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Why Online Privacy Is Broken
Trailrunner7 writes "One of the more trite and oft-repeated maxims in the software industry goes something like this: We're not focusing on security because our customers aren't asking for it. They want features and functionality. When they ask for security, then we'll worry about it. Not only is this philosophy doomed to failure, it's now being repeated in the realm of privacy, with potentially disastrous effects. A quick search of recent news on the privacy front reveals that just about all of it is bad. Facebook is exposing users' live chat sessions and other data to third parties. Google is caught recording not only MAC address and SSID information from public Wi-Fi hotspots, but storing data from the networks as well. But the prevailing attitude among corporate executives in these cases seems to be summed up by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who famously said this not too long ago: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' If you look beyond the patent absurdity of Schmidt's statement for a minute, you'll find another old maxim hiding underneath: Blame the user. You want privacy? Don't use our search engine/photo software/email application/maps. That's our data now, thank you very much. Oh, you don't want your private chats exposed to the world? Sorry, you never told us that."
Actually they probably didn't record your credit-card number. What they probably recorded was the sale number (basically a receipt serial number), the receipt information (what was bought), and the type of credit card and the authorization number. They knew your name because it was recorded off your credit card at the time of sale. To handle the refund they just use the authorization number, which the credit-card company can match to your card (but they won't tell the store the card number, they'll just give out another authorization number for the refund).
Now, the store probably doesn't need to store your name at the time of sale. But if you're paying with a credit card, you know you're leaving a connection between you and that sale anyway so IMO it's not a major thing. If you really want no connection, pay in cash and don't give them any identifying information, not even a phone number.
With a traditional Visa/Mastercard 'debit' card that pulls money from your checking, there are two ways to use that card and pay for your purchase:
If you use you card as a credit card, you are protected in the same manner as you would with a credit card, you aren't responsible for fraudulent charges above $X.xx and you can dispute charges, etc. If you use it as a debit card, if your PIN is exposed by some 3rd party (i.e. the store you are purchasing from, the company they contract with for their POS system, etc) you are fully on-the-hook when it comes to losses - if they steal $2000 from your account, you have lost $2000 - there is no disputing charges or limited liability like with a credit card.
tl;dr;
Use your card as a credit card, you have many protections, use your card as a debit card (you enter your PIN), you are liable for every transaction associated with your PIN.
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitution for Caffeine.
There are a few ways P2P would solve the problem. The first that comes to mind is that it would reduce the incentive to undermine privacy, since the social network would not be funded by the sale of personal data (or data derived from personal data). It would also increase the cost of undermining privacy, since people would not just be throwing their data at a single centralized datacenter.
As for distributing the data across the network, it is very easy to solve that problem cryptographically. You encrypt your data, and the decryption key is distributed as part of the "friending" process. In theory, if your friends are out to get you and want your privacy to be undermined, they could distribute the key further, but this is not much different than the current situation, where they could just copy your data from a website and hand it out to people.
Palm trees and 8
In Canada, or at least with TD, I've had fraudulent purchases made with a copy of my Debit Card someone made. They had the PIN and everything apparently. So I contacted the fraud department, and every fraudulent charge was reversed. It took less than a month, and it wasn't even that much, because I noticed it quickly (it was less than $40 at that point). Additionally, fraudulent transactions made with my web banking are also covered. Of course debit is, I suppose, different in Canada than in most places, given the Interac network...
It is fairly trivial to connect to Gnutella through a NAT without any port forwarding -- so I do not see this being a significant problem.
Palm trees and 8
If you don't want anyone knowing about something then you should not be doing it. Give me one example to the contrary.
Leaving your house empty at a specific time with a specific valuable object in it ready to be stolen.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Alright, I know that a few projects like Diaspora are supposed to utilize this but I am still largely confused by this.
Among other projects wit different aims like I2P, FreeNet, bittorent, aMule, OpenID and many more that could interact together in very interesting ways:
http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Group:GNU_Social/Project_Comparison
So this seems to imply that you need to either have this disseminated to other peers in order for people to access it while you're offline.
