Kiwi Farms

There are tools you can use to enjoy the Internet more. I am a crazy person on the Internet 24/7 and this is what works best for me.


This site is very thorough and has many suggestions.


Browser

Brave
Pros

• Heavy privacy emphasis.
• Far and away the best mobile browser. Allows mobile extensions.
• Built-in ad block.
• Supports cryptocurrency "Basic Attention Token" natively, and is a promising way for casual web users (you) to support sites (kiwi farms) anonymously and easily by paying pennies to websites and content creators you frequent the most.
• Headed by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and founding/former CEO of Mozilla.
• Recent development allows all Chrome extensions to be used in Brave.

Cons

• Nothing. All previous complaints I've written here have been resolved. It is Chrome, minus spyware, plus crypto for normies.

Proxy / VPN
ProtonVPN (Affiliate URL)
Pros

• Does not keep any logs.
• Cheap, free trials, and free ghetto version.
• Has programs for iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu. Has credentials for other traditional SOCKS type proxies.
• Services a ton of countries so you can shitpost on /pol/ from Israel
• Based in Switzerland, which is pozzed but does have extremely strong privacy regulations..

Cons

• Has not done its 3rd party privacy audit.

(Note: This section has changed.)


AdBlock

Brave
Pros

• Built into Brave.
• Always up to date.
• Works on Mobile devices.
• Has site-level controls to keep sites with anti-adblock shit from breaking constantly.
• Brave's AdBlock also includes native HTTPS everywhere and other quality of life considerations AdNauseum and uBlock Origin don't have.

Cons

• Kind of weak on what ads it actually blocks. I think Brave's AdBlock follows a "friendly advertiser" policy that allows a lot of ads through.
• Doesn't have a custom block element tool like others do.

AdNaseum
Pros

• A fork of uBlock Origin.
• Absolutely fucking magical, somehow even blocks ads on Twitch.tv.
• Clicks every single ad the sites put infront of you to destroy advertising profit incentives.
• Has actually caused Google to issue hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds for fraudulent ad clicks.

Cons

• No native extension for Google Chrome or Brave ( ),
• Absolutely fucking nothing of material. If you're on FireFox, install this right now. I actually think Twitch can detect AdNauseum users and hides their ads from you willingly because you're a bad motherfucker.

Temporary Cards
Privacy (Affiliate URL)
Pros

• Great way to abstract credit card details from your bank accounts.
• Good way to prevent yourself from creating subscriptions when using fucking trial.
• Hides your personal details from companies.

Cons

• I think it's only for Americans?

Cryptocurrency Suggestions
Coinbase (for buying and selling)
Pros

• Drop dead easy to use. Just fucking braindead.
• Allows you to buy ETH and LTC as well. Both are preferable to BTC for small-dollar transactions and donations.
• Best of its class; a blessing and a curse.

Cons

• I believe it's only for Americans.
• I do not trust their business practices. I think the service itself is safe, but I don't like them. Delaware company with no human point of service. I had to call their fraud line and threaten them to even get an email reply. It's one of those big evil faceless tech companies that see any access to human interaction as a design flaw, like Google.
• Requires government id.
• No private key control.

LocalBitcoins (for buying and selling)
Pros

• You can indeed buy coin with cash in person at a public place you both agree on, but there are many sellers using many different instant transfer methods. For instance, Zelle has worked great for me.
• Every country serviced. Even Botswana.
• Even though it's a peer2peer system, there is an escrow service managed by the Local Bitcoins team and I've had nothing but good experiences with them.
• Doesn't require any form of id and can be done entirely anonymously, though some sellers and buyers may refuse to work with you.

Cons

• Involves human interaction so if you're some sort of sweating autist who can't handle talking to people rule this shit out immediately.

Jaxx (Wallet)
Pros

• Handles many kinds of currencies.
• User friendly. Fucking Tommy Tooter could set it up and accept $5 in Bitcoin from me for playing Hot Cross Buns on request in under 5 minutes.
• Has mobile versions.
• You control your private keys!!!

Cons

• Glitches out pretty frequently for me. I've seen transactions show up that didn't actually belong to me as an error of the program (thanks a fucking lot I really could have used 8 BTC, assholes). The glitches are only UI related, but it's still annoying.
• Not open source. There are some parts that have their source released, but that's not the same thing as actually open source. If you can't compile the program itself and run it without downloading the executable directly, it's not open source.

Search Engines

DuckDuckGo
Pros

• Not Google.
• It's its own thing. A lot of privacy-centric search engines are just Google in a candy wrapper.
• Pretty good. Sometimes even has a leg up on Google. DDG had StackOverflow previews before Google did, for instance.
• Google obfuscates results it does not want you to see. DDG does not.

Cons

• Results are sometimes much poorer than Google's, but most of the time they're fine.

StartPage
Pros

• Not Google.
• Privacy oriented.
• Design is preferred over DDG to some people.

Cons

• I think StartPage is just an amalgamation of other search engine results.

Yandex
Pros

• Really good.
• Ignores legal takedown notices because Putin doesn't care about your country.
• Yandex.com is new and in English, so you don't need to guess anymore.

Cons

• Trading American Corporate spyware for Russian State spyware.

Torrenting

Brave (Client)
Pros

• Opens magnet: URIs directly in the browser.

Cons

• Bereft of any convenience features.
• Doesn't allow you to seed, as far as I know, which is disgusting.
• If you terminate the download it doesn't let you pick back up.

qBittorrent (Client)
Pros

• Does the job perfectly.
• Only torrenting client for Windows I know of that isn't loaded with ABSOLUTE fucking GARBAGE like uTorrent is now.

Cons

• None.

Email

Email is harder to explain, so I'm going to describe how I use my email.

I have like 10 email addresses over 4 email services.

1. I use Gmail for things I absolutely cannot allow to disappear (banking, government).
2. I use my school's in-house email system for anything academic (including things that discount you for having a .edu).
3. I use cock.li less frequently for general throw-away stuff and disassociative identities.
4. I use my lolcow.email server for a lot of stuff, but it's just me hosting it so I tend not to put anything too sensitive on it and keep the email off the server itself by routinely deleting everything I receive.

In general I treat lolclow.email and cock.li as things that are reliable, but can potentially vanish. I use .edu sparingly and Gmail for shit that needs 100% uptime.

To make my life easier, however, I don't check these email clients on their websites. I instead use Thunderbird and Blue Mail for managing my mail. Using IMAP/POP, I can keep all my mail in one place and manage the different sending addresses. Google can also use IMAP/POP to import and send-as, but I don't want a majority of my email content on Google.

Thunderbird (Desktop Email Client)
My desktop email client of choice.

Blue Mail (Mobile Email Client)
My mobile email client of choice.

Gmail (Mobile & Web client)
Pros

• Does the job perfectly.
• Integrates all your email addresses flawlessly into the Gmail system, which
• Works on all computers as a web client, as well as importing your mail into your mobile devices.
• Allows you to send and receive from all your email addresses exactly as the standalone email clients do.

Cons

• Google.

Proton Mail (Web client) (Affiliate URL)
Pros

• Claims to be encrypted by your password, which they do not keep.
• Open source.

Cons

• Some features are paygated, like IMAP/POP3.
• Requires another email address, a payment, or payment by bitcoin to make an account as an anti-spam measures.

Yandex (Web client)
Pros

• Yandex is Russian Google so it's probably as safe as Google to store your mail.

Cons

• Trading American Corporate spyware for Russian State spyware.