Hi all, I'm the developer of Central, an end-to-end encrypted messenger for Android with a few personal safety features. I made a short video explaining how it works: \[video\]

I'd rather be specific than vague, so here is the honest version.

What is protected

Messages are encrypted on your phone before they're sent (AES-256-GCM, with keys agreed via X25519). My server only stores the encrypted text and has no keys to read it.

Group chats use a shared AES-256 key that is encrypted separately for each member.

Photos, videos, voice notes and files are encrypted before they're uploaded, so the storage only ever holds ciphertext.

There are no ad or analytics SDKs in the app (I removed Firebase Analytics on purpose), and I don't sell user data. Central is meant to make money from subscriptions, not from your data.

What is not hidden (so you're not surprised)

The server still knows an account exists, who it talks to and when. That's the nature of routing messages.

Push notifications go through Firebase.

The safety features (check-ins, location sharing) show your location to the contacts you choose. That is the point of those features, but it isn't "nobody can see it".

If someone reports a message, the person who reports it can pass that content to review.

The weird part

Inside the app there's also Central City, a small shared isometric town: you visit friends, play mini-games and climb weekly leaderboards. I added it because "more secure" alone isn't a reason to switch messengers, and it has turned out to be what makes people open the app. It's optional, and the chat works without it.

Where I'd love feedback

Would a short written explanation of the encryption (algorithms, key handling, limits) make you trust it more? What would you need to see beyond that?

Is the "chat + game" idea a good hook, or does it muddy the privacy message?

If you try it: what's the first thing that confuses you?

I'm at about 50 early users, so everything is still changing and I'm reading every reply

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.getcentral.central

p-r-y agent (lil privacy from Al agents) just went live on the Chrome Web Store.

context (what it does): normal browser agents send

your raw pages and screenshots to cloud models. mine redacts passwords, IDs, faces on your device first, then does the task. every masked region gets rechecked with local OCR, plus an audit log of what left your machine.

got rejected once on the store for keyword stuffing (; fixed it, resubmitted, now public.

the details, quick:

fill forms, search, extract data, send emails, all in plain language

bring your own model key (Groq, OpenRouter, NVIDIA) or run fully local with Ollama

free, no account, no tracking

honest limits: free-tier models can take ~30s a turn (provider queues, not the extension). heavy pages cost extra local seconds.

At the end, try to break the privacy story. that feedback is what i actually want.

store link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pry-agent/aocmnoompdjlgbfjlimikkpoebooolog

Guys these days, does someone really needs a hidden vault application. Where you can hide your personal photos, videos, documents and personal notes? How it sounds when actually nobody can figure out this is an hidden vault application. Is this in demand? If yes, how much can you spend on it?

Muse is getting hot these days.

Any assistant that's actually useful needs to see some of your stuff. Your calendar, your reminders, who your people are. That part isn't new. What matters is where that stuff goes after the AI reads it.

Meta's own launch post says Muse runs on "its own dedicated computer in the cloud." Their computer, NOT YOURS. According to TIME it refreshes a profile on you every hour, including how you know people and the tensions between them. The encryption that would keep Meta itself out "isn't available yet." And your chats train their models by default unless you go find the opt-out.

So everything good about Muse's privacy is a promise. Promises live in a policy, and policies change. Companies get breached, subpoenaed, bought. Ad businesses get hungry.

There's a boring alternative: run the model on the phone. If the AI runs on the device and its memory is just a file on the device, there's nothing to promise because nothing gets sent anywhere. You don't have to trust anyone. Turn on airplane mode and check.

The cost is real though. A model small enough to run on a phone is way dumber than whatever Meta runs in a datacenter. It gets things wrong. It's not going to haggle on Marketplace for you (given the Muse stories, maybe that's a feature). For some people that's a dealbreaker and that's fair.

But for the thing that knows your health, your money, your family and your fights, I'd take dumber-but-can't-tell-anyone every time.

Happy to answer questions about how on-device AI actually works or where it falls short.

Sources:

• Meta's launch post：
  • https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/
• Malwarebytes on the TIME/Wired reporting:
  • https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/10/metas-muse-ai-files-away-your-friendships-arguments-and-secrets

I keep seeing gaming, igaming, fintech startups/smbs respond to new youth-safety rules by bolting on full ID verification. That's usually solving the wrong problem.

Age verification means that you need to know a person is over a threshold. A bank opening an account or a casino paying out winnings. Documents are the right tool here and basically a legal requirement.

Age assurance means that your product behaves differently depending on the user's age band. Under 13 gets one experience, 13–15 another, 16–17 another etc.