Yep, and you could have close friend in your circle mirror your files / profiles and share them as needed... Or an encrypted fast repository (think, maybe, Firefox weave?) to which you lend a key to those you want to read it.
On top of that if you're disseminating photos or videos, this could get crazy for upload speed.
Well, Bittorent totally solved that issue and with friend mirroring you it'd be awesome.
Also, this would help weed out asymmetrical connection in the long run, giving back citizens the expressive voice they deserve.
(Fiber to the home is the only viable way forward...)
So then your stuff is on another person's machine and who knows if they didn't just take and modified the Diaspora code to record all your stuff.
They have what you allowed them to have, you won't backup your sex life on your ex's computer if you don't want to... ;-)
They can hack all they want, a well thought out system with crypto will solve any such issue.
Can you trust their node anymore than Facebook?
Definitively, why would you trust the middle man more than the person with whom you want to share your data?
Who are you afraid is going to spy on you, the person who you are sending the data to anyway or the middle man?
Sure, it might be encrypted but it's hard to believe that it wouldn't be susceptible to a man in the middle attack or eventually crack the encryption by brute force.
As discussed, don't share what you don't want where you don't want it and use proper encryption.
So you're kind of at that point back to the same problem as you are with entrusting Google or Facebook with your data. Otherwise you need to pay for a dedicated hosting server and they're not going to be cheap if you're miss popular with thousands of photos and that's not really P2P.
see above ...
So how was P2P supposed to fix this problem? Especially for people with just a laptop or even like my parents who have a dial up connection out on a farm house with very tiny upload bandwidth. I'm just not getting a clear picture of how the average person would handle this.
dial up are really on the way out but even with that, their initial upload is akin to sharing it with someone else that might help afterward with spreading the file to whoever else you'd want it shared.
Also, at some point, you can't control the information you release to someone, trying to build a social-DRM system is not going to work anymore than it did for bluray, DVD, music and whatnot ...
I worked at a financial institution, this is completely incorrect. Your liability is limited by law to $50, and most small banks and credit unions just limit it to -0-. Just make sure you have email alerts on so you know your card is being abused & call your bank & police if so.
http://usa.visa.com/personal/security/visa_security_program/zero_liability.html
http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-1350.html
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
No, we would be in IT support hell, maintaining our dads and moms P2P servers......
I do maintain computers/routers for my family members. I've done it for years. The lack(?) of P2P hasn't changed that at all.
But, supposing that P2P was some kind of nightmare to deal with... Why couldn't we make it work better? Build protocols that played nicer with NAT tables... Or build UPnP that works better... Or just throw out the whole IPv4 thing and go to v6?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Here in the UK they're both chip and pin - few retailers will take signed for cards AFAIK. My credit card has had the bit where your signature goes rubbed off for the past couple of years (revealing void void void), and I doubt very much it'll swipe through any magnetic card readers now. I still use it regularly though (I know it's pretty insecure, but if I lose it I'll just phone up and get it cancelled).
In the UK if there are charges which are made to your debit card which you claim are not from negligent acts on your part (like your example), they have to reimburse your account basically immediately, then do the investigations. They are liable for fraudulent access to your account, as long as you've not been negligent. If you voluntarily agreed to the full transaction though, you're out of luck (ie. a business who went bust, or a scammer who didn't fulfil their side of the bargain) - it's just like giving cash to them. Credit cards have more protection though - any transaction over 100ukp you can get back, for almost any reasonable reason, ie. paid and did not get the goods, etc. Transactions under 100ukp are covered in the same way debit transactions are I think.
When I first used Facebook, I (perhaps mistakenly) thought the point of Facebook was as a tool to connect with and communicate with my friends whom I selectively granted access to my profile. I gave up on Facebook though the day that every stupid little update I did was visible to all my friends (I had turned off the feature that made it visible to the world) and as it became increasingly difficult to figure out how to change my privacy settings. That and the fact that 99% of my messages from Facebook started to be crap like "You've just been turned into a zombie!" just made it into a huge steaming pile of crap. I never thought that Facebook was supposed to enable me to pretend at being a celebrity and I was always irritated when it became more difficult to close off access to my profile and my updates. Not even my friends need 10 conflicting updates while I screw around with my profile.