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.

How To Contact Me

  • Signal - +1 (616) 326 4079
  • SimpleX
  • Matrix - @sethforprivacy:agoradesk.com
  • Twitter - @sethforprivacy
  • Nostr - seth@sethforprivacy.com or npub1tr4dstaptd2sp98h7hlysp8qle6mw7wmauhfkgz3rmxdd8ndprusnw2y5g

Primary PGP Key

If you’d like to reach me over any of the contact points above and add a layer of encryption/signing via PGP, please use the below PGP public key to do so.

Fingerprint:

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

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-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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JEcJD9ltDAVcgs36
=p/JF
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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.

Status page for all of my community resources

Go to https://status.sethforprivacy.com (Tor: http://rtafhojj2atlfi74oidwiwmjwn3kqcpp7dlugiw3aonlhkfpc3vipeyd.onion) to see the uptime and any outages associated with the services that I run.

Privacy-preserving front-ends and tools

Public mempool.space Instance

I have also spun up a public and freely available instance of mempool.space. Feel free to use it to keep up with Bitcoin fees, check transactions, etc. If at all possible, please use the Tor browser to access it to prevent me or anyone else from linking your IP address to any transactions you view.

NOTE: While I am committed to not logging, it’s very important with Bitcoin that you run your own block explorer if at all possible! Using my instance could give me visibility into large amounts of information on how you use Bitcoin if I was malicious.

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:

Mainnet

  • RPC (use this address in your wallet for a remote node):
    • https://node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 443 (should not normally need to specify port)
      • Use this whenever possible for properly terminated/certified SSL
    • node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 18089
    • sfprpc5klzs5vyitq2mrooicgk2wcs5ho2nm3niqduvzn5o6ylaslaqd.onion
      • Port 18089
  • p2p:
    • node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 18080
    • sfpp2p7wnfjv3lrvfan4jmmkvhnbsbimpa3cqyuf7nt6zd24xhcqcsyd.onion
      • Port 18080

Testnet

Only use these nodes for testing out Monero software, these are testnet-only!

  • RPC (use this address in your wallet for a remote node):
    • node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 28089
  • p2p:
    • node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 28080

Stagenet

Only use these nodes for testing out Monero software, these are stagenet-only!

  • RPC (use this address in your wallet for a remote node):
    • node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 38089
  • p2p:
    • node.sethforprivacy.com
      • Port 38080

High-performance Bitcoin Fulcrum Node

I host a high-performance Bitcoin node (using Fulcrum) that anyone is free to use.

This is run using a slightly tweaked version of this repo: https://github.com/sethforprivacy/easy-fulcrum

NOTE: While I am committed to not logging, it’s very important with Bitcoin that you host your own node if at all possible! Using my node could give me visibility into large amounts of information on how you use Bitcoin if I was malicious.

  • Clearnet:
    • ssl://fulcrum.sethforprivacy.com:50002
  • Tor:
    • ssl://iuo6acfdicxhrovyqrekefh4rg2b7vgmzeeohc5cbwegawwhqpdxkgad.onion:50002

You can verify the certificate provided matches the below, and if it doesn’t match for any reason stop using the server and notify me ASAP!:

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-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIEAzCCAuugAwIBAgIUJl9/aBlMpXr4BPwuIPwS1tIBJAMwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEL
BQAwgZAxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRMwEQYDVQQIDApTb21lLVN0YXRlMRkwFwYDVQQK
DBBTZXRoIEZvciBQcml2YWN5MSMwIQYDVQQDDBpmdWxjcnVtLnNldGhmb3Jwcml2
YWN5LmNvbTEsMCoGCSqGSIb3DQEJARYdZnVsY3J1bS5ndW04bkBzaW1wbGVsb2dp
bi5jb20wHhcNMjIxMjIzMTUzMTQxWhcNMzIxMjIwMTUzMTQxWjCBkDELMAkGA1UE
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KoZIhvcNAQkBFh1mdWxjcnVtLmd1bThuQHNpbXBsZWxvZ2luLmNvbTCCASIwDQYJ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-----END CERTIFICATE-----

To verify this certificate in Sparrow, simply save the certificate text above as a .pem file on your computer and then select it in the Sparrow server dialogue.

Tor Relay/Guard Node

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

Monero Docker Images

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

Github Repositories

  • simple-monerod-docker
    • A simple and straightforward Dockerized monerod built from source and exposing standard ports.
  • simple-monero-wallet-rpc-docker
    • A simple and straightforward Dockerized monerod built from source and exposing standard ports.
  • p2pool-docker
    • A simple and straightforward Dockerized p2pool 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.

My Favorite RSS Feeds

My favorite way to keep up with developments in the space is not using social media, but rather by using RSS feeds to get the latest long-form content from reliable and helpful sites and authors.

I’ve uploaded my latest list of RSS feeds that I use in an easy-to-import OPML file to Github. For most clients you can simply download the file and import it directly, but for others you may need to copy-paste the RSS feeds in manually using the feed URLs for any feeds you want.