Hi everyone, my home wifi has been getting hit with what I think is a DDoS attack for the past two weeks, mostly at night when I'm gaming. Someone in a lobby said "watch what happens to your wifi" right before it dropped for almost an hour, and it's happened four times now.
I looked into fighting back with one of those stresser tools but then I read that it is illegal to ddos even when you're the one being attacked first, which scared me off fast. I don't want to end up being the one in trouble here.
So now I'm stuck just sitting with it. I reported it to my internet provider but they basically just said to restart my router, which did nothing.
My real questions are: is it illegal to ddos someone back no matter what, even as self defense? And does a VPN actually stop this for good or does the same person just find your new IP eventually? Any advice would help, this has been stressing me out more than it should

I know most people here probably use ad blockers already, but I'm curious about the security side of things.

I recently read that some malicious ads can put you at risk even if you never click on them, especially if your browser has security vulnerabilities.

I always thought avoiding suspicious links was enough, but apparently there's more to it.

So I'm wondering, how much protection do ad blockers actually provide against malicious ads?

Do you guys use them mainly for privacy, or do you consider them an important security tool too? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

I am looking around for any safety focused apps. For now, I favour Wireshark with custom filters, Pi-hole handling local DNS sinkholing, and Portmaster to see which apps are phoning home behind my back.

Running packet captures is great for spotting odd telemetry. Basically a PC autopsy tool it tells you if you were compromised after the fact. I’m trying to build a tighter, active daily setup that doesn't rely on bloated suites forcing their premiums on me.

Right now, my baseline defense stack looks like this:

• DNS n' network filtering: Pi-hole paired with Portmaster on macOS. Being able to block outbound connections per-executable stops 90% of sketchy background telemetry before it leaves the NIC.
• Leak prevention: Proton with WireGuard, killswitch permanently toggled, and multi-hop when hopping onto dodgy public Wi-Fi.(theres some other reasons for this too, though in brief thats what it is for.
• Scans on demand: Keeping a portable Malwarebytes installer just in case something gets suspiciously quiet after testing weird GitHub repos

What else belongs in a paranoid, no-BS stack? Anyone using sandbox runners like QubeOS? Is it superior in any shape or form to what Kali can do for me?

I’m trying to clean up my privacy setup. My question is how many emails should i have without making normal account stuff harder than it needs to be
Right now I have one email for banking, tax, and bills, one for shopping and random signups, and one for privacy related accounts. It sounded smart at first, but I already missed a password reset and a delivery update because they went to the wrong inbox.
every privacy thread says something different about how many emails should i have and it throws me off. Some say two is enough and other make it sound like every type of account needs its own email. it gets annoying fast.
For people who do this long term, how many emails should i have before the privacy benefit stops being worth the hassle?

Okay so I realized I was logged into my school Google account on my personal phone on my own WiFi and I think it’s been like that for a while.

It was strange because it seemed like I wasn’t logged into an account at all because the “sign in” button was available but when I clicked on it I was shown that my school account was my default and I was like kinda signed in? It was showing filtered search on a Google search and that’s the only reason I noticed anything.

My web and app monitoring was off but YouTube was on. I can’t view my search history anyway but maybe they log it somewhere??I don’t know.I don’t really have anything to hid but I feel weird like they can somehow know everything I’ve ever searched

Specifically, on TikTok, I have a meme account for my high school (something as frivolous as that), and I heard the principal is seriously considering hiring lawyers. I'm afraid they'll find me because I'm a teacher's daughter. (Maybe I should have avoided this from the start.) Is there any way to block my IP address or prevent them from finding me? I have another phone; could I use it for the TikTok account? I didn't use Instagram or anything else with that email address.

There are other accounts from my school with the same purpose, and it would be good to lend them a hand. It's incredible that they take a meme account so seriously but not bullying or other issues that reflect badly on the school.

I wanted to copy a web page for my study notes, but I am worried that doing this way might carry tracking scripts along with it.
I tried "Save As" in Chrome, but it is downloading many background files, not only text. I also tried Print to PDF, but I am not sure if this method to copy a web page is actually blocking trackers or not.
Could someone guide me the correct way to copy a web page without leaking data to the original site?

This pertains to allowing my Muse to access my Amazon account via a "prompt skill" and it using cookies to bypass the bot blockers.

Probably more security minded folks in here. I'm imagining more conservative answers here than from a sub dedicated to a product made by one of the largest security scrutinized/ criticized companies ever.

But the point of the question is how does handing over session cookies put my Amazon account at risk? Not techy, please ELI5.

I won an online tournament recently with a small cash prize, but I can't find a way to receive the money without either leaking my legal name or incurring a transaction fee. It's unbelievable to me that finding information on this is so difficult. By practically, I mean not sending cash in an envelope or sending cryptocurrencies through crypto-wallets or something. Is there a method? Any information would be helpful, thank you!

I havent searched anything about me and the devil song or dark in my browser, How tf did it know that i was watching dark and the song was playing??????

So to the it guy I had recently heard that network provider can see the search history in YouTube and chrome Is it true ? If it's true how can I delete the history

Me and my team are building an web browser that focuses on privacy and anonymity...

Guys so I need to know which browser do u use and why don't u use other browsers and what limitations u have experienced while using the browser.

If u have any suggestions then u can suggest..

I have a proton subscription. I use their mail, VPN, calendar, password manager and authenticator apps. I use multiple devices, two phones and three computers. I use different accounts for each device.

Phone 1, Android - Identity A (Terry@google.com)

Phone 2, iPhone - Identity B (Barry@icloud.com)

Computer 1, Windows - Identity C (Harry@outlook.com)

Computer 2, MacOS - Identity D (Jerry@icloud.com)

Computer 3, Linux - Identity E (no online account)

I use 1 proton account across all these devices.

What is the risk to my privacy if I use proton apps across these devices while logged into the same proton account? Will my proton account be exposed to the browser on a particular device, the operating system or any other app. I assume Proton would know. However, I want to know about the others, especially the OSs?