Ask Slashdot: Privacy Paranoia 323
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?"
Posting anonymous (Score:2, Funny)
For obvious reasons.
Re:Posting anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
*** 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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Use aliases. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 :-/
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Re:Use aliases. (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
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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 neede
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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! :)
You friended HIS mom?!?!? Duuuude, that's soooo wrong!
Re:Use aliases. (Score:4, Funny)
She's a MILF (Mother I'd Like to Friend).
What, what did you think I meant?
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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!
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It isn't advisible to say anything at all under your real name any more, not when everything is archived and googleable. There is nothing you can say on any issue remotely political without the risk of upsetting someone, and that someone may be your now-or-future co-worker or boss.
If you have such frail conviction in your own beliefs and values... I believe what I believe regardless of what someone else thinks of it, and if my boss would fire me over it then I probably wouldn't be happy working there any ways. If it gets to the point that I can't find any job because of my opinions, then there are bigger problems in the world.
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"If you don't know how to maintain true anonymity (I'm behind 7 proxies!)"
Each of which logs your every click...
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And sure as shit, nobody here gets that it's a joke.
Crikes.
When I wrote that, I was going to write "I'm behind 7 Boxxies!" but I figured it was too obscure and everyone was going to have to google the phrase and thus the joke would be ruined.
But no, people like you have to make me /explain/ the joke and kill it myself. You turned me into *that guy,* the guy that explains all the jokes.
Gah.
--
BMO
For the lazy: http://tinyurl.com/6272za7 [tinyurl.com]
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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 l
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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 hap
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True. For this reason it's best to separate a pseudonymous identity you use for forums etc. from one you use for online shopping or any business that's tied to your credit card or real information (including Facebook, if you must have an account).
I wish I knew what the world would be like earlier, I set up a lot of things I use now in a simpler time (I still have to get my ass off this gmail address ^, Google's so creepy now.) Just a few years ago I saw no problem with my mobile devices not using full-disk
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You only really need to encrypt /home
Have /home on its own partition. Mine is only 25GB - and really, only 5GB are being used. Everything else is offloaded to other partitions and that stuff doesn't need encryption. It's all music and video.
Tar up /home /home partition. /home /home
Save it somewhere. You should already have an external USB, firewire, or esata external drive.
Repartition the drive with gparted and make space at the end of the drive for a
Create an encrypted volume for
Copy your stuff back to
D
Its not a problem of privacy. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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An interesting question would be where the line is crossed between public information and illegal electronic surveillance. Many states have very restrictive wire-tapping laws that don't even allow sympathy for the "I did it to protect my baby" [arstechnica.com] defense.
If it's done electronically, without your express consent, it's probably illegal - if you're an individual. Make that a corporation and it seems you're forgiven...
On the whimsical side, perhaps we could get a class action thing going - we're looking at $10,0
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"Anonymous Coward was able to understand them, but when he spoke in an ordinary voice he sounded pompous and faggy to them."
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I take it you've read The Light of Other Days .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days [wikipedia.org]
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That depends what you define as "bad". I look at porn, but I don't plan on cheating with partners, renting hookers, going on a drugs binge, whatever. Sure, it might be a little embarrassing for me for some people to even know that I have ever browsed for porn, but I doubt anything I've ever done would get me kicked out of office if I was a politician, etc. If I do something, I generally don't give a fuck who knows I've done it.
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Re:Its not a problem of privacy. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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solution of this is ultimate transparency.
That is unrealistic. People will always want to keep secrets.
I think (a part of) a solution is to limit discrimination based on personal information. My car insurance rates should be based on whether I have been a safe driver or not (past accidents, traffic violations, and so on), not on personal information that correlate with safe driving (credit report, home ownership, and so on). My company should retain/fire me based on my job performance, not on what I do or say off the job.
The boundaries are
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if people dont look down on alcoholics, just like how they shouldnt take someone's ass being naked as something that is 'rude', there wont be any need to hide that information either.
,BR> same goes for all your examples.
Not Enough (Score:2)
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That's why I borrow a tin foil hat before I decide where to buy my replacement hat.
Resistance is futile (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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Incidentally, Butt happens to be a real surname in quite a few places of the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_(name) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_(Asian_surname) [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Resistance is futile (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Interesting topic - just read Dilberts blog about this:
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/seeing_the_past/ [dilbert.com]
and while having no privacy at all is a weird concept, it'd indeed make for some cool apps like he says.
Problem with this (and yoru homeowners example) is that it's never black or white. Most people don't really fit in a category, and the question is always where do you draw the line ? How does one decide your neighbour is a lunatic (if he really was then he would be in a mental institution) or just behaves
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>Problem with this (and yoru homeowners example) is that it's never black or white. Most people don't really fit in a category, and the question is always where do you draw the line ?
Lack of binary is a feature not a bug. Lack of a line in the sand is a feature not a bug.
How does one decide your neighbour is a lunatic (if he really was then he would be in a mental institution)
Sounds like you're not from the US. Here the psycopaths and lunatics are the leaders, not institutionalized. Seriously, we don't institutionalize people until after the tragedy occurs. If the cops haven't (yet) found a body, they're pretty much out free.
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You need an ordinary life so you don't arouse interest.
If you do something interesting, invest the work in an alternate, deniable, untraceable life.
Exploit the lack of privacy by being "normally naked". If you are like me, no one is interested in your (figuratively speaking) old gray balls.
It is the cost of "participation" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Most people will not correct it in the government's favor because if the gov knew about the extra income or lack of deductions or whatever, they would have sent it that way.
