pcWRT retweeted
‼️🚨 ALARMING: Google now treats privacy as suspicious behavior by default. Users of GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS, and other deGoogled Android phones are being locked out of millions of websites unless they install the exact Google Play Services software they deliberately removed.
GrapheneOS is recommended by the EFF and used by journalists, lawyers, and activists in high-risk environments. The audience most likely to read Google's data practices and refuse its terms is now flagged as fraudulent for that exact decision.
What happened?:
▪️ Google announced "Cloud Fraud Defense" at Cloud Next on April 22-23, 2026, branding it "the next evolution of reCAPTCHA." Existing reCAPTCHA customers were auto-migrated.
▪️ When the system flags traffic as suspicious, the old click-the-bus puzzle is gone. Users get a QR code instead.
▪️ Scanning the QR code requires Google Play Services running on the device. Internet Archive snapshots show this requirement has been live since at least October 2025, silently rolled out for 7 months before anyone noticed.
▪️ No Play Services = no QR scan = locked out.
The bigger picture:
▪️ Google already tried this in 2023. It was called Web Environment Integrity (WEI), and it would have let Google decide which devices were "real enough" to access the web. Standards bodies and the public pushed back hard, and Google killed it. Three years later, the same idea is back, just hidden behind a QR code instead of a browser feature.
▪️ reCAPTCHA runs on millions of websites. Every developer who keeps using it is now, by default, telling deGoogled Android users they're not welcome...
pcWRT retweeted
The White House App has OneSignal's full GPS pipeline compiled in, polling your location every 4.5 minutes, syncing your exact coordinates to a third party server.
🇺🇸 🚀 LAUNCHED: THE WHITE HOUSE APP
Live streams. Real-time updates. Straight from the source, no filter.
The conversation everyone’s watching is now at your fingertips.
Download here ⬇️
📲 App Store: apps.apple.com/us/app/the-wh…
📲 Google Play Store: play.google.com/store/apps/d…
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The promoted White House app tracks users' precise location every 4.5 minutes (foreground) via third-party OneSignal, syncing coordinates to external servers despite "no filter" claims. thereallo.dev/blog/decompili… x.com/Thereallo1026/…
pcWRT retweeted
THIS IS NOT A DRILL: The Dutch authorities, without a warrant, just seized one of our VPN servers saying they'll give it back after they "fully analyze it".
Windscribe uses RAM disk servers so the only thing the authorities will find is a stock Ubuntu install. The bigger worry is the unredacted Epstein files we had on there...
pcWRT retweeted
Google, Meta, and Amazon are among the top companies tracking you across the web. By automatically blocking their trackers, Privacy Badger makes it harder for Big Tech companies to profit from your personal information. eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/on…
pcWRT retweeted
Those is power say “Just trust us, with this surveillance program.”
But this isn’t about trust, it’s about limits.
Power without limits will always be abused.
pcWRT retweeted
⚠️Oracle issued an emergency fix for a a critical E-Business Suite zero-day flaw tracked as CVE-2025-61882 that was exploited in Clop data theft attacks.
🔥The flaw is a critical unauthenticated RCE flaw. An exploit is publicly available to open a reverse shell.
🚨Patch now!
pcWRT retweeted
The more we accept being watched, the more we start to police our own behavior. People speak less freely, avoid risky ideas, and conform to what's “safe.”
Surveillance doesn’t just observe -- it reshapes society from the inside out.
pcWRT retweeted
Regulations change with politics. Encryption doesn’t. If your privacy depends on a law, it can be repealed. If it depends on math, it holds, no matter who’s in power.
Choose tools that are private by design, not just by promise.
pcWRT retweeted
We've enabled 120+ additional P2P (peer-to-peer) server exits across Canada, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, the UK, and the US. ProtonVPN paid users now have an even greater selection of fast VPN servers that they can use to safely torrent: protonvpn.com/support/bittor…
pcWRT retweeted
A world without privacy turns curiosity into liability.
When every question you ask is logged and stored, curiosity stops being harmless. It becomes evidence that can be used against you.
pcWRT retweeted
Thousands of Asus routers are being infected with a stealthy backdoor that can survive reboots and firmware updates. Read more about how to tell if your router has been infected and how to fix it: arstechnica.com/security/202…
pcWRT retweeted
Not enough people care about privacy. What can we do?
• Speak up
• Get people on private messaging apps
• Help them understand what's at stake
pcWRT retweeted
You shouldn’t have to justify why you want privacy.
The burden is on those trying to take it from you.
pcWRT retweeted
People sometimes worry that companies are secretly listening to us through our phones because they see surprising, unexpected ads. Learn what’s really going on: digitalrightsbytes.org/topic…
pcWRT retweeted
They want to scan your messages “for your safety.”
Ask yourself: who’s keeping you safe from them?
pcWRT retweeted
This incident underscores how image generation tools can be misused to create harmful and explicit content involving both adults and children, revealing just how dangerous they can be.
Source: wired.com/story/genomis-ai-i…
2/2
pcWRT retweeted
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
Correction: When I have nothing to fear, then I'll have nothing to hide.
pcWRT retweeted
For years (from Obama, to Trump I, Biden, and now Trump II), Big Tech has told US presidents, let us keep our monopolies and we'll ensure US dominance in tech, which requires hundreds of billions of dollars. With DeepSeek coming out of China, the lie is starting to unravel. (1/4)
pcWRT retweeted
Tech oligarchs are a huge problem.
That's why Proton is not controlled by any individual, but by the non-profit Proton Foundation, which has neutrality in its governing principles.
theguardian.com/us-news/2025…
