u/Nach0b0y

I just received another email from a company who had a data breach. This was a logistics company associated with the Netherlands/Belgium equivalent of Amazon. This included name, address details, track and trace numbers etc.

It feels like these breaches are happening more and more often - almost every website/company takes copious personal details from you and I highly doubt they have anyone that has done a good once over to their security/data policies.

I have started using email aliases and populate fake data into almost all forms I fill out (obv excluding government websites etc). One thing I haven't looked into is your address and how to protect that. I am willing to give up some convenience for not entering my home address in a million places.

What have people done to reduce the amount they give out their address for deliveries? Are PO boxes still a thing?

I've recently gone down the privacy rabbit hole, especially with everything going on in Europe right now regarding age verification mandates and governments pushing for backdoor access to standard messaging services.

I've been guilty of posting a walk on Strava or geo-tagging a social media post. It would literally take someone with no technical knowledge 10 minutes to narrow down where I live to a pretty small radius. I can't imagine what someone with a bit of technical knowledge and or what a government agency could find with a little digging.

I've made some recent lifestyle changes to try and mitigate this:

• Unique emails: Using different email aliases for every single login.
• Poisoning the data: Populating forms with false information (seriously, why does the local movie theatre need my home address or real DOB?!).
• Scrubbing metadata: Removing geolocation/EXIF data on all photos before I upload them.
• Delayed posting: Only posting things to socials a week or two after the fact so my real-time location is never broadcast.

I feel this is a topic that isn't mentioned much on the prepper channels but I think it should be highlighted. Someone could easily cross-reference your strava run and a post about a new bugout bag etc and figure out you're a prepper.

Is there anything anyone else has done to increase their privacy online? I know we probably can't win against big tech but I'm sure going to try make it harder for them.

I live in the Netherlands and our 1:1 net metering is disappearing on 1 January. Instead of getting 1kwh for 1kwh we are getting pennies so I've been running the numbers on our own situation.

Our setup: solar, gas heating, no EV (and an EV isn't an option so "just charge at midday" doesn't apply), no AC.

Last year we imported ~1,330 kWh and fed back ~1,570 kWh. Under net metering that netted out to an electricity bill of basically €0. From January, that is around €280-500/year depending on whether our supplier introduces feed-in fees. Our surplus is all Apr–Sep and our deficit is all Oct–Mar.

There's only so much laundry you can do in one day so what are your tips to consume additional solar generated during the summer months?

Does anyone know places showing the final? Other than the Irish pub and sportscafe?

With saldering disappearing on 1 January, I've been running the numbers on our own situation.

Our setup: solar, gas heating, no EV (and an EV isn't an option so "just charge at midday" doesn't apply), no AC.

Last year we imported ~1,330 kWh and fed back ~1,570 kWh. Under saldering that netted out to an electricity bill of basically €0. From January, that is around €280-500/year depending on whether our supplier introduces terugleverkosten. Our surplus is all Apr–Sep and our deficit is all Oct–Mar.

There's only so much laundry you can do in one day so what are you actually doing differently, if anything?

I have no affiliation with the project but thought its a good resource for people! Sharing mostly because its all self-hosted and open-source.

You can install it on a spare PC, download the bits of the internet you want while online, then access it all later with no internet, it just lives on the PC. You can load offline Wikipedia, medical/repair guides, OpenStreetMap.

https://www.projectnomad.us/ — setup guide and GitHub are on there.

Is anyone already using this? Curious what hardware and content packs are worth it as I am pretty new to it!

These box 3 changes feel like they're just trying to keep the middle class in the middle class and making it very hard for anyone to build wealth.

Is there anyone here taking actions now in preparation for this change? It would be great to get some ideas on how to get ahead of it!

I am quite new to homelabbing and have a single 8TB hard drive in my NAS (feel free to roast me but it only has things that I don't mind losing). I am looking at adding a parity drive but the prices feel crazy and knowing I bought my current HDD at a much lower price is making it hard to bite the bullet.

What is everyone else here doing? Taking the hit and just buying hardware? Waiting and hoping prices come down? Any alternatives I could explore?

Thanks in advance!