u/supenguin

I've got a family member who is getting into digital privacy/security. The family member has noticed that if you watch a video on YouTube (not logged in) with a privacy focused OS (TAILS) with a privacy focused browser (TOR browser) and then go to another device (normal iPhone/iPad), you'll get recommendations for videos on the same subject and same channels.

Things we've tried so far:

• Using browsers like Brave with cookies disabled
• Browsing with TOR on TAILS
• Browsing using a VPN
• All browsing is done with anti-fingerprint extensions installed.
• Watching videos only with software like FreeTube or Invidious

I've been Linux user for a while, since the late 90's. I've been looking into QubeOS. I have tested it on out of the box QubeOs with Whonix with TOR browser (settings say max security) but I haven't seen any different results as if I did nothing at all. Is there a way to solve this or is QubeOS not the right solution?

To clarify (I've posted on other subreddits and they all seemed to miss this) the issue is NOT getting recommendations. The issue is getting recommendations that make it VERY obvious that the browsing and in particular watching activity was being tracked somehow because some of the recommendations were not trending topics but very niche and specific topics my family member had recently watched videos about on another device.

Other somewhat related notes/questions:

• We've got a Google Home WiFi access point - the model without any speakers or mics. Could that be tracking our habits across any Google-owned products/websites?
• My family member has noticed the same recommended channels/videos are still there on using other peoples network's. This is despite not being logged into Google or YouTube accounts. How does this work?

Summary: I am being tracked across mutliple devices and sessions. I don't want any website to pull up an entire history of what I like and what I do no matter what I try to do to stop it. I don't want websites to know every device I use effortlessly. How does this work? Would some adjustments to QubeOS fix this without too much trouble? If not what would fix it?

(serious answers only)

I've got a family member who is worried about digital online privacy. What trigger this - after viewing some videos on a pretty niche topic (Daniel Tiger of all things) and then moving to another device, the recommendations started showing up for Daniel Tiger videos despite my family member not being logged in on either device.

This has happened again multiple times. This has sent us down the road of trying to figure out how to disable any kind of tracking. I posted on a different subreddit and the top suggestion was use one YouTube account per device which seems to be one way to GUARANTEE we're being tracked.

While YouTube is what started this whole line of thinking, ideally I'd like a solution that works across ALL websites.

Things we're considering:

• VPN
• Tails with the Tor Browser.
• Whonix with Tor.

Things we're trying to avoid:

• Being hit with surveillance pricing/charged more for who we are/our preferences
• Getting hacked (any of our data online could get hijacked in a data breach)
• Anti-journalism attacks (no journalists in our family)
• Being punished for doing what we think are good things
• Being doxxed
• Any psychoanalyzing of things we did our entire life (things we can't escape even if we delete cookies)

Is there a good way to accomplish this that is not super technical, expensive or time consuming?

I'm comfortable with Linux and some basic set up. I just don't want to have to set up a huge home lab to self host everything or jump through a ton of hoops to accomplish this. Ideally I'm thinking a good solid Linux distro with a privacy respecting browser and maybe VPN should do the trick.

Initial testing with Tails with the default Tor browser still looked like it was doing some level of cross device tracking. I'm not sure if I'm missing something? Either configuration option we should have turned on or maybe some flaw in the test. It was basically go on one laptop, search for a topic "Daniel Tiger" in this case for nostalgia reasons and then go to the other laptop and see what recommendations were there. Daniel Tiger was top of the recommended videos list. One call out here: I honestly don't care what YouTube recommends. What I care about is it tracking my habits somehow across multiple devices. It feels like I'm being watched and that's creepy and I don't like it.

This is the part where I sheepishly admit that I think I know part of the problem, I just haven't done anything to address it yet. We do have a Google Home Wifi access point. Google being Google I'm sure that it does some level of tracking activities across Google properties. I would love suggestions for the best routers that are secure, honor your privacy and ideally have the ability to block sites on a per-device basis (preferably with schedules) Yes I know I could Google, I mean DuckDuckGo search for options.

I've got a family member who is getting into digital privacy. The family member has noticed that if you watch a video on YouTube with a privacy focused browser like Brave and then go to another device, you'll get recommendations for videos on the same subject.

