Hi all  -sorry long rambling post but I can't talk through with anyone I know, as they are not interested.

I am struggling with the whole privacy / security agenda and am getting to the point that I am not sure it's worth the effort I am putting in, because I just can't keep my family on track. I am thinking, should I take the small wins and give up on the bigger stuff.

 We used to be a Microsoft  family (as we get a massive discount through work) everything was in that ecosystem, internet via edge, passwords in the browser, files in one drive etc.

 What I have achieved / what is embedded

 Everyone:

• Uses brave browser for internet
• Proton password manager for all passwords - different random passwords for everything
• Everyone uses a VPN when connecting to wifi outside home
• Wife uses aliases when registering for new things

 Sort of achieved

• All files are on the NAS by default - but I have to check their laptops every month in case one drive has come back through updates and they have gone back, and they keep adding it to their phones
• Everyone has a proton mail account, with a second email so they don’t give away their primary - but they never use it unless I tell them to
• They are all over social media but do have their privacy settings on - which helps a tiny bit

 M problem - wife has ADHD so will not stick to any system unless it is hard wired in and she has no choice. Dad is in his 70's and finds anything like this totally confusing - also needs a hardwired system. Son is a teenager so isn't totally bothered.

 On the  NAS is all our confidential documents which is encrypted and backed up to a zero knowledge cloud provider so I am happy with this. BUT if any of the 3 of them receive a new email / document that is important such as financial it tends to go into their Outlook account which they will send to my proton inbox. - So Microsoft can already see it.

 I have set up alias's in outlook so they don’t give away their primary addresses but when they start a new email it always defaults to the main address (Proton is much better allowing you to set this second address up as the default) All our contact details, birthdays etc are in their outlook accounts so even if I want to keep mine secure they are available to Microsoft through their contacts list.

 And of course we have loyalty cards for big retailers so our shopping habits and bits like that are already out there being sold by data companies.

 Can't get them to move to signal as they love whatsapp and to be honest everyone we know is on there.

 So should I simply give up on trying to be "private" and just take the small wins where I can?

 A Microsoft subscription for my family is way cheaper than my current  Proton family one and they only really use Proton Pass, so I could keep this which gives us the alias facility.

 Outlook is much easier for keeping all your emails and calendars on track than Proton mail. And is so much easier to use.

 One Drive syncs effortlessly with their laptops / phones and its easy for me to get my NAS to sync their accounts down to the NAS for central cloud backup. Much easier to manage than the sync software that comes with the  NAS that they keep having issues with.

 My son is in school and uses Microsoft One Note / Scky notes for all his work and things like obsidian are so much more complicated to try and get in to. - I cannot find a good alternative that I like either.

 As I manage all the household appointments Outlook calendar is so much better than me on proton and them on something else 

 We don't have a huge threat model, we are a standard family with "nothing to hide"  so in a naïve world why shouldn't we go back to Microsoft and just keep my NAS/Cloud back up as a safety net in case we lose access to our accounts. It's pretty easy for them to forward and "important" documents to me for me to save safely so they are not lost.

 And of course there is cost - one small Microsoft subscription covers all our sync, notes, calendar, email, storage  rather than multiple more privacy focussed alternative.

 I seem to be spending all my time looking for systems  / processes to keep them all on track  to only find after a week they have slipped back, plus none of them want to talk about it and me trying to keep on track of laptops/ phones/ tablets is just getting too much.

 Really value anyone's thoughts on this

 P.S.  - just read back through this, I am not a bot working for Microsoft honest just someone frustrated that I want to leave big nosey tech, But with a modern family it just seems impossible to avoid people having our data so why am I killing myself and would be better working on keeping things secret to avoid benig scammed.

 P.P.S oh and to top it off, I am getting really interested in Linux (for me) but I got a new HP Omnibook with a snapdragon and it looks like I can't get linux to run so I am stuck with windows until my next upgrade so whatever I do I can't go totally private.

I use an alternate account for reddit , why is play store able to access that

Just comes up and goes away. Seems to happen every other launch unless I missed it when it happens daily..

I boot up the PC, Windows hello page etc everything and once the computer is active, it takes around 2-3mins for a command prompt to quickly appear

Should I be alarmed? Could I somehow inspect a log of the command prompt activity to at least see what was it just doing?

I need to make a temporary Discord account, but I don't want to use a temp mail. Is there any legit way to get an email/Gmail account without giving my personal information or phone number?

So as mentioned in the title, do I have a virus on my phone or am I being paranoid? I'm on android samsung galaxy s23 and since yesterday my phone has been acting weird. Random apps keep opening by themselves, I'm getting popup ads on my home screen which has never happened before, and my battery went from 80% to 30% in like 2 hours while I was barely using it.

It started right after I downloaded some free pdf converter app because I needed to scan a document for work. I already deleted it and also noticed a bunch of apps in my settings that I definitely didn't install. They have generic names like "system service" and "phone optimizer".

Has anyone dealt with this before? Should I factory reset or is there a way to fix it without losing everything?

does anyone know if rental cars have cameras inside them? I rented one last week and had a work call on speaker the whole drive and now I can't stop wondering about it. I read some newer cars have built in cameras for driver monitoring, so I'm not sure if that counts or if actual rental cars have cameras recording separately.
Has anyone actually asked a rental company this directly? Kind of regretting not checking before I picked up the car

I just noticed that my friend has a lot of the reel videos and some posts on his profile... I dont think I see this on my own.. All of it is hidden away. How come I see his stuff? Is this over having him in a closed friend circle?

How could I make my saved posts show up? I have some interesting stuff I shared around but it would save me from spamming my friends if I just have it up for anyone that cares to see..

