Ekster makes thin wallets, often leather, with an RFID-blocking layer and an optional tracker card. The tracker is a Bluetooth tag so the wallet can ping a phone when you leave it behind. Solar charging on that card is a product feature, not a privacy feature. A tracker is a radio you chose to add. […]
Diceware builds a passphrase from dice and a word list, so the randomness is the physical throw, not a program you have to trust. Arnold Reinhold published the method. The EFF long wordlist is the variant most people should use now, because the words are clearer. Five or six words from a 7,776-word list is […]
Bitwarden’s generator is a web page that builds a random password or passphrase in your browser. You set the length and the character set, then you copy the result. You do not need an account. The useful version of this is local: the page should be doing the work on your machine, not sending the […]
LessPass does not store passwords. It derives each one from the site name, your login, and a master passphrase, using a published method. There is no database to sync or steal. Browser and phone apps exist, and the code is open. Change the counter when a site forces a new password. The master passphrase is […]
Cryptomator creates a vault folder that encrypts each file before Dropbox, Drive, or OneDrive syncs it. The cloud sees scrambled filenames and ciphertext. The desktop apps are open source and free. The phone apps are a paid unlock. A vault mounts like a normal drive while it is open. The cloud cannot preview or search […]
GnuPG is the main free implementation of OpenPGP. You generate a key pair, then encrypt or sign files and email so only the holder of the matching key can prove or open them. It runs everywhere. Thunderbird can do basic OpenPGP without a separate GnuPG install. Plugins exist for other mail programs. Key management is […]
age encrypts a file to a small public key, or to an SSH key you already have. Filippo Valsorda designed it to avoid OpenPGP’s ceremony. One command encrypts, one decrypts. The format is documented and several apps speak it. Keys look like short strings starting with age1. It does not do the web of trust, […]
Have I Been Pwned, run by Troy Hunt, tells you if an email address shows up in breaches that have been shared with the site, and it can email you when a new one does. Pwned Passwords is the list managers query when you pick a password. The check uses k-anonymity: the site sees only […]
BiglyBT is the continuation of Vuze and Azureus, a Java BitTorrent client with a huge surface: tags, swarm tools, remote control, plugins. If a torrent feature exists, it is probably in a panel somewhere. The project is open source. Java and the dense window are the cost. New users get lost. Many switches interact. The […]
VeraCrypt encrypts a whole disk, a partition, or a file that mounts as a drive. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is the maintained fork of TrueCrypt, which stopped in 2014. Hidden volumes exist so a forced password can open a decoy container. That feature is easy to get wrong and dangerous to […]
BellCrier breach check
Most people are, and never hear about it. BellCrier checks your email against known data breaches for free, then alerts you when it turns up in a new one, with exactly what leaked and how to fix it.