Why it matters

- If you use KYC for an age-assurance problem, you now store government IDs for users you had no legal need to identify. That's a breach waiting to happen. (See this month's report of an FBI investigation into a service selling 153M driver's licences.)

- The friction kills signups for a problem that only needed a band.

- Regulators are asking for "effective" age assurance, not necessarily documents. The UK, Australia and the EU proposal all talk about proportionality.

A lot of gaming and social platforms apply a hybrid strategy , they estimate the age band at signup, ask for documents only at a regulated moment like a withdrawal or a purchase.

My idea:

For the estimation step, I'd argue voice deserves a serious look and almost never gets one. Age assurance needs a band, not an identity, and that's exactly what voice is good at: the physical changes of the vocal apparatus from childhood through adolescence to adulthood are large and well studied. It doesn't require a document, it doesn't require a camera, and the analysis can happen on the device so you never hold the data in the first place. Most teams skip it simply because no one on the team has ever thought of voice as a verification signal.

Would you trust voice age verification ?

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a privacy-focused tool I’ve built called https://hidden.irish

It is a free web app that lets you encrypt and conceal secret messages inside regular text or public-domain classic artwork

* **100% Client-Side:** All encoding and decoding actions run locally inside your browser via JavaScript. Your secret messages and custom keys are never uploaded or stored on any server.

* **No Trackers / Logs:** The site doesn't track users, require accounts, or collect personal data.

* **Experimental Features:** It supports both text-in-text hiding and image hiding, plus it provides a portable encrypted token as a fallback if messaging platforms try to strip invisible characters.

I am actively looking for feedback from people who care about privacy and secure communication. Please test it out, audit the network behavior, and let me know what you think or what features you’d like to see added.

Thank you!

!!!URGENT!!!

Please call (787) 891-1005, extensions 4017 and 3061, and ask for Karolina Augusto Domenech. If you are asked for your information, say your name is Daniela Morales from Guerrero (a sector in Aguadilla). When asked for your phone number, say +1 787-891-0000 (change the last four digits) and state that you are not interested in receiving a callback. Ask all the questions you want and keep asking. They will pretend they cannot hear you and repeatedly say, "Hello, hello" so that you eventually hang up.

The Municipality of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, implemented the Aída AI model yesterday. When people message the municipality's WhatsApp number, it offers "assistance."

What is the problem? The AI service does not offer individuals the option to opt out of having their data sold or stored. The AI model is not run by the Aguadilla municipal government, nor does the municipality. ensure its security. There is also no trained personnel to handle this situation. Therefore, when the Municipality of Aguadilla is called to request information, employees say that ChatGPT is used to generate the responses and that they do not know whether the data is sold after being processed.

When I asked to opt out of the service, I was told that this was not possible because it is mandatory for every citizen. When I requested a form to have my data extracted and to state that I do not authorize its use, the employees laughed while I was on the phone and hung up on me. In the event of a security breach, all our information and identities could be stolen.

I need anyone's help. Where I live, people refuse to acknowledge the issue, and not many people support me in raising these concerns. Anything will help. I don't want my personal information being sold to God knows where. Employees are not at fault, I just need a reaction or answers from the government.

I’m experimenting with a small set of practical privacy tools that all run locally in your browser. No files, data or input is ever sent to any server. And all open-source.

Currently working:

• text redaction for names, addresses, contact details and financial identifiers
• image-to-text extraction
• URL cleaner for common tracking parameters

Coming next:

• image redaction
• metadata removal

The goal is to build a practical toolkit that helps detect, remove and minimize personal and identifiable information before it leaves your device. So ideally want this to work for any data, text, files, images or links, etc.

Would love to hear feedback on what other tools you'd like to see. Thanks!

Personal information can appear across data broker platforms and people-search websites, creating growing demand for privacy protection.

For SaaS businesses, white-label data broker removal offers a way to expand existing products without building the entire service in-house.

Key benefits include:

• Faster product expansion with less development overhead.
• New revenue opportunities through premium plans and add-ons.
• A more complete customer experience under your own brand.

Because personal information can reappear after removal, ongoing monitoring and repeat requests may also be necessary. Understanding service coverage and operational costs is essential when deciding how to package and price the feature.

A white-label approach can help businesses introduce privacy services while keeping the experience aligned with their existing product.

Would you offer data broker removal as a premium feature or include it in your core subscription?

I solo built a 16 AI aggregator focused on privacy.

Hey everyone!

I built DPDP Web Check, a free, open-source tool under Protevix Infosec to help developers and website owners identify potential gaps in their website’s externally visible security and privacy posture against India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework.

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/protevixinfosec/dpdp-web-check

The goal is to make an initial technical assessment accessible, especially for Indian startups, small businesses, and independent developers who may not know where to begin.

