About Me⌗

My name is Seth, and I’ve started this blog to give me a space for longer-form analysis, thought, and content.

My aim overall is to educate and learn more myself about where technology and privacy meet, and am deeply enthusiastic about the ability these technologies grant people to take back control of their data, and more broadly, their digital lives.

I am a site reliability engineer by day, but have fallen down the privacy and cryptocurrency rabbit holes as of late and will be focusing my posts on those two topics.

How To Contact Me⌗

Twitter - @sethforprivacy
Matrix - @sethsimmons:monero.social
Threema - WBAAN4ZA
Email - sethsimmons@pm.me

PGP Key⌗

Fingerprint:

55EE C39E 2EFD D374 0F94  DFFB 6B97 91C6 214D 1E57


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PGP-verified identities⌗

Below you can find verification of this DNS domain, my Github profile, my Matrix profile, and my Twitter account, all signed via PGP:

https://keyoxide.org/55eec39e2efdd3740f94dffb6b9791c6214d1e57

Monero⌗

Monero is a cryptocurrency that aims to be a privacy-preserving, decentralized, digital cash, allowing users to transact directly peer-to-peer without any trusted third parties while retaining strong privacy.

Tor⌗

Tor is an anonymity network protocol that helps users avoid ISP and government network surveillance. It is the backbone of many privacy tools, and is a great initiative to help user’s remain anonymous while online.

The Tor browser is the browser I would recommend people use for everyday browsing as it includes many default privacy protections by-default, while also sending all traffic natively over the Tor network.

Signal⌗

Signal is an easy-to-use end-to-end encrypted messaging app, which allows people to easily communicate without revealing data to any intermediaries. While not perfect, it’s a great first step to get people on the journey towards better online privacy, and I use it daily.

NOTE: Signal has chosen to integrate a pre-mined and suspicious cryptocurrency into their platform, raising many concerns over leadership and financial vulnerability to governments and regulators. For more context, see my two Twitter threads here and here.

Element/Matrix⌗

Element is an open-source cross-platform application for accessing the Matrix decentralized chat protocol. While there are other clients available, I’ve enjoyed the Element client on both desktop and mobile.

This is the primary way I prefer to do group chats, and is the way I stay involved with the Monero community on IRC as Element supports excellent native bridging.

I’m also going to work on spinnning up my own federated server for Matrix shortly, if time permits.

Standard Notes⌗

Standard Notes is a great encrypted notes app available across platforms that also accepts Monero for subscriptions. Extensions add a lot of power features including encrypted attachment uploads to your own WebDav server, like Nextcloud.

Nextcloud⌗

Nextcloud is my personal cloud service of choice, and provides an easy to setup and use home cloud platform for storing files, photos, and much more with the plethora of community apps available.

My Community Resources⌗

Opt Out, a FOSS and privacy-focused podcast⌗

Opt Out is a podcast where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they’ve found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data-sovereignty.

Check out my announcement blog post for more info, or the podcast’s website at optoutpod.com.

High-Performance Monero Nodes⌗

I host a high-performance Monero node that is free to use for anyone, both as a p2p peer and a remote RPC for wallet usage:

node-1.sethforprivacy.com:18089 (high-performance node on Hetzner in Frankfurt, Germany)

Also available as Tor HiddenServices at:

rbpgdckle3h3vi4wwwrh75usqtoc5r3alohy7yyx57isynvay63nacyd.onion:18089

Monero Docker Images⌗

I have created a bare-bones and simple monerod Docker image that compiles from source according to the selected tag:

Docker Hub Images

Tor Relay/Guard Nodes⌗

I also host a Tor relay/guard node, available at the below address:

tor-1.sethforprivacy.com:443

Node Statistics (Nickname: tor1sethsimmonsme)

Github Repositories⌗

  • simple-monerod-docker
    • A simple and straightforward Dockerized monerod built from source and exposing standard ports.
  • self-hosted-services
    • A core set of privacy-preserving services that can be easily self-hosted via Docker Compose.
  • sethforprivacy.com-content
    • The contents of this blog are published here and available to be changed, or for new posts/guides to be added via PRs.

Donations⌗

If you’ve enjoyed my blog and would like to give me a little more time to dedicate to it, I’ll happily take any Moneroj you’d like to throw my way:

86JzKKyZvtEC98y6zJxCCVfcA3r75XngPBjpYDE6zRR36keNGMHwZomDjMCv1oCYB2j9myiFqEJQF3JtnhKdfX546T91eaY