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Ask Slashdot: Privacy Paranoia
dvbuser writes "The privacy debate is well known these days — organizations that track every click, geolocation, image, you name it. So now I sit here today monitoring my IP blockers, obfuscation algorithms, tor relay and each packet that goes in or out of every device that I operate. I even wear a hat always when I go outdoors, never carry a cell phone, and never look up (well, not all of that is true). But is it really that bad? Am I simply going to wind up completely out of touch with the modern world, where the next generation so boldly (for want of a better word) goes? What's wrong with targeted advertising? And if the feds can track my every movement — who cares? Sure, I don't want to be a victim of identity theft, and I like to download some p0rn every now and then, but I don't want to exclude myself from society, or spend copious hours trying to preserve it, merely from paranoia or at the very least from an overbearing sense of privacy. What does the average Slashdotter do to preserve their privacy (or what's left of it) while still making the most out of what the web has to offer?"
For obvious reasons.
Fuck Zuckerberg. Half of the people on my "friends" list use aliases. I use an alias.
And I don't put anything out there that I wouldn't be ashamed of my mom seeing.
Use the technology, but for gawd's sake cover your ass and don't be stupid. If you don't know how to maintain true anonymity (I'm behind 7 proxies!), then just use common sense.
--
BMO
Its what other people do with your information.
would you really care if the society didnt have any bias in regard to downloading porn, and found out that you have been downloading porn ? no.
its because society is acting/reacting on that information that you are desiring to have privacy. if nobody cared that your ass was bare or not, you wouldnt hesitate from going about naked. which was the case in early days of mankind. then we developed a bias that says asses should be covered. despite that the ass is still there, hidden, and everybody knows it.
same goes for govt. why would you care if govt. know what you did, if the govt. was not going to do anything bad with that information ? no.
so problem is not hiding what you are doing. problem is out there, in the society and government and so on. (actually govt. is included in society).
solution of this is ultimate transparency. nothing should be hidden, nothing should be judged if it doesnt harm another human being. this also goes for governments. there should be no secrets.
there will remain no need for privacy or secrecy then.
Read radical news here
If your hat isn't foil lined, they've already got you.
Live openly, with integrity. Be interesting. Post under your real name. The rest will take care of itself.
If you're a dick in real life, people won't need to look on the internet for confirmation, they'll know already.
More and more, there is a cost of participation in the modern world. All of the new things we have started to enjoy since the invention of the automobile have come with strings attached. Unless you are a thriving member of the "homeless" you can't earn a single dollar without the government being aware of it. (Which always makes me wonder why we have to voluntarily file taxes? Why can't they just generate a bill or refund based on the numbers they have and then let us file an appeal if we disagree? After all, if THEY disagree after we file, it's a whole lot more hell and a lot more waste of government resources as well.)
This is how we find ourselves in the state we have now. Both government and business (which some see as two sides of the same coin) have an interest in stripping the public of its privacy, security and rights and do so on a continuously eroding basis. I just wonder how far things can really go before the people really start to feel the pinch? So far, I don't really feel the pinch... just angst over what I see happening.
I know in the technical world, "security through obscurity" is a huge red flag. But in the meatworld, it's a beautiful strategy.
So what if you're tracked? Everyone else is too. Human beings generate so much data that it is infeasible to process it. Even if you can process it, there isn't another human who can comprehend it all.
You're just a data point in a huge dataset. You're upset about being in the dataset, until you realize just how large and vast the dataset is. You strive for 0 involvement the same way an OCD person strives for perfectly parallel utensils. Both are impossible.
Simply learn to accept you are a small drop in a very large pond. It's not that scary.
The oldest method: Don't be interesting.
While a bit tongue in cheek, it's a fairly good way. Even if your data is in whatever databases, if there's no use of it, then it might as well not exist.
Unfortunately, that works both ways in some cases. I keep hearing about Charlie Sheen. I decided to look a little last night and no one has made a coherent summary of it. Better yet, could everyone stop talking about him?
Granted, that won't prevent automated things like targeted advertising. However, if you haven't yet developed a mental filter for advertising, I'd get started, it helps on so many things. In fact, if not for being a method for infection/malware, I probably wouldn't use adblock. (That I got tired of the Flash/PDF ads that tried to infect my machine was the ultimate catalyst for that. Too bad for sites that are ad based, but there are enough sleazy ads that they lose out.)
...I use an SSH tunnel now and then just to circumvent certain limits of a certain video delivery service but other than that I don't care.
I also keep most of my pictures on Facebook where I have only 6-7 friends (my *real* and closest friends); so Facebook wants to track me and has access to a few pictures of me on vacation or a couple of videos of me jamming with my friends, so what...
All the other people that were on the same vacation spot probably have my face in the background of their photos as well.
My on-line handle is also closely linked to my real identity and anyone can find my work experience on LinkedIn.
Of course I protect the things that matter, my private keys, passwords, banking data etc...
"Tread" or "sprints toward."
If you've ever handled a penny, the government's got your DNA on file."