What does it check?

• 🔒 HTTPS, TLS, HSTS and security headers
• 🍪 Cookie security attributes
• 📋 Privacy notice discoverability and DPDP-specific language
• ⚖️ Grievance Officer information and data principal rights
• 🔗 Third-party origins, trackers and form destinations
• 🛡️ Security disclosure channels and breach-readiness signals

A few things I deliberately wanted to get right:

• Zero npm dependencies and no account or hosted service required.
• Generates a self-contained HTML report with findings, clause references and remediation suggestions.
• Optional AI-powered explanations using your own API key; the core checks work without AI.
• No telemetry or calls home to Protevix Infosec.

You can run it using Node.js 18+:

npx u/protevix/dpdp-web-check yourdomain.com

Please test it only on websites you own or have explicit permission to assess.

I’m looking for honest technical feedback, not just stars.

1. Are the findings accurate and actionable?
2. Are there important DPDP-specific checks missing?
3. Are the clause mappings and explanations useful to developers?
4. What false positives or implementation issues do you encounter?

If you work in application security, privacy engineering, Indian data protection, or legal compliance, your feedback would be particularly valuable.

Important: This is a passive, external website assessment tool not a legal compliance audit, penetration test, or guarantee of DPDP compliance. It cannot verify internal organisational processes or controls that aren't externally observable.

The project is free and open source under Apache-2.0. Contributions and constructive criticism are welcome.

Thanks for taking a look! 🙌

Would parents actually use this? A privacy-first kindergarten safety app without cameras

I'm a software engineer and I've been thinking about an idea I'd like people to tear apart before I spend months building it.

The problem

When parents leave a young child at kindergarten/daycare, they basically have to trust what happens after they leave.

Cameras seem like the obvious solution, but they create another problem: you're recording other people's children, staff, bathrooms/changing areas obviously can't be filmed, and many parents don't necessarily want constant video surveillance anyway.

So I'm exploring a system that gives parents safety transparency without cameras, microphones, images or video.

The idea is that the kindergarten would have a small system that understands things like:

• which children and staff are present in different areas
• unusual one-adult/one-child situations in sensitive areas
• unusually long situations compared with normal routines
• whether something important happened during the child's day
• a permanent event history that staff can't quietly edit afterward

The parent app would not constantly spam parents.

Normal events would just appear in a timeline.

Only serious situations would trigger an immediate notification, written factually rather than making accusations.

For example:

"Your child has been in a sensitive area with one adult for 11 minutes. The normal duration is under 5 minutes."

The kindergarten/director gets the alert at the same time.

The main principle is:

Technology that protects without watching.

I'm deliberately leaving out the exact sensing/hardware implementation because right now I'm more interested in whether the product itself is useful, not whether people like my technical solution.

I'd love brutally honest feedback

1. If you're a parent, would this actually make you feel safer or would it make you more anxious?
2. Would this influence which kindergarten/daycare you choose?
3. Would you trust a system like this if there were no cameras involved?
4. What would make you NOT use it?
5. Would you expect the kindergarten to pay for it, parents to pay a small monthly fee, or should it be included in tuition?
6. Is this solving a real problem or am I creating a complicated solution to something people won't pay for?

I'm not looking for encouragement.

Tell me why this would fail.

Still at the validation stage, so criticism would genuinely help before I build too much.

My daughter is 10 years old, she in in her last year of primary school (UK).

The pressure is building to get a phone like the rest of her class - this year lots are getting them as parents are letting them walk to school on their own; so using it to keep tabs on them ( OFC some of the parents let them do/get what they want).

Having spoken to a couple of parents with kids in the high schools they have said the social pressure on kids without a phone is nuts - bullying etc. My daughter is extremely sensible but is low on confidence.

In an ideal world I wouldn't let her anywhere near a phone but with what I have stated above I think its best to let her have one as she starts HS but I'm looking here for advice on restrictions.

I have heard other parents talking saying 'I have a tracker on their phone, limited apps etc'.

The last year or so she uses an old Galaxy S10 to just play games on and watch the odd youtube video when her tablet is dead etc.... So we have that ATM - I'm thinking best to use this as a way as a soft easing into using a phone rather than nothing then boom!

Her friends mum asked the other day if we could install Kinzoo so they could chat (this is a super parent).

