chappedafloat

whonix docs is very good to learn about this stuff

Do you think it's better to use a VPN if you aren't using TOR Browser?

You can copy the part of the url watch?v=4sfIBRTcRpU and use it in the frontend you prefer.

Good suggestion about analyzing network packets. I don't know anything about how to do that except there are tools like wireshark which can help but I still have no knowledge on doing that. And I think you would need to make a script to monitor it for you because it would probably only (talking theoretically now) phone home very quickly on rare occasions, it wouldn't be continous. So your script would have to be able to detect these short and rare anomalies. I don't know anything about how to do any of this though but I will add it to my todo list down the road.

Another problem is you might need to get the NSA's attention first and make yourself a target. You also need to make sure there is no other way for them to spy on you, so they are left with only using intel me as their last resort.

So because I don't know anything about analyzing network packets I can't say if you're right but it does seem convincing. And it would be great for security in general as well, not only for investigating intel ME. I will definitely learn more about this later.

I think a big part of it comes down to what threats are there in theory and what threats are there actually. The problem is that the theoretical threats are possible, they're not unrealistic and that's why it doesn't feel good to not be protected against the theoretical threats but we maybe need to try and accept they are too unlikely to be active threats. Trying to protect from theoretical threats is kind of like trying to protect your house from having an airplane fall down from the sky into your house. Or maybe this is just my trying to cope.

And how do we know what threats are theoretical vs active threats? Just have to keep learning and learning, it takes a long time. Talking in privacy and security communities can help speed up the learning.

Yeah, i did use words that express feelings in this topic I created and it was intentional because when people have to deal with something that involves uncertainty or something so advanced they don't understand it entirely then they can become uncomfortable and scared even though maybe there isn't something to be scared about or maybe the fear is justified.

My post was intended to be a discussion starter so we can dig into this, get to the truth and help everyone including myself to understand everything better.

Why not is the question and that comes down to guessing. Sheep do what they are told so don't need to guess much there. Those who are not sheep have to go through a long journey to gradually keep increasing their privacy and unlearn the sheep habits we've been conditioned to have.

The end goal is to throw away your phone because you can do everything on your computer instead including buying a phone number, using voip and take and make calls. Phones are unnecessary spy devices used by sheep.

You can buy for cents phone numbers online for one time verification purpose or even rent the number for long term if you need. It's better to use these anonymous cheap throwaway numbers if you want privacy instead of your real phone number for everything.

I don't have experience with that yet. Are you talking about a PI hole? Can you give a little idea on how to make such firewall rules? Because I want to have a laptop with many VMs or Qubes and each VM has different firewall rules. An email qube would only allow connection to the email server. Maybe one of the safe browsing VMs would only allow connections to the websites I typically visit. The unsafe VM maybe to everything except for known bad IPs/domains.

And NSA and other potential adversaries most likely have access to at least one domain that isn't blocked by firewall.

NSA is infamous for illegal and unconstitutional mass surveillance.