The Simpsons - Who shot Mr. Burns Pt. 2
> > What does the average slashdotter do to preserve their privacy
> Post AC, duh!
Using HTTP and without a proxy...no, you don't post AC!
Regards,
Your ISP, TLA, etc.
nothing should be hidden, nothing should be judged if it doesnt harm another human being. this also goes for governments. there should be no secrets.
Tell that to a gay guy who just got his ass kicked by homophobes.
Tell that to a recovered alcoholic or drug addict (FU AA, people can recover - I've seen it!) who got his shit together but can't get a job or make social contacts.
Or tell that to an atheist who is considered not to have an "values" and therefore can't get a job. Yeah, try and prove it - illegal my ass!
No thanks, people are cruel, shallow and small minded.
P0rn, no wonder, I've been getting pr0n all these years. No wonder its all a bit tame.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
I think this is the right place for a question which I posted too late to another story. I am also a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not really trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that? Please don't propose any instructions involving tin foil.
With regard to this story, I think everyone should try to keep as much privacy as is acceptable for him/her. It always means not participating in some things like social networks or cell phones.
Not very soon, but I'm placing my bet on the assumption that once the children of the digital age (mostly Gen-Y and some younger Gen-Xers) become the majority, people will care less about privacy because there will be less to hide or be ashamed of, hopefully because at that point, a majority of people will become used to freely sharing information about themselves. Hopefully it also means that I can start seeing ads that are interesting to me.
> http://www.duckduckgo.com/
https://www.duckduckgo.com/
TFTFY!
I don't really care about "the feds", I care more about some nutcase or group (Westboro baptist church, 4chan, etc) who might take umbrage at my religion, what I do, who I work for, where I live, what I consume, or mis-take some random sarcastic comment that I might make for a real comment.
So for the most part, I made up a couple of fake names a LONG time ago (1990s) and use them for most of my stuff on the web (eg: reddit, facebook, gmail). Think "Rory Bellows" = "Krusty the Clown" = "Herschel Krustofski"
I occasionally use my real name (eg: on Slashdot) on technical forums because I know co-workers and perhaps future employers are going to be Googling for my real name and I want to appear to know what I'm talking about....haha
The important thing is that your are AWARE of the power of Google/Bing in searching, and just in general, the power of technology in tracking you. buy a new pay-as-you-go cellphone each year. go through a proxy or two when surfing the web... but don't just be paranoid, have FUN and be paranoid... think of yourself as Truman Burbank.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
I am not arrogant enough to think that I am so important that my privacy needs protecting. But I never post my credit card number in my facebook status, and only post what I did, never what I am going to do so that people with bad intentions cannot anticipate when I am away from my house (of which they cannot find the address anyway). That should be enough.
I realise that in ask slashdot you were probably looking for geek/technical replies, so feel free to ignore this. I think the Tao principle of uselessness is the best solution to both privacy and security. The parable of the useless tree illustrates this well. If you have no money, you give out all your intellectual property free on the internet, and you don't have a need for expensive possessions, there should be no need for privacy and security. Naturally in the real world this is more a guideline than foolproof rule, to be useless to the US government you have to either have no interest in any kind of politics, or live in a country who's politics don't interest them. With the current economic rules regarding debt it has become virtually impossible to be useless to big corporations. But nevertheless I think it is an important principle to take into account when working out how to secure yourself. Think about how you are most useful to people who would harm you to use you, and see if there are ways you can become less useful to them.
I *wish* Google latitude / check-in and Android smartphones with GPS were around ten years ago, it would have made my case so much simpler, and prosecuting her so much easier.
Let's face it, opting out doesn't mean you turn into a ghost that nobody tracks, so you may as well opt in, control it, and who knows, one day it may save your ass....
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Step 1: Senator has an adulterous liaison. One or more federal agencies film it.
Step 2: Senator receives photographs of adulterous liaison plus anonymous demand to vote a certain way on not-very-important legislation.
Step 3: Senator caves.
Step 4: Repeat Steps 2-3 with increasingly important legislation, combined with threat to reveal previous influenced votes as needed.
Step 5: Under sufficient pressure, Senator eventually votes to increase powers of agencies, weaken constitutional protections, etc.
Multiply by several senators, congressmen, and judges.
Don't worry about it. As long as you don't do anything controversial, you don't have anything to hide. Examples of what is controversial really vary. Sometimes it's saying something that's politically wrong (e.g., supporting communists, socialists, any minor party, or the wrong major party), or religiously wrong (taking an interest in an unpopular religion, such as Islam currently, or Judaism historically or in some places), or socially wrong (e.g., sexual practices that your neighbors might disapprove of, even if they do it themselves; or humor or fiction that's politically 'incorrect'). It also depends on who is looking; for example, taking the wrong side of the health care debate might discourage some employers, or of the energy debate might discourage others; what if someone with authority has strong feelings about Guantanamo -- maybe it's better to avoid issues like that; and remember that what's politically incorrect can change -- what's ok today might be wrong tomorrow. What's unremarkable today might be a Congressional hearing tomorrow. When people ask, 'which side are you on?', just be sure you've chosen the right one. Also, make sure it's unambiguous; if someone can misinterpret it they probably will, especially if they don't like you.
