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?"

Comments

Posting anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

For obvious reasons.

Re:Posting anonymous

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

"Posting anonymous for obvious reasons" is fairly close to the truth.

*** 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? *** asked the submitter.

1. Easy - sit at home and do your normal internetting.

2. If you are going to do something sketchy online, go to your local coffeehouse four towns away and do it there. Alternatively, go for a wardrive.

3. If you are going to do anything massively sketchy, think long and hard about doing it in the first place. If you are still justified in doing said deed, buy a USB wireless card and use a CD based Knoppix. Proceed to step 2 as described above.

4. If you are going to do something insanely illegal, don't do it. Kiddie pr0n, DDOSes, etc fall into this category. Chances are great that you'll be looking at felonies when (not if - just a matter of time) you get pinched.

5. ???

6. Profit!

Use aliases.

[bmo]

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

Re:Use aliases.

[captainpanic]

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.

Agreed.

It's not the targeted advertisements that worry me. It's that the wrong people get information about me. That I get into embarrassing situations with pieces of information going to places they shouldn't without my approval. It might even be possible to extort people if you have the right info.

So, I would advise you (guy from TFA) that you don't need to wear the hat if you just go to the supermarket... but if you don't want your wife to find out that you have a mistress, and you pass some camera's on the way there, then the hat is advisable.

-- Remember: If you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from the government - but you still have a lot to hide. Why? Because it's none of their f*cking business.

Re:Use aliases.

[MightyYar]

And I don't put anything out there that I wouldn't be ashamed of my mom seeing.

Friend your mom like I did and your problem is solved! :)

I do use Facebook, but mostly as a big contact list. It's great when we travel near where some infrequently-contacted cousin lives and I can just lift their contact info from Facebook rather than calling around trying to update my long-out-of-date address book. It's also nice to see what someone's kids look like and such without having to sift through my emails looking for that link to Picasa/Kodak/etc.

Anyway, if I were doing such a thing that I needed privacy, I'd probably use someone else's connection - and not the same connection every time. I'd pay for services with pre-paid credit cards bought with cash while wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. One of the services I would first purchase would be an out-of-country VPN, and I'd frequently change accounts. I'd consider having a special PC dedicated just to the activity that needed so much privacy, and while on that PC I'd assume a completely different identity. While doing said activity, make sure the phone in your pocket is off! And don't use EasyPass. If I had the financial means, I'd probably also rotate phones/computers.

That would at least set up some roadblocks, but I don't do any of that - I think the worst thing I do online is subscribe to Giganews.

Re:Use aliases.

[MoonBuggy]

The corollary to that would perhaps be "you don't need to hide it if it's not worth anyone's while to find it"; admittedly with crowdsourcing, and the decreasing cost of automated data processing, it's pretty easy to pull individual data from the huge conglomeration that's produced every day, but the limiting requirement is still that somebody needs to take the time to act on that data.

I completely understand the principle of the original question, but I do think they need a little perspective on the practical side: the chance of anyone caring what you, as an individual, are doing is near-zero. Unless you've pissed off people in your monkeysphere enough that they'll go digging for your name, there's probably not much chance of any of the information about you surfacing beyond its minuscule impact on aggregate marketing data. Those improbable edge-cases are maybe still worth taking some precaution against, but in general it's not worth too much worry. The real question, of course, is whether you truly care about the principle above and beyond any practical danger it poses to you?

Re:Use aliases.

[blackfrancis75]

And I don't put anything out there that I wouldn't be ashamed of my mom seeing.

Wait... you only post stuff that you know will offend your Mother!?
That's just mean!

Re:Use aliases.

[Tomahawk]

"If you don't know how to maintain true anonymity (I'm behind 7 proxies!)"

Each of which logs your every click...

Re:Use aliases.

[Lurker187]

She's a MILF (Mother I'd Like to Friend).

What, what did you think I meant?

Re:Use aliases.

[ladoga]

Imagine what can happen if some autocratic regime gets into power in and confiscates all the data that social network corporations have in store of their users. Then the said regime can use that data to search for probable dissidents and make their lifes hard. IMO that's good enough reason for not to use high profile social networking services with anything linked to your own name.

So for me it's not about telling something I don't want my mum to hear. Such things could cause only minor problems, maybe a lost job at worst. But there are scenarios that could lead in loss of ones life.

