Alternatives
Products that do what Honest Privacy Policies – We Read the Fine Print So You Don't Have To does
Hi HN, I’m Aseem Last month, during my commencement for a Master's in Privacy Engineering at CMU, my friends and I were joking about the absurd volume of unreadable privacy policies we’d spent semesters dissecting. What started as a graduation joke stuck with me, and over the last few weeks, it transformed into this actual project. I’m personally very privacy-conscious—I self-host my NAS, run Immich for my photos, and try to self-host where I can. But completely decoupling from third-party services is nearly impossible. Even with a technical background in privacy and security, figuring out…
- 1IM
2019 · useguard.com
- 2HP
2018 · webbkoll.dataskydd.net
- 3IM
Creator here. I was looking for something as simple as Backblaze Personal [1] but privacy focused and open source. This is my attempt to build that. Uses PyQt6 [2] for the GUI and Pyinstaller [3] for creating the platform specific binaries. The backup engine under the hood is Restic [4]. The server code is written in Laravel [5]. All the code is on GitHub [6]. I actually really like Backblaze (even use B2 for this offering behind the scenes) so this isn't meant to throw shade their way. Just wanted a private open source alternative. Something like Bitwarden but for backups. [1]…
2022 · blobbackup.com
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- 5SH
Needed this in my own work, anonymizing PII/PHI and decided to build this because presidio didn't really cut it for our use-case. Try it and maybe let me know if you have any feedback :)
2025 · github.com
- 6RT
The NSA metadata gathering and passive monitoring is quite upsetting, and we don't have much confidence in legal changes happening quickly, so we put together a really simple consumer VPN service. We're still cleaning up the UI and making the install process easier, but it should work for people now. Yes, it's based in the US, but there's a big difference between "will turn over data proactively" and "will push back on requests to the fullest extent of the law". Since we don't fall under CALEA, there's no requirement for us to have any monitoring infrastructure. We're focusing on the mobile…
2013
- 7AP
2012 · voo.st
- 8AF
https://github.com/inoda/private_journal Built this to use myself, and I'm curious if anybody would be interested in using it. I'm also wondering if anybody has tips to make it more secure (I'm super super new to encryption and whatnot). The security is probably a bit overkill since chances are that nobody cares about what I'm journaling, but it is fun to implement from a code standpoint.
2019
- 9SA
I had the idea to create a dedicated web page containing basic, easy-to-understand digital hygiene advice. So if a friend or relative asks you for advice on securing their digital lives, you can simply give them a link and hopefully they'll share it with their friends too. Hosting is on GitHub pages; just a single, semantic, accessible HTML file. I just made this today, so contributions are welcome, especially right now. I am not a security researcher, so if anyone finds an issue with what I've written in this first draft, or thinks some other point deserves mentioning, please tell me either…
2020
- 10
- 11GC
Hello HN, we're Andrew and Stephen from Keyboard (https://www.keyboard.dev/). After building AI tools for the past year, we recently made a YouTube video on building MCP servers and realized MCP is a total game-changer. It essentially lets AI do anything by connecting to your apps. But the deeper we dove, the clearer it became that security and privacy were complete afterthoughts. Coming from backgrounds at Okta and Stripe, this made us pretty uncomfortable. We kept seeing the same pattern: every app needs its own MCP server, each storing sensitive tokens, with minimal…
2025 · github.com
- 12AM
TLDR: I built a "quick and dirty " private social network for my friends, posted on Reddit and HN, got some interest so now have built it properly along with my brother. site link: https://intimost.com/login/ demo creds: [email protected] Demo123! Full version: I needed a social network where I can just send updates and nothing else. So I built it, my friends liked and now I have built it "for the world". Everything is private by default. - Text-only updates - No likes. Only views to acknowledge a post - [in development] Comments are private between the poster and…
Oct 2025
- 13AS
Hi HN, I'm the creator of epress. After a lot of work, I'm excited (and a bit nervous) to finally share it with you. For years, I've been feeling like a digital tenant on the platforms I use every day. My content, my social graph, my online identity—they were all stored on someone else's servers, subject to their rules, algorithms, and business models. I could be de-platformed, my data could be sold, or an API I relied on could suddenly be put behind a paywall. I looked into existing decentralized alternatives. While many are great projects, I found they often shifted the trust from a big…
