Glad to hear it! My pleasure, always happy to learn.

Fair enough, now i feel a bit ashamed since you are way way more knowledgeable than me. I have only been a Debian user for a year and half.

I made the reply because i remember that when i was looking to enter into Linux, Debian testing was recommended as a great compromise between stable and unstable.

My surprise when i went to the Debian wiki and said, pretty ambiguously at that, that i shouldn’t use it! Reason being that it wasn’t as updated in security patches as stable. No one told me that bit when i was asking. Since i didn’t know the risks involved, i took the safe option and went with stable, in the end loved it.

I have to admit that for your case it makes sense to use it. You know the risks, know where to patch it up, and it helps to contribute to it by testing it and submitting bugs. Thank you!

I do still think that testing shouldn’t be recommended, but i see and agree that it has it’s niche where it works and can be great for some people.

Anyways, i hope i didn’t came too hostile in my first reply! Cheers

I disagree, the strong points of debian are the stability (long periods of testing, without new changes) and security (by applying security updates quickly).

Using testing or sid means to forego the strong points. At that point you are better served by other distros which focus on having newer packages.

Also i would be cautious about using Debian testing (forky).As far as i know its the worst in terms of security. Stable has security update priority over testing. And some people say even sid it’s better on that front by having even newer packages.

Disclaimer: I daily drive debian stable and game on it without hiccups. Rock solid. BUT i have 7 year old amd rig and the games are not demanding.

Thanks for the clarification, i read you wrong, and you are completely right. Whats worse is that even if you are a bit savvy or informed is hard to fully get away from them. But anyways, even if i cant escape them i will try to give the minimum data possible.

whatsapp requires phone numbers. surely they can be called

Sadly the phone number is only for messages, in most cases it’s automated with a bot giving you options.

if you have tech skills, try running a matrix bridge

I didn’t know about matrix bridges. To be honest i’m not familiar with matrix but i have been learning about networking and self host on the side. I could make it part of the project.

Thanks for the suggestions! I should interact more with the community, i have been receiving lots of good feedback recently, i was always a lurker on reddit.

In Latin America most public services, banks ans bussines uses whatspps as their main support line.

To give you an example, if you have no water in your house you need to report on wp. No other way. And this is the standard for a lot of services, wp is the ONLY way to ask for support.

Also, if you are a freelancer or have a bussiness, your clients expect you to have whatsapp, 90% of inquiries and sales goes through wp.

It’s a nightmare, i really want to get rid of meta services but it is impossible for my case.

I have decided to decouple what i can, and use different phones for meta services, but i suspect that they still correlate and collect data. (Based on location, wifi, mac of iot, browsing etc)

Anyways, i ask people to be aware that for some of us, our situations makes impossible to remove some of the meta, microsoft or google services.

My aproach for now is to only use the minimum neccesary, i still search for ways to gradually switch out what i can.

Whatever i can’t rid off, i have another phone for it, how effecrive this is idk but for now is the best solution i found.

Nice suggestion i will look it up, thank you!

Thanks for the reply, i will keep it mind.

I will keep it in mind, i will be mindful of commands and flags. No typing without being certain of what each command does.

Thank you, even if its simplified, the browser example was really helpful. So in summary, having software up to date and being aware of what you do, should in most cases be safe. I was asking just in case there was some configuration i should do before connecting. With browsing i know that if i use something like firefox and ublock, i should be safe from most malware unless i screw up pretty bad. I will probably research ssh a bit more, as how it works, but you put some fears away. Thank you again.

Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for the explanation!

Since we are on the topic of signal… im not tech saviie but i have read lots of blogs and people about how secure is the signal protocol. My question is … how can i be sure that the protocol is implemented as the open source code shows? Please correct me if im wrong but from what i read on their website the apk they provide has the capability to update itself at anytime. So what stops them to change how it works with an update? is it posible to build the apk yourself and stop the ability to update?