v0.2.3-alpha) includes pre-built binaries to make it easier for interested developers to try out the library without having to set up a build environment (including all dependencies) to build the library from source code themselves. Read more ⟶

The criminal government of China, through one of their working arms called Huawei, are proposing to replace the underlying protocol of the Internet with a new protocol they call “New IP”. And if you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that this is serious cause for concern as neither the criminal Chinese government nor Huawei can be trusted. Read more ⟶