Things we've tried so far:

• Using browsers like Brave with cookies disabled
• Browsing with TOR
• Browsing using a VPN
• All browsing is done with anti-fingerprint extensions installed.
• Watching videos only with software like FreeTube or Invidious

I've been Linux user for a while, since the late 90's. I've been looking into QubeOS. Would that help with situations like this?

To clarify (I've posted on other subreddits and they all seemed to miss this) the issue is NOT getting recommendations. The issue is getting recommendations that make it VERY obvious that the browsing and in particular watching activity was being tracked somehow because some of the recommendations were not trending topics but very niche and specific topics my family member had recently watched videos about on another device.

Other somewhat related notes/questions:

• We've got a Google Home WiFi access point - the model without any speakers or mics. Could that be tracking our habits across any Google-owned products?

I still have my original CPAP machine. I don't know how old it is but let's put it this way: it uses the old style smart cards.

I've upgraded twice - once with a DreamStation, and then upgraded to one of the newer ResMed models.

I figured that two is all I need - my main one and my backup. It feels like a waste just throwing out my old one, but I don't know if it's of any use at this time.

What's the best option? Take it to an e-waste recycling place, or is there a better option?

I've got a family member who is getting into digital privacy. The family member has noticed that if you watch a video on YouTube with a privacy focused browser like Brave and then go to another device, you'll get recommendations for videos on the same subject.

Things we've tried so far:

• Using browsers like Brave with cookies disabled.
• Browsing with TOR
• Browsing using a VPN
• Watching videos only with software like FreeTube or Invidious

Other somewhat related notes/questions:

• We've got a Google Home WiFi access point - the model without any speakers or mics. Could that be tracking our habits across any Google-owned products?
• I've been Linux user for a while. I've been looking into QubeOS. Would that help with situations like this?

I'm making some good progress on my app - Cashflower. I won't go into all the details here, but will give the general idea, what's in progress and what's next.

The elevator pitch: Cashflower is an app that does envelope style budgeting where you fund your money into top level budget categories (keep these as few as possible) and as you spend you can split out each main category into sub-categories so you can have a granular view of where your money is going.

The latest addition was adding the ability to do reconciliation via bank statements. This is 100% OPTIONAL but you just put the start and end date for your statement and then mark all the transactions that are part of the statement. At the end, it will tell you if they match and mark it all reconciled or if it's off, you can do a balance adjustment transaction to get things in sync.

I also have the investment tracking working when it comes to importing transactions from Fidelity. I haven't tested others because honestly I don't have accounts any place else to test. I'm planning on making a generic CSV import, leaving Fidelity import as is, and having modular options for importing from other popular companies (Schwab, Vanguard, e-Trade, etc).

I did have someone reach out to me via chat and say managing the budgets and categories sounds like a lot of work, and I decided this person is right! What I'm missing is a way to automagically assign categories to transactions based on either rules or past assignments.

One big elephant in the room here - the only way I've made as much progress as I have as fast as I have is I AM using AI for coding, but it's not vibe coding. 26 years coding on top of a 4 year CS degree I'm using the AI to build what I'm treating as a rough draft and then tweaking it to be how I want it to be. I'm also using TDD (test driven development) where I'll have tests to make sure the app is working as intended before building the functionality.

I haven't decided for sure which way to go with the app, most likely making it a one-time license fee but I'm not sure what price point to put on it. I'm seriously thinking of just having it be an unlimited time free trial similar to how Buckets does it, but then have it be a pay what you want as long as it is under development.

I posted a list of apps I've used for extended periods of time, but realized I did not exactly say what I was looking for. I'm making this its own post. Hopefully it's less confusing this way.

I've been all-in on envelope based budget since finding out about it via Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and then stumbling across YNAB.

The one thing I've noticed - once I have my budget set up, I end up having 5 or 6 top level category groups and then within those I'd say about 30 different categories.

There are very few categories I'm likely to overspend on. Eating out, groceries, vacations. Most things - utility bills, taxes, insurance are generally a set amount and having to fund these categories makes for lots of decisions about which categories should be funded and with how much?

So the big thing I want is a budget where I can fund a small number of top level categories and then track spending in the subcategories within that.