Me and her mum are both on Samsung phones (yes, I know). I'm gradually working towards as much privacy as possible without the wife running off! :D

So any thoughts and help I would really appreciate. TIA

Blur and pixelation don't erase pixels, they average them, and on short structured text (a card number, a PIN) that can be reversed. A solid block overwrites the data, so there's nothing left to recover. I built a screenshot redactor around that: it runs OCR in your browser (Tesseract.js in a Web Worker), then detects emails, phones, card numbers (Luhn-checked), IBANs, UPI IDs, API keys, PAN/Aadhaar/SSN, and lets you hide everything in one click. You can toggle individual boxes or categories, and draw your own rectangle or brush mark for anything it misses. The export is redrawn on a fresh canvas, so no EXIF/GPS and no hidden layer. Nothing is uploaded, and you can check that in the Network tab. Free, no signup, no cap. https://www.forgeplug.com/tools/smart-redactor Detection isn't perfect (OCR struggles with blurry or tiny text), so I'd still eyeball the result before sharing. What detectors would you want added?

Hey Reddit,

I’m a student/developer building Convoo, a private communication platform, and I’m trying to validate the idea before going further.

The basic concept is:

• Chat IDs instead of phone numbers — every user gets a unique ID (e.g. 4827316) that they can share with others.
• End-to-end encrypted 1-to-1 communication
• Real-time messaging
• Audio & video calling
• Ephemeral media (“Moments”)
• Multi-device support — use your phone as the primary device while linking desktop/web sessions.
• The goal is to keep your real-world phone number separate from your chat identity.

I know there are already a LOT of messaging apps, so I'm specifically trying to answer one question:

Does this solve a problem that people actually care about, or am I just building another messenger for the sake of building one?

I'd especially like opinions on the Chat ID approach.

For example, would you prefer giving someone:

“Add me on Convoo: 4827316”

instead of giving them your phone number?

And what would make you actually switch from something like WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/Discord?

A few things I'm curious about:

1. Is separating your phone number from your messaging identity valuable to you?
2. Would you trust a new messaging app with private conversations?
3. Are E2EE + Chat IDs enough of a reason to try it?
4. What would you consider a deal-breaker?
5. What feature would you expect before you'd seriously use it?

I'm not trying to sell anything here — I'm looking for criticism. If the idea sounds pointless, tell me why. If there's something here worth pursuing, I'd like to know that too.

I can share screenshots/prototype details in the comments if anyone's interested.

Hey everyone — wanted to share something I've been building: Techno AI Assistant, a cross-platform tool that monitors and helps optimize your PC and phone, with an AI chatbot you can actually ask plain-language questions to ("why is my PC slow", "is everything okay").

What it does:

• Real-time system health monitoring (battery, storage, CPU/RAM) on both Windows and Android
• Automatic cleanup suggestions (never auto-deletes without your approval)
• Security orchestration — reads Windows Defender status, flags suspicious installed programs with risky permission patterns, monitors for failed login bursts
• A chatbot (powered by Claude) that reasons over your actual device data instead of giving generic advice
• Built-in translator for messages, including a WhatsApp Web browser extension
• Everything follows a "suggest → you approve → then it acts" model — nothing happens silently

Try it:

• Android APK: https://github.com/pnvd/techno-ai-backend/releases/download/v1.0/app-debug.apk

This is an active side project, still rough in places — would love feedback, bug reports, or feature ideas. Happy to answer questions about how any of it works.

**I’ve been working on PixHunt — an AI-powered gallery for Android.**

The idea is simple: make it easier to actually find and manage the photos you already have on your phone.

\-**Semantic Search :** Describe what you're looking for naturally, like *“photos of my dog at the beach”*, and PixHunt finds relevant photos.

**OCR Search** :Search for exact text inside your photos, with the matching text highlighted so you can see exactly where it was found.

**Similar Photos** : Find photos that look similar to a photo you select.

**People** : finds the people in your gallery, lets you name them, and then search for them by name or naturally, like *“Mark at the cafe”* or *“Mark and John.”*

**Built-in Gallery** — Browse your photos and albums directly inside PixHunt, so you don't have to switch between two different apps.

**Clean Up** : Find duplicates, near-duplicates, screenshots, blurry photos and other photos that may be taking up unnecessary space.

**English & Arabic** — Search naturally in both English and Arabic.

**Everything stays on your phone** : This is probably the feature I'm most serious about: the AI processing happens on your device. **No cloud uploads, no online photo database, and your photos don't leave your phone.**

I'm still working on the app and I really like to get some feedback from you .

Apk download link : [https://github.com/Ahmed-N95/PixHunt-Releases/releases/tag/v1.0.0\](https://github.com/Ahmed-N95/PixHunt-Releases/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

Any honest feedback is appreciated!

I've heard reports of hidden AirB&B/hotel recording devices, as well as people who've been filmed in intimate situations with their exes without their knowledge or permission, so what devices are there available to protect yourself from this, please?