Other than that, just do whatever you want online. As long as you do nothing wrong, there is no reason private companies can't log everything you do. In fact, use my computer last thing at night and first thing every morning, so the log is accurate about when I'm sleeping.
Another search engine claiming to take your privacy serious:
https://startingpage.com/
Interesting feature (see settings) is the ability to save your search preferences without a cookie by using a generated URL, which you then use for your Bookmark.
Also of note is the proxy view option of search results.
Gordon cannot be stopped. Gordon can and must see all or Gordon will destroy, torture, and kill all.
So you also have Mallory. When you deal with Gordon you know Gordon's name. You know who Gordon works for. You know Gordon. When you are dealing with Mallory, you don't know who Mallory is. You don't know Mallory's motivations. You don't know Mallory.
The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. You know Gordon is a part of a necessary evil. Mallory could be your rival, your competitor, or just a predator. So while Gordon has to be trained and typically has some orders he is following, all the way up a chain of command, and has selfless motivations, Mallory may have entirely selfish motivations.
I do find myself wanting some kind of mobile perma-token that goes to each internet accessing individual. Hi, I am E341-AA0B-C3A9-5505-30FF, and my internet access account began on July 3, 2013! I am male, 27 years old, etc. My token knows that I exist, that only I belong to this token, that I am certifiably human, and maybe that I've demonstrated a preference for buying Anime from Amazon and invest heavily in Silver Mint. -- point being, I don't necessarily think such a token should really store sensitive information about identity, per se... but that it can prove that you are who you say you are when online in some verifiable and prohibitively difficult to steal kind of way (at least it terms of the minimalistic rewards such theft grants). When you read a review on an apartment or a product or a service... when someone trolls you on a forum... etc... you can know first that it's not a machine and second that that person will be accountable for any false information they give. I should think this would even be applicable to voting, taxation, etc. I just can't help getting past the notion that in a communicable universe where one can trust the content they encounter and people are liable for their actions, not only will there be less cybercrime, spamming, etc, but also less incentive to want to engage in them as well.
You information paranoid freaks make me sick. How many times do I have to say it? The whole freaking World is going to melt down to chaos soon. Keep hording your information...I'm hording guns, knives, and bullets. We'll see who was right soon enough. BURN BABY BURN!!!! It's all going down!!!
you'd have to spy me 24/7 and even then you'd come out puzzled and depressed... and it would be an awful bad investment as far as returns are concerned. the better it would be the harder time they'd have even selling targeted adverts. and you'd have to do it over multiple social networks or whatever you want to call bbs's, irc, forums and the internet as a whole. that's one thing about stasi style surveillance, it's an extremely boring and devastating career path to start doing it to random people and would take an extreme number of real human beings to go through the stuff.
but the problem mobile advertising companies have, it's not your privacy, it's some starving guys in china, taiwan or wherever who are going to game the system, that it would be more fair and more tied to the "real" targeted person than your usual clicks. in the end advertisers are going to care about generated sales though.
and as far as porno goes - if you're a free man, who cares? ever thought of living honestly? you can get away with a lot these days if you live in the west. that's what freedom is, that nobody is going to oust you just for having a collection of erotic material. though, I got a new explanation, it's an anatomy collection. which is actually sort of true, I can't afford the time or money to observe real models and it would be pretty hard to find someone who could make all the spontaneous facial expressions too and the models are usually naked, usually with first muscles relaxed and the camera goes through many angles. leonardo would be jealous. midgets too. but it's impossible for anyone to try to pile crap on me for having it.
anyways, if you want to fool ip geolocation shitters, use a mobile connection. but if you're so deep that you wear a hat everytime you go out for privacy, you're easily distinguished by wearing that hat and you're already so far off that you're actually very easy to keep surveillance on since you have habits, the people in your neighborhood will start paying attention to you precisely for acting that way and this will just feed your paranoia and some of the people in your neighborhood will remember you all the same no matter what you do, the same as you will remember some of them and that's just normal.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I've changed my mind slightly on this topic after I read about a guy who knew the Feds were trying to keep tabs on him. He publicly shared his geo-information for literally everywhere he went. Blogged publicly about everything he did and everyone he talked to. Tweeted about every little thing he did. And he had as many friends as would have him. This put his entire life out for the public record. This kept the Feds from privately nabbing him and then making up their own story about his life and all of the insidious things they wanted to finger him for.
I, now, just assume that if the Feds want to get me they will. If they want any info about me they can get it. So who am I fooling by hiding my activity? I would only be making it easier for them to fabricate the narrative of my life and then pin it on me. A very private lifestyle makes it easy for them to get away with it since nobody knows anything about me and could prove otherwise.
So now I love Google and everything Google Apps. I love my Android phone. I think I'm sort of boring so I'm not the type who uses Facebook much anyway (but I do have an account). I've got a Twitter account but have never really gotten into tweeting. My best defense of my normal, innocent life is for me to be social and use the Internet to control and communicate the narrative of my life.
