Privacy: the 21st Century's Newest Luxury Item 111
chicksdaddy writes: There is a report today on the 21st century's newest luxury item: online privacy The Christian Science Monitor writes about the growing market for premium privacy protection tools available to tech-savvy consumers with the desire for online anonymity — and the means to pay for it.
The piece profiles new tools from companies like Abine that deliver everything from self-destructing e-mail messages to the 21st century's equivalent of Kleenex: one-off "throwaway" online identities to keep advertisers, merchants and government snoops at bay. Privacy experts, however, doubt that the new tools will tip the scales of online privacy in favor of consumers and away from governments and advertisers. "Consumers really don't have a fighting chance," says Andrea Matwyshyn of Princeton University. "Technology moves entirely too fast."
She and others see the need for both bigger fixes and the level of Internet infrastructure and law. "As a consumer protection matter, there needs to be a floor," she said. "Just as there are laws protecting renters from substandard housing, or car buyers from 'lemons,' there need to be regulations that create a buffer between consumers and companies."
The piece profiles new tools from companies like Abine that deliver everything from self-destructing e-mail messages to the 21st century's equivalent of Kleenex: one-off "throwaway" online identities to keep advertisers, merchants and government snoops at bay. Privacy experts, however, doubt that the new tools will tip the scales of online privacy in favor of consumers and away from governments and advertisers. "Consumers really don't have a fighting chance," says Andrea Matwyshyn of Princeton University. "Technology moves entirely too fast."
She and others see the need for both bigger fixes and the level of Internet infrastructure and law. "As a consumer protection matter, there needs to be a floor," she said. "Just as there are laws protecting renters from substandard housing, or car buyers from 'lemons,' there need to be regulations that create a buffer between consumers and companies."
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Since work no longer relates to wealth, the psychopaths in charge are right to be afraid.
Wealth and work have been disconnected since the days of the Roman Empire.
If you think people who have learned how to leverage themselves so they can earn
more wealth are all psychopaths, you are one seriously troubled little boy, and you
need some quality in-patient psychiatric care.
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if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about
Is just a lie, ask anybody in power (well anybody really, apart from close friends and family) if you can have access to their email, and see the response you get. I can just imagine Obama, say of course I have nothing to hide.
I find it rather ironic that spy agencies, who rely on secrecy to do there job, cannot see why other people may require privacy, for a perfectly valid reason.
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definition of privacy:
a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people.
In order to have secrecy you must have some level of privacy, you can't have just anybody watching what you do, it won't be much of a secret will it.
The statement itself implies both secrecy and privacy.
if you have nothing to hide (have a secret) you have nothing to worry about (worry about loosing your privacy, by being watched)
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Pointless (Score:4, Informative)
As long as the government's privacy policies and legislation remain as badly broken as they are, what happens in the commercial sector isn't of much significance.
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Pretty much ... if government isn't willing to put limits on what companies can do with your private data, what the rest of us want is meaningless.
Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of people in government who believe that having corporations be allowed to collect, use, share, sell, and otherwise exploit every piece of information about you is somehow a good thing.
Of course, those people in government are on the payroll of industry, so of course they're going to roll over like bitches for the corporations
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Unfortunately there seem to be a lot of people in government who believe that having corporations be allowed to collect, use, share, sell, and otherwise exploit every piece of information about you is somehow a good thing.
Free Enterprise
$$$ = $ for govt.
$$$$$$ = $$ for govt.
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Of course there are. It's much easier for the government to spy on you if someone else gathers the data into one convenient place.
Nope. They're
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There are ways to have privacy, and you are not going to get them by buying some app and letting some company take care of it for you:
1: Unplug. Yes, unless you need that phone on, it goes off, or into airplane mode. The HTC One M8 has an extreme battery saver mode, when combined with airplane mode, makes a useful alarm clock.
2: Learn the basics of OpenPGP [1], and build a web of trust. One can even have keysigning parties, and done right, no computers need to be brought over... public key fingerprints
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~Government checklist for initiating drone strikes on domestic threats.~
If the target adheres to, implements, and/or publicly promotes any individual item or subset from the following, the target may added to the strike list.
1: Unplug. Yes, unless you need that phone on, it goes off, or into airplane mode. The HTC One M8 has an extreme battery saver mode, when combined with airplane mode, makes a useful alarm clock.
2: Learn the basics of OpenPGP [1], and build a web of trust. One can even have keysigning parties, and done right, no computers need to be brought over... public key fingerprints and IDs can be printed on pieces of paper, and people can indicate that the printed item is theirs.
