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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Your Privacy These Days? Or Do You?

Posted by Unknown on from the nsa-and-cia-just-know-i'm-a-square dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The NSA snoops traffic and has backdoors in encryption algorithms. Law enforcement agencies are operating surveillance drones domestically (not to mention traffic cameras and satellites). Commercial entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon have vast data on your internet behavior. The average Joe has sophisticated video-shooting and sharing technology in his pocket, meaning your image can be spread anywhere anytime. Your private health, financial, etc. data is protected by under-funded IT organizations which are not under your control. Is privacy even a valid consideration anymore, or is it simply obsolete? If you think you can maintain your privacy, how do you go about it?"

19 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. one method by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    not truthfully responding to such questions

    1. Re:one method by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It depends who you are hiding from.

      The typical internet user is unlikely to incur the wrath of the NSA or even law enforcement unless they are involved in crime or political activism. They may choose to hide on princible.

      What they do have to fear is the casual background check.

      For example: I loathe the catholic church. A bunch of homophobic superstitious idiots with ridiculous beliefs that even they have had to shy away from out of embarassment. Stuck-up people who claim to be the sole early authority on issues of morality, though apparently this includes sheltering a truely obscene number of child-molesters in their ranks from the public relations disaster of actually being caught by law enforcement.

      My first job out of university was in IT support at a catholic school.

      Now, imagine if I had been dumb enough to write the above under my real name somewhere? The school may very well have put my name into google to check if I have any skeletons, found something like the above, and decided not to offer me the job. I'd never have learned why, just gotten the 'your application was not successful' form letter, so it's impossible to say how often this happens - but with facebook and google requiring real names for an increasing number of social media concerns, this is surely happening with increasing frequency.

    2. Re:one method by dhasenan · · Score: 5, Funny

      When I have a phone conversation, I do it by recording MP3s, putting them in encrypted form on microSD cards, and leaving them at dead drops.

  2. Don't use it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nothing you do electronically is anonymous. I don't use the Internet, I don't make phone calls, and I don't do email. Ever. At all. I only pay cash (coins actually, because bills have serial numbers that can be tracked). And I certainly would never, ever, post anything online.

    1. Re:Don't use it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's exactly why I only touch pennies with my private parts - they may have my DNA but they're not going to like where it came from.

  3. I don't care (so much) as long as (fillinfodder) by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most people I have talked with are angry, but don't know how to act against it.

  4. Simple by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    I send everything to Snowden for safe-keeping.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  5. Re:Simple. by NoKaOi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't have anything the NSA is interested in.
    The people that are likely to try to gain from violating my privacy are likely to spend 10 times more then they gain.

    There are two words that everyone should be concerned with: False Positive.

  6. Not too bothered by axlash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm less worried about the likes of the NSA, and more worried about criminal gangs getting hold of my data and using it to make my life a misery through identity theft.

    Anyhow, the way these things work is:
    - Either a very small percentage of people are seriously affected by breaches in privacy, in which case I don't need to worry too much about it, or
    - A significantly large number of people are seriously affected, so that it becomes a political issue and there's a push to do something about it.

    --
    Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
    1. Re:Not too bothered by somenickname · · Score: 5, Informative

      The NSA *is* a criminal gang. And, it's a criminal gang that can put you in jail for breaking laws that you don't even realize you are breaking.

  7. Proxies and encryption by MoonFog · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think it's important to protect my privacy despite not having much they are interested in. I encrypt my harddrives, have my own domain with e-mail that I've set up with GnuPG on my workstation and laptop, I sometimes use the TOR bundle as well as a USB with Tails on it. The simplest thing is that I subscribe to https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/ to get proxy/VPN access to the net. Also, setting Firefox up with HTTPS everywhere, DNTPlus, NoScript etc. is important.

    It doesn't take much to make their jobs harder. I use these things also for everyday items, it's not like I fire up PIA to "go dark and do evil stuff". I've plenty of friends that don't see the point of doing what I do when what I use it for isn't illegal, but privacy means privacy from prying eyes, I decide what I share with others.

  8. Re:Simple. by MoonFog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree with you 100%. The issue I've found is that people are absolutely terrible when it comes to working with big numbers. Any chance of false positive is seen as a 1 in a million shot at best. People cannot comprehend how they could end up in that kind of situation, the chances are so slim. It seems to me many have forgotten the old saying that we're supposed to let 10 guilty people go rather than jail 1 innocent person since we're (the west) supposed to be a benevolent democracy.