No.
> What's wrong with targeted advertising?
I don't know. I've never seen any.
> And if the feds can track my every movement â" who cares?
Depends on who you are. I don't believe that they track very many people: they simply have no reason to. If they are tracking me they are fools. Of course, if I did think that they might want to track me I certainly would not discuss it here nor am I endorsing what tracking they do .
> What does the average Slashdotter do to preserve their privacy...
Squall indignantly about what an outrage it all is while refusing to inconvenience himself in the slightest in order to protect his "details" (most of which are matters of public record).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Just trust that the big guys in charge are not going to do the wrong thing (ok, not likely, but try to think that way and you'll feel better), and remember that the amount of information flowing over the internet pipes is simply massive. Yes, they can use filtering and regular-expression-type searches to filter out your data, but firstly they have to want to filter out your data. And they really don't care if people are looking at pr0n (unless there are kids involved). Individuals don't matter to them, for the most part. Global trends do matter (especially to advertisers), but individuals don't.
Break the law, do stuff that you should do, and yes you might raise a red flag. But being a normal person (I assume!), what cause to they have to track anything you do?
You are insignificant. Remember that, and feel joy in it.
So ... the best way to hide from the FBI is to not give them a reason to want to find you?
Using HTTP and without a proxy...no, you don't post AC!
True, but I think we have some reasonable middle-ground to occupy here...
Since the early days of the internet, I have used aliases online. I have taken care to use encrypted protocols whenever possible, and thoroughly separate my personal accounts from my work accounts from my random-online-crap accounts. And when necessary, I know how to guarantee "real" online anonymity, though the effort almost always outweighs the benefits.
Still, I have no delusions of online privacy for the vast majority of what I do. If a random TLA government agency took an interest in me, they could certainly correlate most of my various online activities. But at what level of effort? Put simply, I don't interest anyone enough to bother; jumping through hoops to obfuscate my activity on a regular basis would arguably make me a more interesting target.
So to answer the FP author - Don't bother. Take a few basic precautions, but just realize that in the modern world, your privacy depends almost entirely on blending into the background noise, not on adopting increasingly complex technological means of concealment.
Its a fad. Remember "that guy" whom wanted all kinds of firewall monitoring to let you know if there is a weird nonconformist packet seen by the firewall? We need reports. We need graphs. We need you to be paged for every individual packet. Because that TCP SYN SSH packet from China (while we're blocking APNIC space anyway, in fact only permitting ssh port IP space from our fellow admins home ISP ranges, and disabled typed in ssh logins going solely pub/priv key auth only) scares me and should scare you and we should all be scared and aware together so we can all watch TV while we're scared and buy lots of stuff from the commercial ads. WTF?
Eventually you gotta ask, so what are you going to do about it? Whats the end result you're looking for? Fly out to China and beat the guy whom owns the zombied windows PC? Open a ticket with the ISP in China? Call the CIA? Shine the batman emergency light on the clouds? Pray?
The next (last) step in the fad is to ignore it. Who cares. I got a ssh syn packet this morning from Korea. So what?
Privacy hand wringing is the same type of fad. So general mills has tracked your changing tastes in breakfast cereal since birth by careful analysis of facebook posts correlated with grocery store loyalty cards. Eventually, after being asked one time, a hundred times, a million times, "What are you gonna do about it?" you'll realize its simply irrelevant, and move on to something new to be scared of.
Maybe a terrorist behind every tree stump so we gotta give up all our freedoms because they hate our freedoms (oh wait been there done that). From what I read, in the UK the media has them in an absolute frenzy about neighborhood child molesters, maybe we can terrify americans the same way. Or we'll get terrified of space aliens. Or the flu, again. Who knows. Who cares.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
There will be instances where it makes sense to be open and honest in your online dealings (close friends, your bank account, your work accounts). Trying to cover up your real identity in those instances could have negative consequences. (explaining to your bank that you really are the Rip Torn on the account...)
But in instances where you are dealing with strangers, and you may never deal with them again, obfuscate as much as possible.
I (like many here) run my own mail server. I must have 250 accounts on it right now, as I make up a new account for each online entity. (allows you to delete that account if you start getting spam, etc.) Having that many accounts also dilutes the meta data about you in large databases.
If you don't have one already, get a P.O. Box. If you sign up to have some piece of lit delivered, have it sent to the P.O. Box and use an alias for a name. I get lots of mail addressed to many different names - the Post Office gets used to it. Again, it dilutes the info about you in databases.
Think about how you are going to interact with each new online entity (entity meaning store, blog, media, etc.) before you type your first word. There are few places online that really need to know about you - they may want to know about you, but they don't need to.
I think it goes without saying to watch your cookies and javascript at new sites. (I am always amazed how a single site can have 15 javascripts from other sites. Gives me the creeps.)
I'm not saying you can escape entirely, but, like an earlier poster said, it's not about whether they know, but how they use that info. And if the info is less accurate and more diffuse, it is less valuable and slightly less likely to be used in a way you don't like.