By preparing it, they say "This is what we know about you." Instead, they say "Guess what w
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That is until you start spending your money. Is it really necessary to remind you that there are all sorts of red flags and required reporting that goes on when someone pays for things in cash? The amount of cash requiring a report to the government varies and keeps getting smaller and smaller. Not only that, but being found in possession of a "significant" amount of cash often result in confiscation without charges, due process and most often without return to the rightful owner.
Cash is effectively ille
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I think next time I upgrade my laptop I'm going to pay in cash to see if I get any odd reactions.
I did this back in 2003 (Powerbook G4, around $2400 in cash) just for kicks; the folks at the Apple Store didn't even bat an *eye*.
Maybe the amount has to be larger.
Nothing really... (Score:2)
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 wel
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My god, I've been getting the wrong st0rff (Score:2)
I'm banking on society changing. (Score:2)
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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 ... because there will be less to hide or be ashamed of, hopefully because at that point, a majority of people....
"They" said the same things about my parent's generation and smoking weed. By the time I become an adult they'll be selling it in vending machines right next to the Marlboros. Didn't quite turn out that way, did it?
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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 ... because there will be less to hide or be ashamed of, hopefully because at that point, a majority of people....
"They" said the same things about my parent's generation and smoking weed. By the time I become an adult they'll be selling it in vending machines right next to the Marlboros. Didn't quite turn out that way, did it?
Whoever said it would be in vending machines was out of their mind to think that. It's not come that far, but weed HAS come a long way. It's only been ~40 years since the counter-culture started and I'd say smoking weed has much less of a stigma now than it did then. I know plenty of people who have and/or still smoke it. This is pure speculation, but I'll bet that more Americans are okay with weed. The reason weed is only legal for medicine right now is because the legalization camp still has to cater to o
Create a fake personna (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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paranoid guide for mobile phones: the mobile itself has a code and your sim has a code, so don't overlap them if you're paranoid.
maybe the reason a lot of folk are bothered by loss of privacy is that they got used to that their friends in different circles couldn't interact so they could re-invent themselfs in those circles as different people.. I'm pretty sure everyone knows a few of the type, if they're social people, the same people who start a new chapter in life five times a year. it was a fallacy tha
Uselessness (Score:2)
I was falsely accused of rape, custody battle (Score:4, Interesting)
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....
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You'd have to prove you're the one using the phone, or even worse, think of the fun if your phone was "borrowed" and you didn't notice.
Her side would be all about the tired old "computers never lie" while opening a copy of "paint" to edit the screen capture.
Technological solutions to social problems never really work. Might help a little, maybe, maybe not.
Don't do anything controversial and you'll be fine (Score:2)
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,
Worry about Mallory not Gordon. (Score:2)
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
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I didn't understand any of this, until I asked Alice and Bob about it.
Unique identity (Score:2)
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That's what public/private keys are for, and digital signatures...
Having them for proving identity is one thing, forcing them on each and every connection and thus not allowing anyone to post anonymously is quite another. Privacy issues, yadda yadda.
It's not going to matter anyways (Score:2)
if you spy me (Score:2)
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
"But is it really that bad?" (Score:2)
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
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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).
Maybe they shouldn't be, the last 4 digits of the social security, the ones they typically ask for are typically completely unguarded on bank websites, mother's maiden name frequently used as a way of confirming ones identity is easily looked up in most cases online.
Individually it's not that big a deal, but when you add those things up, it becomes relatively easy to break into other people's accounts using publicly available information. And since companies frequently don't bother to secure their sites wit
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That's how Sarah Palin's emails were 'hacked.' This teaches us two lessons: Firstly that it's not that hard to break into email, and secondly that a crime which would be ignored if the victim were a lowly commoner will result in an investigation, prosecution and jail time if the victim has friends in high places.
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And yet you give them the
Try not caring (Score:2)
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, f
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Its a FAD (Score:2)
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 yo
Don't have privacy, don't need it (Score:2)
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 a
Keeping your privacy is a life style change (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:3)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Database Pollution (Score:2)
Re: (Score: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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
> 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
Re: (Score:3)
> http://www.duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com]
https://www.duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com]
TFTFY!
Re: (Score:2)
Another search engine claiming to take your privacy serious:
https://startingpage.com/ [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.
Re: (Score:2)
The data is always useful to someone. Especially someone trying to make money. If you are the most boring person on earth and eat bread and water, walk to work, and only ride a bike as a hobby, the bread water, and bike people are going to be all over you. If you are the most typical person who watch reality TV, drive 8.3 miles to work, has 2.5 kids and a slightly overweight frigid wife....well you are in the demographic for a LOT of vendors.
Someone will always want that info.
as someone said above. The best
Re: (Score:2)
"If you are the most typical person who watch reality TV, drive 8.3 miles to work, has 2.5 kids and a slightly overweight frigid wife....well you are in the demographic for a LOT of vendors."
The company that produces the Fleshlight springs to mind.
Re:Was privacy ever a right? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Was privacy ever a right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
Rights can't be revoked or suspended for convenience.
Have you looked around lately? Sure they can.
Re: (Score:3)
You forgot the Ninth Amendment. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I keep my utensils perfectly aligned in a vacuum chamber, using super conducting magnets you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
(of which they cannot find the address anyway)
Unless its a trick question and you're homeless, that seems a wee tiny bit optimistic.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm so unpredictable, nobody can anticipate my location and momentum at the same time.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that at some point in the future it might be that important and once your information is on the web you can't get it back. TD Ameritrade lost some of my contact information by incompetent security measures on their database server, that information is out there, and no number of injunctions is going to change that.
It's really easy to say that it's not that important now, but you don't get to redo it at some point in the future should you change your mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> 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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.