Sep 2025 · github.com
- 14TS
I built a platform that lets users verify their identity and run a background check—and securely share proof of a clean record without exposing personal details like full name, address, or date of birth. This is something we found missing in all other services: they keep the data locked in their systems and share way too much when you want to prove you're safe. We built a privacy-first solution where you control your data. Use case: You’re a high-profile individual or just privacy-conscious, and want to prove you're safe to meet—say on a dating app—without revealing where you live or your…
2025
- 15PA
Hi HN, I'm Divy, former CTO at Branch and previously led engineering teams at Credit Karma and NexHealth. Over the past decade in fintech and healthtech, I've watched too many founders get blindsided by privacy compliance. The Problem: 80% of startups are unaware of privacy laws affecting their business. The choice between expensive attorneys ($5,000+) and risky generic templates is getting worse as regulations expand. Generic privacy policies fail because they make promises your business can't keep – I've seen this tank funding rounds and trigger regulatory investigations. My Personal Pain:…
Sep 2025 · privacyforge.ai
- 16PA
2019 · privacyspy.org
- 17IM
orignally shared this on startup school... i thought id' share it here. i'm using a `nocode communication tool` (a web-based interface... a single browser tab!) for all of these things: 1. landing page — the landing page is the product and i wanted for folks to feel "transported" right into the app without having to walk through a shitty b2b marketing-style content. this is akin to my experience back in the `BBS` days of the mid-90's where you were immediately into the app, community, and tool. no terms of service, no privacy policy. just pure, immediate value. 2. building community — we…
2021
- 18AA
2023 · parsepolicy.com
- 19FA
Would like to share here a project that we have been working on for the last ~10 months. It all started with the goal of properly blocking adult & explicit content out of our own kids devices and expanded it to a free service that anyone can use. Feedback is welcome: https://cleanbrowsing.org CleanBrowsing is free Anycast DNS resolver that automatically blocks adult content and enforces safe search on Google, Google Image search, Bing, Youtube, etc. We have been crawling and categorizing the web for many months and we feel it got to a point where our database is large enough and we…
2018
- 20TT
Before starting, i posted about america pac's unethical data collection a few days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41139801 Please read the linked cnbc's story, it explains almost everything there Long story short, america pac collects user data while lying and hiding its true intentions. Apparently, the data they collect might (and probably will be) used for door to door canvassing for donald trump. I find this deeply unethical and shady. I thought a nice idea to waste door to door canvasser's time was to pollute the database with fake names, fake emails... i've…
2024 · github.com
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- 22IB
I built a minimal opensource CMS, I use it myself for my blog and for other SaaS. l love blogging, and sometimes I post random thoughts on my blog. The only thing is, I always did it with .md files, which is fine too However, I was excited about the idea of using a CMS that was very minimal and avoiding the option of connecting something like WordPress or other big platforms. Open source (if you want to fork it or contribute) and free to use (unless I see you have a million views haha). Star the repo if you like it!
Jan 2026 · github.com
- 23MA
Hello. :) I've noticed for the last few years it feels like everyone has been saying the same thing, that social media got baaad, timelines feel hostile, nothing you see is actually from people you chose to follow, and every platform seems optimized for outrage, screenshots, and engagement bait rather than the original microblog ideas of the early 2010s I miss the 2010 social styles, where you have to share your @name with a friend IRL because search wasn't really search... A place where you followed people, saw what they wrote, stumbled into interesting discussions, and hashtags meant…
Jan 2026 · meepr.co
- 24IB
Recent news about Trump admin officials accidentally leaking war plans via Signal (The Atlantic, March 24, 2025) has renewed concerns over secure messaging. But for me, those concerns aren’t new. While visiting family and friends in Ukraine, I sat down with a friend for coffee at a café in Kyiv and that’s where it all started - the first sketch of a messenger built for privacy, not profit. We knew most messaging platforms were vulnerable to leaking data, tracking users, and exposing private conversations. We believed we could build something better. Then the war in Ukraine began, and…
2025 · gospl.chat
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