Gosh, where to begin. I guess I use whatever privacy measures I can for one simple reason...IT IS NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS WHERE I GO, WHAT I DO, WHICH PAGES I SCAN, WHAT PRODUCTS I BUY, WHO I DATE, HOW MANY KIDS I HAVE, WHERE I LIVE, OR WHAT I THINK!!! If I chose to divulge such information, it is because I CHOOSE TO, not because I think you have a right to make money off of it. My biggest complaint with the internet is that people have chosen to mis-use it. I loved back in the day how I could go to a chat-room and it was not plagued by fucking chat-bots. I loved being able to type "wherez da warez", and someone would tell me where I could get a solid copy of Photoshop, or Lightwave...without fear of some schmuck at the NSA, DOJ, RIAA or MPAA, using the conversation to justify putting me in a cage. Not to say that I made a habit of doing such things, but the fact remains that the freedom to do them without fear of prosecution existed.
I always envisioned that the web would be used to liberate humans from the stupid 9 to 5 get up get in the car, take the bus, or train, sit at a desk getting fatter, surviving or merely enduring office-related bullshit/politics for 8 to 12 hours, and drag yourself home reality. But NOOOOOOO, instead the internet has become like a farm, where you are milked for personal data, and your every transaction is being monetized at no benefit to you. Deep down, I think this is the result of employers not utilizing the full potential of the web. That it really represented the end of locality, and has instead been perverted to become the end of privacy, and dignity.
-Oz
I know I don't have privacy, and I keep that in mind when going about my business. Really I don't need privacy for the vast majority of what I do -- I'm a very boring person. I don't care if Amazon or Google or the FBI knows that I've bought Chopin's Complete Waltzes, Preludes and Nocturnes. If I ever needed privacy, I could acquire it simply by not using any connected gadgets. I am 28 years old (and I don't care if you know that) so I am a bit older than the "next generation" that the original post talks about, but my friends and I all assume that anything we put online is public information. I don't post embarrassing pictures of myself on Facebook, and I don't post anything that I wouldn't want my clients to read (including this).
There are issues with employers being effectively able to censor their employees' speech, but this is mostly due to the increased access to publication (e.g. via Facebook and blogging), and is not really a privacy issue in my opinion. Employers still can't legally break into my Google account and read the chatlogs in which I complain about my company. The fact that they can make access to private communications a condition of employment IS a privacy issue, and that should be dealt with via legislation.
Shred old bills / receipts with any identifying info after the "retain tax info" time frame.
Shred all Credit Card applications sent to you unsolicited.
Remove your self from the list to receive unsolicited Credit Card Applications by notifying at least one if not all 3 major Credit bureaus.
Use dummy email addresses if you can on line that is specifically meant for junk mail.
Avoid making Credit Card purchase on line when a phone call and complete the same transaction.
Keep your cell phone as dummied down as possible.
Watch for warnings from govt. sites that state that your info will become public record if you provide it on-line.
Let your friends know that your privacy is important and to not share what they know about you in real life or on line.
Keep your photos off line.
Quietly lean on friends to keep you in tune with the latest technologies.
Use Cash where ever possible.
If you're not willing to be diligent in doing these things and more then you're not ready.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Rights can't be revoked or suspended for convenience.
Have you looked around lately? Sure they can.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
> I don't interest anyone enough to bother
Do you know that? You can't possibly! In fact, these days it's enough to know someone, who knows someone, who is interesting to someone else to get into the dragnet.
Besides, the being of interest part used to be a fairly real-time affair. Now with things saved even officially in various locations for several months or years or forever, the accumulated data can be searched and mined again and again. So you may not be of interest today (or any of your friends), but that is now always subject to change at any time for as long as you live (think Google and them having never deleted ANY search result as of yet. Extrapolate to the rest of your activities and life.)
> jumping through hoops to obfuscate my activity on a regular
> basis would arguably make me a more interesting target.
Another, IMHO, probably baseless assumption at worst or the surveillance state at its best (self-censorship etc.).
Where's the line anyway? Using HTTP? Using SSL? Using SSH tunnels? Using Tor or your own private VPN and Proxies? Many of these are perfectly legit and who knows how many millions of such connections are going on this very second simultaneously. So what's to be afraid of?
Pay in cash whenever practical. It's amazing how many databases this will keep you out of.
Before I answer this, I need to put on my tinfoil hat... Now where did I last put that thing?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I once knew this guy who didn't watch TV because he thought the commercials were brainwashing. Hard to say he wasn't right, but he was unlucky as hell, too. Not for lack of TV, but from worrying too much.
If you think your government treats you indecently (i.e. by allowing you to be tracked), speak out while it still allows you to. But be buddhist about it: don't worry that you cannot change the world, just do what you can while you still feel comfortable with it.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Your paranoia is appropriate in inverse proportion to the ability you have to control what information about you is collected, and how it is used. Unfortunately, the mavens of on-line data aggregation want to control and sell that information about you. The symptom is privacy paranoia, but the problem is that you have been turned into the raw material from which valuable data can be mined.