I don't think something like above is likely to happen anytime soon, but it doesn't hurt to play safe. I use open protocols like XMPP and IRC with known (or own) servers and have control of logs myself when it's possible. Probably my contact information (even if I try to avoid spreading such details) and discussions I've taken part in are still all over the world in various message boards, but the least I can do is to try to stay in control of my data where I can.

Re:Use aliases.

[networkBoy]

While no one may care, I still protect some basics.
I have a little perl script that does nothing but grab a random number of random words from my dictionary and performs google searches on those words, then gets a random number of hits from the search query.
It doesn't do anything with the results, just discards them to dev/nul but my real searches are likely lost in all that noise.
I use my real name on facebook, specifically so people can find me, but I post almost nothing.
On forums like this I use an alias. I've three distinct on-line persona and I keep them relatively separate

That said, the odds that anyone actually cares about what I do is remote, but I do not rely on that as my only defense of who I am.

Re:Use aliases.

[Chatterton]

Except that more and more company are doing a google search on your name when you send your CV... The chance that you next boss is caring about what you, as an individual, are doing is not near zero. And a photo of you drunk, smoking some weed (or something that look like), or any non conventional posture could cost you your next job. Some don't get a job or get fired for these kind of things right now. And unfortunatly it is not alway you that post these kind of information :-/

Re:Use aliases.

[anyGould]

So, I would advise you (guy from TFA) that you don't need to wear the hat if you just go to the supermarket... but if you don't want your wife to find out that you have a mistress, and you pass some camera's on the way there, then the hat is advisable.

I'd extend that - so long as you never intend on having a mistress, you're probably OK. Because they'll be able to tell from your changing patterns that something is up.

That's the freaky part about things like Facebook's new "tracking like buttons" and the "let us manage your forums for you" features - my newspaper turned on the "you must log in to Facebook to write us" feature, and frankly, it feels a little expensive to have to hand over access to your complete profile in order to give them content to publish...

Re:Use aliases.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good advice. Wearing the hat all the time actually makes you more identifiable - "oh look, it's that guy who always wears a hat".
I suggest that if you're going to use the hat approach to disguise yourself, a variety of hats in different styles is the way forward.

Re:Use aliases.

[indeterminator]

The solution is for everyone to post their drunk/stoned/naked pics on the web, and make sure they're easy to find. Then employers cannot care anymore, if they still want someone to do the job.

Re:Use aliases.

[pr0nbot]

It's not enough for YOU to be careful about what you put out there; a lot about you can be inferred from what your friends put out there.

E.g. you may not want Google to know your phone number and home address, but guess what? Chances are if one of your friends has an Android phone, chances are they've sync'd their contacts up to Google, including all your details, a picture of you, your birthday, etc.

Your friends are busily posting pictures of you on Facebook, possibly geotagged and timestamped, and are happily tagging them with your name. They keep spamming your email address with invites to join Facebook and LinkedIn. You may be declining, but guess what? Facebook and LinkedIn keep track of those invites, along with all the details your friends submitted about you (e.g. your full name, job title etc).

There was a story a few years back about the UK DNA register. The expert explained that as long as they had roughly 10% of the population in the database, it didn't matter if people opted out, they could still be identified by matches against their relatives' DNA and inferences from other records (e.g. birth records).

I think the same is true of the online world; you can try to opt out, but others will happily splurge everything they know about you, and you can't control that.

Re:Use aliases.

[MoonBuggy]

True, but there's a vast gulf between the OP's attitude of "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)." and your hypothetical situation of "The first picture to come up when someone Googles my name is that time I ended up handcuffed to the goat with my testicles painted orange". Preventing things from being directly and publicly linked to your name is quite different to preventing the monitoring from happening in the first place.

There's also the fact that, as another poster pointed out, your boss should really be able to cope with the fact that you're not on duty 24/7, nobody meets some absurd standard of 'morality' that they seem to set, and there's nothing wrong with a good party once in a while; I do realise, however, that in the real world the luxury of a decent, reasonable boss is something that many people don't have.

Its not a problem of privacy.

[unity100]

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.

Re:Its not a problem of privacy.

[peragrin]

The big thing is your actual privacy hasn't really changed in the last 100 years. access to public information has simply gotten easier.

