Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Your Privacy These Days? Or Do You? 319
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?"
I keep my data locally. Almost... (Score:4, Insightful)
My private data does not leave my home network. I lack off site backups, but Google spies on all my email. I rarely bother with Tor, just enough to draw suspicion. Gee, maybe I should rethink some of this, but that sounds like work.
I think my issue here is the same as a lot of peoples: maintaining privacy requires you actually bother to do stuff. My categorical banning of all cookies, java script and browser plugins except for white lists is really the only effort I've put into my privacy.
I don't go around spamming private stuff on Facebook, but I still expose my reading habits to web servers, my ISP etc. I don't host my own sites, so I'm leaking lots of info about my users/readers to the hosts. I lack HTTPs support on most of my sites, so I'm leaking lots of stuff.
I've toyed with Tor hidden services (I made one), and bitcoin (I have some), but never actually done anything with them. I have a big interest in privacy, but generally I don't bother with it. Its kinda sad really.
We need better tools to make having privacy not be a sacrifice: it needs to be easy, and not lose you features, or even the people who care (like me) won't even bother. We are a long way from this, which in the purest sense isn't even actually possible (You have to lose some features if you have true privacy).
Re:Simple. (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.
Re:Unplug. (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
About all you could do is head to the woods and live off the land, but not yours. ( Of course then you have the satellites to worry about.. ).
Good luck with that plan.
Re:Simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
As I usually say: every week there is someone who wins the lottery, and that chance is really, really small.
Privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I keep my data locally. Almost... (Score:2, Insightful)
We need better tools to make having privacy not be a sacrifice: it needs to be easy, and not lose you features, or even the people who care (like me) won't even bother.
This. We also need to make it much easier to find out which tools/services are worth people's time, energy, and money. Even something as seemingly simple as intelligently choosing an ISP, VPN, email provider, etc. requires a massive investment in time to learn the basic technical aspects of each service & relevant features, scour the Web to find non-spammy reviews hidden among the SEOspam, compare prices & feature offerings... If a geek like me that already understands the technology and has a ton of free time to do research finds it a frustrating pain in the ass, the average consumer hasn't got a chance in hell.
IMHO it would be a good idea to form a donation-supported central site (wiki, forum, whatever) where individuals could write articles explaining the relevant technology both for geeks and non-technical types, post overviews of services (prices, features, government-friendliness, etc.) & personal reviews, double-check reviews for accuracy, compile results, and so forth.
No backdoors in encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything Snowden released has shown that the NSA doesn't have magical ways to break modern encryption. They rely on strong-arming various organizations and hacking vulnerable systems.
Re:Privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything I care to keep private, I don't put on the internet. That's about it.
The facebook spy system encourages others to post everything they know about you. People do that without any understanding of what they are giving away for themselves or for people they know.
This is bad from the simple example of so called friends making sure criminals know when I'm on holiday as well as my home address, to corrupt government spooks having access to everything that anyone ever wrote about me as well as a stream of up to date pictures.
Re:A few things... (Score:5, Insightful)
faraday cage cell phone case
Just take the battery out. Physically remove it. Or if you want to be 110% sure don't carry a phone at all, it's not like it's law that you have to carry one.
Some good tips (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's some nice tips which won't ultimately solve the problem but which will greatly improve your privacy.
1) Use common sense. Try to imagine which routes your data will take and which providers will it meet. Will those parties snoop on your data (datamining or wiretapping)? What kind of privacy policies do they have?
2) Use encryption in as many places as you can. HTTPS and IMAPS are good start.
3) Do not put important data into services provided by Google, Facebook or other datamining companies. If possible, switch your e-mail account from GMail to your home country ISP or other locally produced service.
4) Consider using Tor for crucial communications. If you need maximum safety, do not send your message through Internet and all.
5) If you need maximum safety, use an open source operating system. For example, NSA may have talked in backdoors to Windows and OSX.
In Soviet Russia your TV watches YOU! (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.
Re:one method (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.
Re:Not too bothered (Score:4, Insightful)
The NSA is a criminal gang. They operate above the law and ignore rulings against them. As far as they are concerned the rules do not apply.
We also know that individuals in the NSA a criminals. They use their power to spy on their partners, for example. You should be very afraid of the NSA.
Re:Simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong question - it's not about our privacy (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 [eff.org] and similar organisations.
* Contact your representative.
* Vote with your head and your heart - not your wallet.
Re:one method (Score:4, Insightful)
People do get framed (Score:4, Insightful)
A few commenters have suggested that they have nothing to worry about because they let no "sensitive" information out onto the web.
Sorry to break it to you, but the world is not fair. People are sometimes framed or kangaroo-ed into apearing guilty of something when they are clearly not (I have had it happen). Sometimes, various authorities need to catch someone to hang blame upon for some crime. I've even heard cops tell a public defender, "We know he didn't do it, but we know he's a bad kid, so we got him."
Also, numerous (unregulated) consumer-monitoring agencies scrape up everything from public databases, buy lists from shops, service providers, your bank, your phone company, your credit card company, and your grocery "club card," sold subscriber lists, and so on. All of this data is correlated based on a few unique or semi-unique identifiers such as full name, SSN, phone number, credit card transaction number (it's illegal to track by CC #, but they get around this.), bank and account's last-four digits, addresses, and so on. This approach does produce some viable correlations, but typically yields "profiles" that are rife with errors.
HR departments use reports from these aggregators as if they were 100% accurate. There is no law in place that will allow you to opt out, to see their entire file on you, or to correct errors. There are anecdotes of people searching months for a job, only to find out at some point from an interviewer that, "you have XXXXX crime in your profile," even if you don't have a record. I once had collection agencies coming after me from Time-Warner Cable for bills on a Texas account — I have never lived in Texas, but the burden of proof was on me.
Despite what the aggregators would have everyone think, names are not unique. Phone numbers are not unique, as they are recycled. Email addresses are often not unique, as they are recycled.
Like it or not, there are many profiles on you that are beyond your access, and the law has not yet caught up with these practices.
Happy privacy!