Thanx,
John
When the going gets weird, The weird turn pro.
- Hunter S. Thompson
> Pay in cash whenever practical. It's amazing how many databases
> this will keep you out of.
And don't use loyalty cards, since that defeats the point of paying cash in the first place. Might cost you certain discounts though. Ditto for CC's.
Why would you want to stop your mother using Facebook? If she wants to use it, why not? Seriously. Targeted ads? Embarrassing photos? What? Unless your mother is actually Sarah Connor, I don't think it's a big deal.
which is totally what she said
Something more important is how this will play out down the road, will that porno you downloaded suddenly be used against you retroactively in the newly founded America run by ultra right wing religious fanatics?
Will copy right infringement someday have a death penalty? (you know at least one Hollywood mogul is pushing for that)
Sure, these are very extreme examples, so come up with your own tamer versions, because I am a cynic, I feel the world will be under constant surveillance once machine AI can access and use the CCTV camera systems, back-scatter scanning while walking down the street, every communication monitored for "key words" decrypted on the fly and stored permanently.
Hell they may even monitor facial expressions for "malcontents", once all that is in place just imagine what a corrupt government (which they all are) would get up to.
You're kidding your self if you don't think we are headed for a world of hurt, and all thanks to technology as used by fascist and religious nuts.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Daniel Solove makes a good case that imbalance between the power of the individual vs society (government and/or corporations) invariably precedes upheaval.
Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
- Schneier: The value of privacy
HermesPod: Free Podcast Download Manager for Windows
Lately doesn't seem to be any better than historically... there's a trail of tears leading just about everywhere. But with our constitution we can at least expect history to look back and say: "that thing there, that was wrong," or "I'm sure glad someone like Ed. Murrow had the guts to take on the witch hunters."
It covers unenumerated rights and states that "the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Don't feel bad, though. Those SCOTUS assholes you mention are also fond of forgetting the Ninth.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
The best way to preserve privacy is to pollute databases. Data miners now use a variety of sources to 'confirm' information (whether you are male, married, income, political affiliation etc) and the more often you can pollute those databases, the better. If they cannot get a greater than %60 accuracy on your data, you are not a good lead for them.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
So to answer the FP author - Don't bother. Take a few basic precautions, but just realize that in the modern world, your privacy depends almost entirely on blending into the background noise, not on adopting increasingly complex technological means of concealment.
This really is the best advice. The thing is we are tracked so much and by so many different sources that there really is no hope of maintaining privacy anymore. Sure if that was my goal, to "live off the grid," I could probably do it, but not without sacrificing most aspects of a normal life.
The thing to realize is that you blend into the background noise. In a world with nearly 7 billion people, its not hard to do that. In fact, that is in itself a type of security.
Analogy time (because I love them): If you are at a sports game and talking with your friends, are you worried about others overhearing your conversation? I mean sure, the people next to you (someone like your mom on Facebook) may hear what you are saying. But will the cop at the bottom row? Yea, sure, he could hear you if he wanted you. And watch everything you are doing. But will he? No, because you are just one person in a sea of thousands. On the other hand, what if you had a ski mask on and were whispering secretively to everyone? Yea, sure as hell he will pay attention then.
I charge:
$ 0.3 for every cookie/day stored on my computer beyond the current session
$ 0.2 for every tracking beacon used
Next I will work on copyrighting my SS #, name, addresses, birthdays, phone # etc and sue for infringement.
The TV business model still lacks customers - I am trying to find companies paying me watching TV ads in essence giving me a cut on their ad revenue.
I bought a GPS blocker yesterday. Two Reasons; I think they will be illegal soon and (less likely) I may need one.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
I know this was at the first CS level but.... I called to find out some info about my iPad data usage after a trip (and after I had canceled my data plan) I was told they could not access any info about my usage with my plan turned off. Oh, and since were on the paranoia conversation, I keep PUSH off. Hey, Its not paranoid, I'm prepared!
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
So you're happy to abandon all your privacy because you live in a police state?
Yeah, there's nothing fucked up about that at all.
I want to walk into a store and buy a product for the list price. Without someone looking me up in a database to figure out my net worth and steer me to the 'deluxe' product. The web version of this is much more prevalent given the ease of generating custom pages targeted at certain users. On the other hand, I like having vendors load me up with free samples just because I'm an opinion leader and they want me seen with their crap. And I like getting moved to the head of the line at popular clubs.
So I guess I'd like to be able to switch my anonymity on and off as it suits my needs.
Have gnu, will travel.
Please do read Daniel J. Solove's article:
"I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
When virtually invisible, and atmospherically pervasive nano "motes" wirelessly transmit all they see and hear (and it won't be that long!), to say nothing of monitoring the minutia of our individual brain activity emanations, you won't even be able to keep your thoughts private. Forget the foil hats unless you can seal yourself up in one hermetically!
The end of privacy will mark a tectonic shift in society. It will not be safe to "think outside the box", and the box will close in on us, getting smaller every year.