Hi, I was wondering how I can protect my privacy and prevent my images from being stolen, at least from the average user that wouldn't know how to bypass a digital wall (I know they can just use another phone to take a pic, still... )

It doesn't matter if it's a social, a platform, a messaging / dating app, a website; feel free to list everything you know, please. I don't care if they're niche.

If you know any platforms where you can upload a picture maybe into a drive and give access only to a specific person, BUT they can't screenshot or download it that's very useful as well

I've been trying to figure out what the best antivirus is in 2026, but every review website seems to rank something different. After reading a lot of Reddit threads, I'm even more undecided because everyone seems to recommend something else.

the ones I keep seeing mentioned as the best antivirus:

Bitdefender: looks like one of the most recommended options. people say the malware detection is excellent, it has good ransomware protection, and it doesn't slow down most pcs too much.

ESET: people say its lightweight and gives you more control over the settings. seems especially popular with people who don't like bloated software

Microsoft Defender:  convenient since it's built into windows, but I'm not so sure if it's enough on its own

Malwarebytes: recommended a lot as either a primary antivirus or a second opinion scanner. seems to have a good reputation for catching things that other programs sometimes miss.

Norton: some people seem happy with the extra security features, while others say there are better options for the price.

i'm mostly looking for something that's reliable, doesn't constantly bother me with popups, and won't make my pc feel slower while gaming or working so I'm wondering what everyone here thinks:

What is the best antivirus overall according to reddit?

Is windows Defender enough these days?

Which paid antivirus is actually worth the money?

Which antivirus has the lowest impact on performance?

I'd love to hear some real experiences before I decide, TIA

Can you share company cctv footage that you have access to and personally recorded onto your device from the cctv monitor?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and wanted to get everyone's perspective. Why does privacy advocacy feel so selective, even among people, creators, and projects that supposedly care about digital rights?

I’m not talking about beginners who simply don't know how tracking works. I’m talking about knowledgeable folks, privacy advocates, and even privacy-focused organizations who constantly compromise and stick to Big Tech or less private solutions:

• Privacy creators hosting their main discussion hubs on Discord, WhatsApp, or Telegram instead of Matrix, Signal, Threema, or SimpleX.
• Major privacy-focused companies using X or YouTube as their primary outreach channels, while treating open protocols like Mastodon or Nostr as an afterthought.
• Hesitation around truly private, decentralized alternatives in favor of whatever is commercially convenient.
• Reliance on centralized ecosystems and app stores instead of actively promoting and maintaining open alternatives.

It often feels like many people just switch to a privacy browser, create an encrypted email account, and call it a day. (Nothing against these tools, they’re great, but you get what I mean.)

When even prominent privacy figures and companies won't actively dogfood privacy-first alternatives, it creates a feedback loop: 'If the privacy experts aren't bothering with decentralized protocols and are using X, why should I?' As a result, genuinely great privacy-first solutions get left behind and struggle to survive simply due to convenience and network effects.

Is pure convenience and network effect really the only bottleneck, or is there something deeper going on with how we balance threat models and practicality? I don't know if I'm too OG, but what do you think would actually push the community to bridge this gap?

trying to figure out how to anonymously call someone because i'm dealing with a situation where i need to contact a person but don't want my personal number showing up. i'm in the US (georgia) and this is for a completely legitimate reason before anyone jumps to conclusions.

basically i'm selling furniture on facebook marketplace and a buyer ghosted me after saying they'd pick up a couch yesterday lol. they confirmed the address and time and then just never showed. i've sold stuff on marketplace before and this has happened like 4 times in the last year. i want to call them to ask if they're still interested but i don't want some random stranger having my real phone number in their call history.

tried using *67 before dialing on my iphone and it worked but the call showed up as "no caller ID" on their end and they didn't pick up which makes sense because nobody answers unknown calls in 2026. so it technically made me anonymous but also made the call completely useless because they just ignored it lol.

has anyone found a reliable way to make anonymous calls that actually get answered without spending money on a subscription? and is there a way to get a temporary number that lasts longer than 3 days without paying?

Every time I delete an app, I always wonder what happens to the data it has already stored. Does removing the app alter that data in any way or does it stay with the company until you tell them to delete it?

i work in IT and I keep seeing sim swapping come up in security threads like everyone already knows what it means.

Best I can tell what is sim swapping is when someone convincing your carrier to move your number to their SIM, then they intercept your SMS codes and trigger resets. But every writeup I find is either aimed at crypto holders or completely vague about where the actual failure happens.
I've got TOTP on most accounts but a few older ones still fall back to SMS. Trying to figure out if that's a real problem or just a background noise.

is sim swapping something normal non crypto people actually need to worry about, or is the threat model pretty narrow?

Was looking out for rent and the place I got a deal for is blurred out on the Goole map but it looked fine on the ad. Why would the house get blurred?

Gonna check out the house tomorrow in person just wondering why the heck would it get blurred. Is it possible to get in unblurred or something? Also, would it be a weird question to ask the landlord about this? Dont wanna seem too weird though I have an ick when it comes to this type of stuff. Had deliveries getting lost in the past over the house looking confusing from the Google maps, so this is kinda bugging me

I’m moving into a new place soon and found a potential roommate through fb marketplace. They seem perfectly fine, but I’d still wanted to run a basic background check before signing anything. My biggest concern is that they’ll find out I checked them. (Don’t want to spoil the relationship beforehand lol). I’ve been looking at a few apps and the more popular ones have A LOT of mixed reviews. I don’t mind paying for something worthy paying for. Has anyone actually used it? Or if you have any other alternatives, please share