We realized that we often use certain words taking their term for granted. We have therefore tried to summarize here what we think are the words nerd most used and perhaps less known. And we called him nerd-Italian dictionary. We create this page precisely because our mission is to speak mainly to those who think that online privacy is just something for geeks. Some terms are difficult to replace and therefore must be known.
If you see that some words are missing in this nerd-Italian dictionary that we have used in our articles without explaining it properly, please let us know and we will insert it, thank you!
One program, one extension for Browsers or a smartphone application, but also DNS, which blocks advertisements.
It's unsolicited digital junk placed inside other products. Example: you buy a Huawei smartphone and inside you find dozens and dozens of applications pre-installed that you don't need, including perhaps Facebook and more. That's all Bloatware.
The Browsers it is the program you use to surf the internet. It can be Google Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, Safari, DuckDuckGo Browsers and so on.
It is a free project developed by Google. Many gods Browsers modern ones derive precisely from Chromium. We mention the most famous: Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera and Vivaldi.
They are tiny text files that contain valuable information. There are first-party ones: generally harmless and which are used to navigate the site correctly. Then there are third-party ones: it means that a domain other than the one you visited will see what you are doing. Not only that, they will then follow you for all the sites you visit from that moment on. This is the case with statistics and advertisements.
It's the only certain way to be sure that no one can read the messages except you and the person you sent them to.
Briefly explained: in Italian we say “zero-knowledge demonstration”, it means that no one can access your data in any way except you.
It is the store we talk about most often, it is like Google's Play Store but it contains only and exclusively applications Open source. Installing it is equally simple: go to f-droid.org from your mobile phone, click on DOWNLOAD F-Droid and run the downloaded .apk file. It may ask you to allow installation of apps from external sources because its Android doesn't want you to use anything other than the Play Store. Authorize and you will have installed F-Droid on your mobile phone!
It is our virtual fingerprint. Every computer and every smartphone leaves one and just like fingerprints, with this you can recognize a computer among millions.
It's the spin-off of a source code. In practice it is when a project starts from a source code to take another path, for any kind of reason.
It means Free and Open Source Software. With the addition of “Free as in freedom”, that is, free as freedom and not as free. It's an important difference, the basic idea is that you pay the programmer, not the program.
It is a free project developed by Mozilla and is the engine that mainly runs Firefox and its derivatives such as Tor Browsers, LibreWolf, Mullvad Browsers.
It means “to host”, so it is where you can house servers, websites and applications.
Server on which a specific software runs. For example mastodon.uno is aInstance Italian Mastodon.
It's a Repositories famous and safe. To use the applications present here you can install Neo Store or add manually IzzyOnDroid on F-Droid: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index.php
It's what you use to search for something on the internet. Some search engines have also developed their own Browsers, this is the case of Google, DuckDuckGo and Brave. For the end user it is generally very convenient to associate Browsers to Search engine and define the whole internet a little. But they are two different things. The Browsers it's a program, the Search engine it is a system that allows you to search on the internet.
It means that the source code it is accessible to everyone and anyone can see what's inside.
It is an entity that has permission to register and resell domains.
It's the place where the project Open source supports the source code and where all the chronology, history and evolution of the project is present. Some Hosting Of Repositories they are GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and Codeberg.
System that allows you to create updateable flows of news, new articles, comments and much more on sites without having to manually visit them one by one. Thanks to some readers RSS it is therefore possible to always stay updated without registering directly on the sites. A reader RSS will be able to make it readable even for the human eye.
It means independently managing a server on which to run the various programs instead of paying someone to manage them for you. A practical example? Install Nextcloud yourself for photos and files on your server instead of paying a provider to do it for you. It is absolutely the best thing when it comes to privacy, but it is not recommended if you don't know what to do because in these cases the security risk is greater than the privacy risk.
It is the skeleton of the program. It is the program text written in any programming language. This is why it is important that it is free and accessible to everyone: so that everyone can check what is written inside. Would you like to live in a house where the architect didn't show you the project, and doesn't want anyone to see it, but only told you: "trust me, I know what I'm doing"?
It is the threat model that you need to protect yourself from. In fact, it is important to distinguish the use of a system and program by an investigative journalist compared to someone who is just trying to protect themselves from Google profiling. Generally what is suggested on Le Alternative is to avoid the second threat.
In addition to cookies, there are many other methods for tracking a person's profile by, for example, social networks. The web is, unfortunately, littered with them.