If you can Google up a cubic 1mm computer, completely self-contained with solar cells, memory and radio transmitter, made to be implanted in your eye and available today - what do you suppose already exists out there when the rule of thumb is that the military is actually 10-15 years ahead of the public domain? That hummingbird drone thing is a joke!
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
After getting burned by supposedly expired online chats in 1990s.
My electronic material periodically disappears in the vastness of the cloud. Then some improved data-mining system makes it retreivable again. This I lern for self-searching over the years.
when a future employer, coworker, s/o, insurance comgoogles me I don't necessarily want them to know everything about me.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Seriously, "I even wear a hat always when I go outdoors, never carry a cell phone, and never look up"?
Unless you're wearing the hat because you're bald and want to protect your scalp from UV exposure or the cold, or are a fugitive from justice, you probably should seek some psychiatric or counseling help.
It's not healthy to live in constant paranoia.
Putting moderation advice in your
It's not OT. duckduckgo is a search engine that doesn't track you in the way Google and Bing do, read https://duckduckgo.com/about.html
There is a shorter URL: https://dukgo.com/
Anything that will track you, usually uses DNS, and not fixed IP addresses, so view your HTML source (when you can) and add those to your hosts file to 'block'
For example, I dislike some advertisers, so a snip of my hosts file: /etc/hosts ...
robert@pip:~$ sudo tail
127.0.0.1 www.crackle.com
127.0.0.1 ads.revsci.net
127.0.0.1 cs.adxpansion.com
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
That's a brilliant way to use the system. It also provides cover for sophisticates to operate a parallel "life" not connected to info they are sharing.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Another, IMHO, probably baseless assumption at worst or the surveillance state at its best (self-censorship etc.). Where's the line anyway? Using HTTP? Using SSL? Using SSH tunnels? Using Tor or your own private VPN and Proxies? Many of these are perfectly legit and who knows how many millions of such connections are going on this very second simultaneously. So what's to be afraid of?
In spirit, I agree with you completely. In practice, wearing a hijab to the bank might fall within your first amendment rights, but it sure doesn't do much for preserving your anonymity when you appear on the evening news as the person that got tackled by a swat team after refusing to show ID to the bank's rent-a-cop.
So I suppose this all boils down to: Do you want privacy, or do you want to flaunt your right to the same? If the latter, good for you (and I mean that), thanks for fighting for the rest of us. If the former, rather than using Tor just to read Slashdot, you'd accomplish more by teaching others such basic steps as using FF's Private Browsing mode and how to use GPG.
I am not generally one to suggest even more laws; we have too many already. But there is only one thing that will stop this garbage once and for all, and that is an "Opt-In Only" law for info tracking.
That is to say, outlawing any tracking unless a person voluntarily opts in to a "service". I would include in the law a provision to very thoroughly "de-personalize" any information that is recorded by your ISP, after 48 hours.
(I say thoroughly because the "de-personalizing" of data done by a lot of companies is inadequate for protecting privacy, as earlier releases of so-called depersonalized data clearly demonstrated.)
I have yet to see a really good reason I should use things like facebook/twitter. I live in a different state from my family and I do share photos, emails, and even video chat with them. I have a facebook account, under an alias to see what all the hype was about.. and in my opinion it is the single worst piece of widely used technology to be invented in my lifetime. I don't get it. People don't use it for "keeping in touch", they use it to record every stupid thought that comes into their heads. Or worse, use canned thoughts because they're too lazy to think of their own. I have friends (in real life) that use it all the time. I noticed one of them commented that she was following Charlie Sheen on twitter, and that she accidentally exposed herself to some co-workers. And I saw all of this on my Linked-In updates. So I hope potential employers enjoy her mind-ramblings.
I feel like the old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn - except that the "kids" are people my own age. They are the worst offenders! There is nothing more annoying than talking to someone and have them constantly checking their phone. I am the "tech" guy, but I don't understand the appeal of being plugged in all of the time. And all of this does play into privacy. Once it's "out there" it is on record.
When I was growing up there was no internet, and while getting my CS degree frequented BBSs and gopher sites - so I can certainly appreciate how far we've come. But I really don't see how these "social" technologies as advancements. People are for some reason willing to forego privacy these days.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The funny thing about conforming is that you do society an injustice.
The world needs radicals but political powers and clandestine powers-that-be do not.
There are plenty of good and bad aspects to transparency. I'd rather not explore the extremes. Instead we should keep the debate alive and well. We should push back against extreme transparency and make sane choices regarding what privacies we are willing to sacrifice for our collective benefit.
The best defense against invasion of privacy is to simply be aware and (re)act accordingly.