3: Use social networks minimally, if at all.
4: Use OpenPGP tools on top of messaging and other protocols.
5: Use a VPN service, or perhaps TOR behind the VPN service, since it is routine for admins to block TOR exit nodes, or any nodes relating to TOR.
6: Use containers [2] for web browsing, so the social media buttons on one site can't chat with the social media buttons on another.
7: Check your Web browser against Panopticlick, and fix it so it isn't unique.
8: Even if one doesn't use TOR, use a VPN. This at least keeps the ground level ISP from modifying your traffic... they have to either block it, throttle it, or let it through... and (for most purposes) can't modify it.
9: Assume that any data that leaves the machine is available for anyone. Encrypt your stuff, or face the consequences.
Privacy can't be bought. It is a Class A Felony under secret Federal intelligence service court directives.
[1]: OpenPGP can be PGP, NetPGP, GnuPG, or any of those tools that use the OpenPGP format.
[2]: Containers can be VMs, sandboxes, or even separate user accounts.
FTFY
Strat
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Um, most 'government privacy policies and legislation' is written and paid for by the commercial sector. What is 'broken' about it?
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Calling for the apocalypse are we? You know, the people you are fighting have used nuclear weapons before. They won't hesitate if they feel truly threatened in any way to do it again. They will even do it to enforce copyright if the resistance were able to protect itself from anything less. We are way beyond politics and far into pathology. They will bring it, no problem. You have yet to see the face of your monster.
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Bingo. Right now, there are few consequences for Joe Beard Oil to be spouting what type of poop and whatever drivel onto the social network.
However, there will become a time where this is going to start haunting people in days to come. I've listed some scenarios in the past about this. The problem is that a lot of people don't realize who is listening and sifting through posts... even ones that are marked "private".
One concern which few think about is that not just local LEOs look at posts. For example,
Moving to a future where you pay for freedom (Score:5, Informative)
People seem rather keen to rush towards a future where you pay - either in money or time or experience - for more freedom. Either freedom of privacy, or simply ability (like paying more to avoid internet content blocks).
Happily for most here we have both the technical ability and the funds needed to have "real" digital freedom. But it would be nicer if more of us were more self-aware we have freedoms others do not, and support more efforts to ensure more non-technical users can enjoy the same freedom. Because we understand better what is being lost, we have a duty to call out when we see digital freedoms being taken away from those who do not realize what they are losing.
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Or where you pay for an illusion of privacy, since there's no reason why you could trust a 3rd party device or application.
Not a matter of trust (Score:2)
Or where you pay for an illusion of privacy
You can pay (through time spent) for real privacy through verification of all network traffic on your network.
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You can only watch the traffic from your own machine, and even then it's a hopeless task to sort it all out. I have at least 10 IP connected devices in my home, of which 5-6 may be on-line at a given time, and 4 of them controlled by other family members, with potentially hundreds of packets per second generated.
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I have at least 10 IP connected devices in my home
And that is where the other payment would be in limited the number of devices, and the way they were used.
That's why I said it could be done - at a cost.
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That's why I said it could be done - at a cost.
Well yeah, like approaching the speed the light, the cost approaches infinite.
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You're thinking of it backwards. People willingly give up their privacy for convenience. e.g. Letting Google see all their emails because they don't want to go through the trouble of setting up and running their own mail server. Or letting Facebook see everything they post or comment on
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don't want to go through the trouble of setting up and running their own mail server.
Not everyone knows how -- you seem to imply that everyone has the technical capacity but is just too lazy.
letting Facebook see everything ... don't want to go through the trouble of setting up and running their own website.
Right. It's not because all of people's friends are on Facebook. If you go through the trouble of setting up your own website, your friends still won't see your posts because they will stay on Facebook.
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Getting things done without giving up your privacy is more complicated. e.g How do you get merchants to ship stuff to you without giving up your home address? You have to rent space at a mailbox store, which can act as a proxy to accept your packages. That complication incurs additional cost which someone (i.e. you) has to pay for.
Actually this one would be trivial to solve at negligible cost if the delivery company would provide the proxy address service. You enter your real address on the delivery company's site, they give you a proxy indicating the right area for shipping cost/tax/fulfillment purposes which you can give to the merchant. They ship it, the delivery company scans the code and deliver it to your house.
Re:Moving to a future where you pay for freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
People willingly give up their privacy for convenience. e.g. Letting Google see all their emails because they don't want to go through the trouble of setting up and running their own mail server.