People never realized just how much of their "private" life was actually public. I have worked with companies that owned complete sets of phone books. Not the simple white pages you see but the $100 a volume hard cover reverse look up by phone number, or address volumes. This was public information for the last 50 years. you just had to pay for access, as it was expensive to compile into usable data. Now it is cheap to do so and so people are suddenly aware of how much of their supposedly "private" lives are actually public and they get all scared and panicky.

If you live in a glass house you don't walk around naked unless you want the neighbors to see your naked body.

Re:Its not a problem of privacy.

[Sprouticus]

Except that almost every power base in the world (government, Religion, Corporations, schools, the militiary, cliques, clubs, etc operates on the basis of limiting your options and hiding information and judging other people.

Transparency is a laudable goal, but until we as a race can exceed our current ability, all transparency will do is ultimately liimit society**. People will revert to the pre-industrial village era where everyone knew everyones business and the local moral police came down hard on people who went out of the norm.

Except this will not be a local envelope, it will be national at least and in some cases global. We will have the LEAST tolerant and MOSt vocal among us trying to limit everything we do.

** I am speaking of transparency at an individual level, not at a corporate or governmental level.
there is also the profit issue and the creepy issue which are completely different but no less compelling arguments.

Re:Its not a problem of privacy.

[JaredOfEuropa]

If you live in a glass house you don't walk around naked unless you want the neighbors to see your naked body.

In other words, if you're somehow forced to move to a glass house, you pretty much lose the option of going around naked. People are rightly scared about that. There is the other side of the coin of total transparency: it may well be that society does not stop caring about some of the stuff hitherto done privately or anonymously; but continue to judge it harshly or even prosecute it.

For example: the online political debates are much more open, frank and no-holds-barred than before; not just because of the instant nature of online debates, but also because people can partake anonymously in most cases. If we're forced to post under our own names, then even the things that we are not afraid to admit to or mention in the company of friends or colleagues can affect our jobs or our lives once it is committed online for the world to see. There are already countless examples of people losing their jobs or getting in trouble over more or less innocent online posts. This means that the online debate will likely become much more reserved, sedate, and "safe". Personally I think that's a big loss.

Resistance is futile

[manicbutt]

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.

Re:Resistance is futile

[oodaloop]

Thank you, Mr. Butt, for those words of wisdom.

Re:Resistance is futile

[vlm]

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.

Not necessarily.

For an alternative viewpoint, look at the popularity of homeowners associations. Personally, I hate them because if my neighbor is a lunatic whom won't minimally maintain his property, maybe because he drinks all day (true story!), I really don't care about how his property looks, I want to know if he's a lunatic (so as to avoid him, tell the kids to look out for him, avoid being on the roads at the same time as him, etc). Its a signal. Covering it up with a HOA works in direct opposition to my interests.

Remember the outcry about GTA and weirdos whom "played the game" by knifing women in the back all day, despite that having nothing to do with progressing in the game and actually works against you? I really want to know whom is a lunatic, so as to avoid them, and keep my women away from him. However, all the Oprah viewers were horrified to find out they have relatives or neighbors or coworkers who were nuts, so their solution is to try to ban the game, so they won't know, therefore, at least from a moron's point of view, its all good.

Using similar logic, the vast steaming masses don't want to know what can hurt them, w/ regards to others on facebook or whatever, so they would rather cover it all up so we can't see it. I want to know if people around me are nuts, its just that 99% of the population disagrees with me in that regard.

The vast majority really don't want to know if their kids school bus driver is a smoking member of norml via facebook or tee shirts or whatever. They know they are supposed to say they want to know, but they really don't want to know. And that internal tension in themselves is why they get all uncomfortable about this topic.

It is the cost of "participation"

[erroneus]

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.

Re:a good search engine:

[muckracer]

> http://www.duckduckgo.com/

https://www.duckduckgo.com/

TFTFY!

Create a fake personna

[thomasdz]

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.

I was falsely accused of rape, custody battle

[GuyFawkes]

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....

Re:Was privacy ever a right?

[EraserMouseMan]

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.

Don't have privacy, don't need it

[coldsalmon]

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.

Keeping your privacy is a life style change

[realsilly]

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.

keep it simple

[Pflipp]

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.

Doesn't matter now, it may later.

[koan]

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.

Re:Was privacy evr a right?

[Defenestrar]

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."

Re:Was privacy ever a right?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You forgot the Ninth Amendment.

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Assholes like Scalia and Thomas like to take the Bible literally and the Constitution metaphorically, when they should be taking the Constitution literally and ignoring the Bible.