If you think the NSA is surveilling you, they are. If you're concerned about that, I don't have much to say but use cash, avoid tech, and good luck. If you don't want local people snooping your wi-fi transmissions, don't use wi-fi. Or at least use WPA2 and https. A VPN, secure proxy, or SSH tunnel would be a good thing. But unless you have a device with an editable wi-fi MAC address, don't use wi-fi. The MAC address is always plain text no matter what you do to secure your session data. So you can be tracked across time and space by your MAC address. If you don't want your ISP snooping on you, use a VPN, secure proxy, or SSH tunnel (of course then you have to have some trust in the endpoint). You could use Tor, but that's slow. It's a trade-off between how involved you are willing for the precautions to be, and what ease you want in using modern technology. Make sure your DNS requests are routed through the proxy, or your ISP will still know what sites you visited, and when. If you're concerned about the advertising-analytics-social ecosystem tracking you (who isn't?), there are a lot of things you need to do. Keep your browsers clean of cookies (of all kinds: http://samy.pl/evercookie), cache, and history. Change your IP address frequently. Use Tor as much as practical. Use multiple browsers over multiple VPNs, secure proxies, and/or SSH tunnels. Keep browser configs as standard as possible with respect to things that can be detected by a remote web site (Flash, Silverlight, Java, internet plug-ins, fonts, etc). Use multiple physical or Virtual Machines to diversify your accesses. Keep each physical or VM as standard as possible to reduce the bits of entropy that its device fingerprint betrays (https://panopticlick.eff.org/). Browsing on an iPhone is better than browsing on a desktop with unique add-ons, for example. Actively block tracking servers and domains with your hosts file, DNS service, browser add-ons, etc. Yes, we need a good law to make privacy rights fundamental, protected, and with enforcement teeth. But we also know there will always be bad actors who will ignore or work around the law. Bottom line? Do more to protect yourself than you think you need to, then do some more. Defense in depth. Diversification across services, accounts, connections, browsers, machines, etc. And always practice good security, even if you're in a situation where you don't think you have to.
There actually people reading slashdot over Freenet: the /. mirror on a FMS forum seems to be pretty popular considering that the bot that updates it has the highest rating for a non-human on FMS. And they're probably using the private/incognito mode of their browser to use Freenet, since it's the default on the Freenet installer.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
I don't get it.. you made the case for why privacy is important and then closed with the typical 'as long as you live a boring life by not doing 'anything wrong' then everything will be fine'. like you said, what's wrong is a subjective thing.. what you did today may be considered heinous 20 years from now, and without any sort of privacy, or even reduced capacity for collective forgetfulness (buried in a filing cabnet..maybe.. vs instant search away) you'll get the shaft for it.
that or I just missed your sarcastic irony..
Basically, it's stupid to allow any incumbent intercontinental despotic dictatorship to have powers you wouldn't trust to a democratically elected government of your own.
It's crazy to say --for instance-- that the FBI shouldn't be allowed to put a GPS tracker in your vehicle without a warrant, but having your phone company keep logs of your every location is fine and dandy.
There is a solution, legislation. Enforce built-in privacy from the device manufacturing to the service provider. There is nothing crazy about limiting the power of business. We do it all the fucking time with construction codes, sanitary permits et cetera. Why not this? The free market won't solve this because it's a damned oligarchy and all the corporations are just as evil.
Don't let articles like this sell you the idea that privacy has no value and is impossible to defend anyway. That's what they want you to think. Nothing more.
But... the future refused to change.
make sane choices regarding what privacies we are willing to sacrifice for our collective benefit.
Fine, as long as it's the choice of each individual, not something imposed on them by neighbors seeking profit or who are apathetic.
The best defense against invasion of privacy is to simply be aware and (re)act accordingly.
I disagree. At this point in time, there is nothing effective that a typical end-user can realistically do, unless they stop using the phone and the Internet.
I view privacy in the context of information flow.
.... example: advertisement for a laptop you are selling .... example: your paypal password
.. I could be wrong though.
Information = power
I want to maximize my power as an individual without taking too much away from others. To do this I engage in the following strategy:
Limit the information powerful people can get about me. By doing so I limit their power and increase my own.
Increase the information I have about powerful people. By doing so I limit their power and increase my own.
For example, my objection to body scanners is simply in the context of information/power flow. When I get scanned, the information flows to government (or potentially a hacker). Both of these groups have more power/information than I do. They get a freebie from me - I get absolutely nothing in return. If this power disparity went away. I would have no problem with body scanners. Scan everyone, and publish info to everyone else, and I'll go through these all day without a complaint. The key word is "everyone". Those who are left out, gain power at the expense of everyone else.
It is a 0 sum game - or maybe more like a battle really. The goal is for for everyone to get their fair share. "Fair share" depends which group you belong to. If you are in the government, then Wikileaks is pure evil because they are taking your precious power away from you. If you are a simple citizen, Wikileaks is probably your friend.
The interesting twist is that there are two types of information. Information you want public and information you want private information. What I described above is an example of private information. For public it's the opposite; spreading it actually increases your power. You could almost give it polarity:
+information = public
-information = private
I am posting this under my real name because I'm pretty certain that I'm dealing with +information in this post. But I'm taking a risk
This is where neutral polarity comes in. It just means you are not sure if you want it to be public or not yet. Some people air on the side of caution, others take the risk. That's the real difference between the "twittering-facebookers" and "7-proxy-tin-foil-wearing-folks"