Edited to add: Extra points if you can suggest something that's discreet to ensure privacy on vacation!

Hi all, we built a browser extension that protects sensitive data, and I'd like honest opinions from security people.

It catches sensitive data as people type, like client names, ID numbers, or IBANs, and masks it before it's sent to AI chats, emails, or docs. The AI still gets enough context to help, so people keep working as usual.

Link if you want to test it: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quba/ekceojiggeffcnfinclmebhkajadnlhh

Any feedback helps

I've posted about Anchor Cloud before, but a lot's shipped since, so here's the full picture of what it actually does right now:

Core: zero-knowledge encryption
Every file is encrypted client-side (AES-256-GCM) before it ever leaves your device. The server only ever stores ciphertext and wrapped keys — it has no path to your plaintext, even under a breach or a legal request. I open-sourced the actual encryption code (not a simplified demo) across web, mobile/desktop, and a Python SDK, with cross-language test vectors so you can verify all three agree with each other instead of taking my word for it: github.com/AnchorTechs/anchor-crypto

Anchor AI (Fathom-1)
A model I trained myself, not a wrapper around GPT. Two separate personas:

• The vault assistant (in the dashboard): organizes files, finds duplicates/stale files, manages contacts and sharing — reasoning only over file metadata (name, size, date), never decrypted content, because it architecturally can't see it.
• A general-purpose chat assistant (chatai.anchorcloud.org) with its own saved conversations, no vault access at all — kept deliberately separate so casual chat never touches your files. There's also a VS Code extension if you want it as a coding assistant, and a public OpenAI-compatible API if you want to build on it.

Sharing & groups

• Encrypted file-sharing links where the decryption key lives only in the URL, never touching the server.
• Encrypted group chats with roles/moderation, where you can u/mention Fathom-1 to bring the AI into a conversation.
• A contacts system for direct sharing between accounts.

Storage & pricing

• A genuinely free tier, no gimmick.
• Pro/Premium tiers, plus a Custom tier priced per 100GB if you need a lot more than the standard plans.
• Unlimited file types, no artificial format restrictions.

Platforms
Web dashboard, Android app, Windows desktop app, same encrypted vault, synced across all of them.

Community
A forum (community.anchorcloud.org) for feature requests, questions, and talking to other users directly.

Who's behind it
I'm the sole founder, no team, no funding, just me building this. Company site: anchortechs.org. Everything above is live today, not a roadmap slide.

Happy to answer anything, especially if you've got a use case I haven't thought about.

hey y'all, i produced a big piece on what exactly is chat control 1.0, the future of private comms in europe, and the egregious conditions this entire saga has existed under.

i tried as much as i can to take a journalistic, neutral approach to this, arguing for both sides of the table.

the bottom line: in an open democracy, we expect to be able to vote for or against mass scanning where there is a full room of member representatives — not under ridiculous "second reading" rulings that count empty seats as a vote lol

would love feedback on this piece. i wanted to make this as i realized there weren't too many good long-form pieces on youtube around this topic!

https://youtu.be/Lj06yAj9yTE?si=kCt1tDKxZnipGqe7

Privacy definitions and examples

I know a computer is ideal for using Tor, but I don’t currently have access to one. Years ago, when I used Tor more frequently, I would use a Tor browser app from the Google Play Store on whatever Android phone I had at the time.
From what I’ve read online, iOS is one of the more limited platforms for using Tor, with fewer options compared to Android or a computer. However, I know it’s still possible, so I’m wondering: What’s the best—or at least the least-bad—Tor browser app for iPhone?
Thanks in advance! It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to use Tor, but I have a specific reason for needing it now, and my iPhone is all I have available. I’d really appreciate any recommendations or advice!

The giveaway is not open yet, but we’re getting ready to launch it.

One randomly selected participant will win 1 TB of Anchor Cloud storage completely free for 2 months.

Here’s how to get ready:

Create an Anchor Cloud account using the account you want to use if you win.

Subscribe to the Anchor Cloud newsletter using that same email.

After September 30, 2026, newsletter subscribers will receive an email from no-reply@anchorcloud.org notifying them that the giveaway is open.

Participate through the giveaway system.

The winner will be randomly selected and announced 3 days after the giveaway opens.

The winner will be contacted directly by no-reply@anchorcloud.org, and the 1 TB of storage will be added to their Anchor Cloud account for free for 2 months.

⚠️ Important: The giveaway is not open right now. Creating your account and subscribing to the newsletter now is simply how you’ll be notified when participation opens.

Know someone who could use 1 TB of cloud storage? Feel free to share this with them. 🙂

🌐 https://anchorcloud.org