    As I usually say: every week there is someone who wins the lottery, and that chance is really, really small.

  9. Re:Unplug. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So you plan on never going to the doctor. Never getting a job. No girlfriend. Never walking down a city street. Never owning a car. Never renting or owning a place to live. Oh, and groceries...

    Slashdotters don't do any of these things. Especially not the job or the girlfriend or leaving the basement.

  10. Don't use "free" services by Neelix21 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The main thing I do to protect my privacy is not to use "free" services, such as Gmail, Hotmail for personal email. I maintain my own server which has a mailserver installed. This means that no-one except me (and anyone who manages to break in) can just access my email.
    I live in the Netherlands where ISPs are forced to keep "traffic records" of me. Because I'm an academic I get to use the academic ISP, which is not bound by that law, at least for Internet traffic. But having my own mailserver means that also my my email traffic is not monitored and can not be requested by the police. Furthermore, having your own mailserver and domain also makes it very easy to compartmentalise service subscriptions. Just make a new email address for each service.

    I used to use Google Calendar, and Contacts but stopped with that since I discovered that OwnCloud is a really decent private drop-in replacement that you can host yourself.

    I use many different privacy plugins (Ghostery, Adblock, etc.), while being aware that this makes my browser ID somewhat unique and identifiable. At least I'm making it harder for them.

    --
    Don't worry, it's all just 1's and 0's anyway...
  11. I don't use my real name. by ugglybabee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't use my real name on the internet. This is no small thing, because Facebook will throw you off their network for using a fake name, and while I find facebook to be ubelievably drab and awful, I suffer a penalty in relationships from not being on it, since nearly everybody I know has some kind of presense on Facebook, I'd rather not trust the NSA with my personal information, but since i am not a criminal, the potential negative consequences involved are finite. I could be harassed for my views, though they're not particularly extreme, or falsely accused of a crime, But there are a billion people on the internet, and they've got a billion agendas, and i know from experience that some of them can truly be evil motherfuckers. There's no sense in trying to measure or aniticipate what can happen, what they're going to individually decide or figure out. I'm probably safe. I'm a 55 year old male with not much money. Nobody's going to want to stalk me for anything, but I refuse to participate in this crazy experiment whereby we turn down the privacy settings for civilization, and see who thrives, and who gets hurt. Zuck you, Fuckerberg!

  12. Re:Unplug. by Pino+Grigio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here's the thing:

    There are two levels of private here. There's keeping things private from potential employers, friends, family, associates and so on and there's keeping things private from the NSA, GCHQ, Chinese Government and so on. The average guy or girl has absolutely no hope of keeping their online dealings private from the latter. From the former, you don't so much keep them private as be a bit circumspect when making use of the internet, your mobile phone and so on.

    So far over the last 10 years I've had 1 credit card attempted theft (tried to transfer £4,000 out of it, bank caught it as "suspect" so it didn't happen) and I've had 2 email accounts hacked and used to send spam. Of the latter, the problem was weak passwords. I now have a "system" for passwords and none are weak, but that doesn't mean the NSA and GCHQ can't still read them. I have no intention of fighting a room full of Mathematics PhDs for my data.

    Even if you get the NSA to stop doing this through political action, the Chinese, Russians and so on will still be doing it.

  13. In Soviet Russia your TV watches YOU! by Thor+Ablestar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't have anything the NSA is interested in.

    It's correctable. Just ask your congressman to make your everyday activity punishable. Here in Russia I read about 3 reports per day about people punished due to use of social networks to publish dissent with official national policy.

  14. Re:Simple. by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would add 2 words to that ones: Witch Hunt. What we see normal or harmless today could be proclaimed as crime tomorrow. The "pressure cookers" topic changed meaning after boston bombing.

  15. Wrong question - it's not about our privacy by nmnilsson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Come on, you're asking the wrong question!
    The sun doesn't revolve around you or me.
    Those here who answer "I don't care" are halfway right.
    None of us will be betrayed by Google or Amazon - that's bad business.
    NSA won't post your private stuff or steal your money - they just want to do their job, damn the consequences.

    However, after the next economic depression and mass unemployment, or after the next great war,
    when we elect our Führers, or support revolutions ending in a totalitarian states,
    they will find it convenient that our governments have built the infrastructure for their tyranny.

    To answer the question that your should have asked:
    * Voice your opinion.
    * Support EFF https://www.eff.org/action and similar organisations.
    * Contact your representative.
    * Vote with your head and your heart - not your wallet.

    --
    No sig to see here. Move along.