But what's the point in setting up my own server? About 75% of the people I email use gmail, so even if I set up my own server, I still suffer google's creepy mail-stalking whether I like it or not.
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Or you pay for the illusion of privacy, such as getting AT&T with the death star's ever watchful eye on your traffic plus ads for $70 or for only $30 more you can turn off the ads but not turn off the traffic monitoring.
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The US needs real consumer protection laws (Score:4, Insightful)
The US needs real consumer protection and data privacy laws, and enforcement actions to back them up. It's been left up to the free market to sort out, and the situation has gotten entirely out of fucking control.
Check out all these slimeballs scrambling to profit [imgur.com] every time you click on a web page. Gathering your data, selling it amongst themselves and to the highest bidders, handing it to the NSA under the table. Your insurance company knows you visited marlboro.com to request a free deck of cards even though you've never smoked in your life. Target knows your daughter is pregnant before she tells anyone. Companies like ChoicePoint and Axciom, who you've never even done any business with, have enormous amounts of data about you, it's the only reason those companies exist. It goes on.
We've left this situation unregulated for long enough, we need real consumer protection legislation with teeth.
IT'S TIME FOR REAL PRIVACY LAWS IN AMERICA.
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There are real privacy laws in America.
Just ask Canada. It's a Right in the Canadian Constitution.
Heck, even Mexico has more privacy rights than the US does. ... oh, you thought the US was America. I'll tell Brazil they belong to Europe ...
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America = The United States of America
The Americas = The entire continent
Yes, it's perhaps a little unfair that we took the name of the continent for ourselves, but we call ourselves "Americans" because it's in our name. Every very other country has a very specific method of referring to their citizens (Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, etc), so there's no real ambiguity. And I'd posit that it's fairly rare to have to refer to the citizens of every country on the American continent(s)* - far more common is
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I was born here too. But I know, having lived in other American countries, that we are NOT the only ones on these two continents to say America and mean where we are (not USA).
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Except you ignore NAFTA, FTA, and TPP and other treaties. Consumer Laws used to be at the state level, with few at the national level, but increasingly it's the international treaties that undercut those, and if we are so foolish as to allow China to force us to sign TPP, will be gutted even further.
I took US and Canadian consumer law classes for a while, my brother is an international lawyer in NYC with BC and CA bars. You can continue to believe this is only decided locally, but it isn't.
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No, not China. Companies like Phillip Morris is more interested in TPP. It will stamp out the growing Asian and African anti-tobacco campaign. The US (meaning "US" companies) will benefit more than anybody. China of course is a convenient diversion of attention from the real pushers.
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Privacy is un-American, it gets in the way of corporate profit. I wouldn't hold out any hope for new laws, and whiff of them will attract millions of dollars of lobbying instantly.
Instead, fight back. Poison the well with bullshit data. Install blocking technology. Help others do the same. Like mass surveillance, the best defence is to make it too expensive and/or ineffective.
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It has to be more than simply having a privacy policy ... because then all it will say is "you have no privacy, suckers".
You also can't put "intentional" as part of it ... because then all they have to do is say "whoops, we were incompetent".
Essentially put real and meaningful limits on what a company can do with your data, and real and severe penalties for failing to do it.
No weasel room of playing semantics to assign blame ... you got a data breach, you are non-compliant.
And, most importantly, don't let t
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Pfft! Prison for pencil pushers, yeah that'll get 'em! I swear, prison is such a fetish with you people. Does it make you horny? How about just taking their shit, now and for the future, and demoting/firing the offender.
As we say: Go Dumb (Score:1, Interesting)
You don't need your TV to monitor your conversation so that you get even less exercise than pressing a button.
You don't need a smartphone if all you do is listen to music and get bus times and stock quotes and news briefs.
Embrace Dumbness. Reject Smart Technology.
Besides, we're already recording you and using your cell and phone and Net providers to track you. Don't help us even more.
This includes answering those stupid FB polls that just let us collect more data on you.
Rip FB out of your phone.
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You don't need your TV to monitor your conversation so that you get even less exercise than pressing a button.
You don't need a smartphone if all you do is listen to music and get bus times and stock quotes and news briefs.
Embrace Dumbness. Reject Smart Technology.
Besides, we're already recording you and using your cell and phone and Net providers to track you. Don't help us even more.
This includes answering those stupid FB polls that just let us collect more data on you.
Rip FB out of your phone.
Your advice makes perfect sense, which is exactly why dumb devices will soon be illegal to own.