Here's an example: the core of my budget would be Saving/Investing and then Needs and Wants. I shoot for 20% saved and invested and then split the rest as 2/3 Needs and 1/3 Wants.

If I go grocery shopping and spend $80, that would track as $80 spent out of the Groceries subcategory which would take $80 out of the "Needs" top level category.

I shouldn't have to worry about overspending on groceries in particular as long as I'm under budget on the Needs top level category.

Does anyone know of any application that works like this? The only one I've seen that does this is KMyMoney, but that doesn't do envelope based budgeting. If I get to the end of the month and I am $200 under budget on Needs, that $200 would not roll forward. I'd just start over with the next month.

I've tried shoe-horning other apps into working like this. Things I've tried:

* KMyMoney - not available on Mac. Very manual process to track expenses. Leftover money for categories doesn't carry over

* Banktivity - envelope budgeting works pretty good, but does do the "fund a top level category, track spending on subcategory level" thing I want to do. You CAN fund top level categories, but if you spend at a subcategory level, it will show you as being over-spent in the subcategory level. I tried using tags for subcategories, but it's pretty obvious this is not how they have these set up.

* Budget by Snowmint Creative Solutions (snowmintcs.com) which is virtual envelopes. It's primarily on the Mac with a Windows port that lags behind. The envelopes amounts are PER ACCOUNT so if you have a credit card you use for some expenses and checking account for others, you have to separately manage those. I think it may also have the same problem as Banktivity - if I spend out of Groceries, then it would be over-spent and Needs would be under budget.

I've even tried prototyping this idea in a spreadsheet and the idea seems pretty solid, but I didn't like how it worked in a spreadsheet.

I've bopped back and forth between YNAB and a few other apps. Basically once YNAB4 stopped working on the Mac, at least not without some tweaking I held my nose and went to the subscription-based YNAB. I very much prefer to have software that I can pay for once and just own.

Some things I've tried:

Banktivity - looks great. It used to be pay once and you own it, but they went to subscription only. It is also very much tied to the Apple ecosystem (Mac, iPhone, iPad) Basically imagine a very nice looking version of Quicken with the option to do envelope budgeting. This is the best personal finance I've tried with some things I haven't seen in any other app like automatically putting your monthly and yearly savings rate front and center. It also supports tracking your bank statements, which makes reconciling accounts much easier.

Buckets (aka Budget With Buckets - because calling the app "Buckets" makes it basically un-Google-able) - cross platform app built by a solo dev. It got popular enough he has his wife helping him run the company. They have some really good things going for it, but sadly not having scheduled transactions makes it a no-go for me. I paid for it to support the developer anyway and tried to use it long-term but ended up moving away from it.

Moneydance - first budgeting app I paid for. Cross-platform, pay for it and it's yours. They do release every year or two and the license gets you the current version and next version. If you want to upgrade as an existing user, an upgrade version is half the price as buying it. The budgeting is sadly the weakest area. I know some people do envelope budgeting by using sub-accounts, which works GREAT if all your spending is out of one account. If you spend out of multiple accounts, it gets a bit weird. They have great support for users to write extension. One big downside - the cross-platform is accomplished by writing it in Java, and it shows in the UI. This is a big turn-off for some people, but it won't both some I'm sure.

Open source:

KMyMoney - not available on Mac. There is some support for Windows. If you're on Linux this may be worth a try. It doesn't really do envelope budgeting but certainly worth a try.

MoneyManagerEx - Windows, Mac, Linux. Good app. Again, not really envelope based budgeting but a solid open-source personal finance app.

HomeBank - similar to MoneyManagerEx, but without support for investment accounts. It does some cool things like tracking how much your car is costing you and how many hours of your life it costs to buy something (idea from the book Your Money or Your Life)

Of course give Actual Budget a shot if you're into YNAB.

EDIT: of course after reading the comments I realized I forgot about a couple. I used GNUCash before running into Moneydance. It felt powerful but also felt like it took a lot of work to maintain my budget there. It just didn't click with how I wanted to manage money.

I also tried out Moneywiz, which looks nice and does a lot but has two issues that bugged me: one was you don't have to put all your categories into budgets, so it's easy to overspend on categories that aren't being budgeted. It also didn't allow rolling over unused money from month to month at the time I last used it.