Oh, think you'll be smart and just not configure networking to ensure your privacy? Cute, but nice try. They'll soon tie the license and EULA directly to networking, to ensure it is enabled 100% of the time, to all but guarantee the advertising capability behind that marketing-supplemented price tag.
You're right. You don't need any of these features. Then again, you didn't ask for them, which also explains ju
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Your advice makes perfect sense, which is exactly why dumb devices will soon be illegal to own.
Oh, think you'll be smart and just not configure networking to ensure your privacy? Cute, but nice try. They'll soon tie the license and EULA directly to networking, to ensure it is enabled 100% of the time, to all but guarantee the advertising capability behind that marketing-supplemented price tag.
You're right. You don't need any of these features. Then again, you didn't ask for them, which also explains just how much control you have in this situation. Now, or in the future.
Thank you for the advice. Too bad we can't do a damn thing about it.
You could always damage the circuit which does the reporting. This may generate a fault, but since you own the device, and it's your property, an act like removing a bridge jumper or cutting a capacitor on the circuit should suffice.
Or just find out where the IOT connects and disconnect that.
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LOL, you naive fool! Don't you know there's a "War On Property" going on, where copyright holders everywhere are trying their damnedest to make their Imaginary Property rights superior to your right to control the physical device that their Imaginary Property happens to be in?
"Your" computer? You don't own it. "Your" cellphone? You don't own it. "Your" TV? You don't own it. Even your car? Fuck, you're lucky they even let you open the hood without being a "Manufacturer Certified mecha
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Look back at the beginning of the information superhighway and you'll see I was there long before you civilians even knew about it.
My name might not appear the same way, but I was there.
Now realize your trade deals are trying to sell your Rights to corporations, but we all know they aren't people, so they don't have Rights.
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They'll soon tie the license and EULA directly to networking, to ensure it is enabled 100% of the time
That's been happening for decades. Must be going on 20 years now since satellite TV broadcasters started having PPV and other such services via their set top boxes, and requiring periodic connection to a phone line in order to do billing. I remember people used to get nastygrams from Sky if they unplugged their STB from the phone line for too long and it couldn't report back to the mothership, even if they never used PPV. Eventually if you didn't plug it in they would just cut off your service but keep char
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I went one better: I got rid of my phone.
My laptop might as well be a desktop, it goes nowhere now.
When I go out I don't need music to distract me, because I'm in the sticks. I want to hear the silence of the countryside (and there is a spot where it is totally silent - just four miles away from Nottingham city centre! You can hear the blood rushing through your ears). I need to be able to hear the bending grass as the rabbit steps over, and that satisfying slap as the pellet blats through its skull at 630
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fuck all that shit, if you want privacy online, DO SHIT OFFLINE.
Anyone else remember way back when we actually had to go face to face for human interaction because international calls cost a fucking fortune? Facebook has killed not only the art of conversation, but it has also seriously harmed the human psyche in terms of our ABILITY to socialise in what scant twenty years ago would have been considered normal modes of interaction.
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Anyone else remember way back when we actually had to go face to face for human interaction because international calls cost a fucking fortune?
Yeah, because international face to face meetings were so much cheaper than a phone call.
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uh... whoosh?
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Who cares about the damn data? Just don't let the bastards lock you up for it.
Re: Make up your damn minds (Score:2)
Yup. I agree completely. Here in Norway we've had public health care for so long, the NSA is just a front for the Norwegian intelligence agencies planted by our royal family during WWII and operating within your government ever since.
Re: Make up your damn minds (Score:2)
Yup. I agree completely. Here in Norway we've had public health care for so long, the NSA is just a front for the Norwegian intelligence agencies planted by our royal family during WWII and operating within your government ever since...
if "Technology moves entirely too fast.".... (Score:2)
No Privacy (Score:2)
online privacy is a myth (Score:3)
Think about it: if you have accounts on any website that offers it for "free", and that includes Slashdot, ANYTHING you post on them, any email you send through GMail, or Yahoo, or MSN/Hotmail, any photo you post on Facebook, any tweet you send, from the moment it hits the site and regardless of "privacy" settings, belongs to the company that owns the service. You're not a valued client to them for the simple reason that you're not paying out of your pocket for the service. What you're *giving* these companies is something far more valuable: your personal data. This they use to target ads, to collect statistical data, and yes, to track you as an individual through trackable crumbs left on your computer and through your online accounts.
Don't take my word for it, have a proper read through the terms and conditions on these sites. Somewhere in there, in not so many words, hidden in among the boilerplate, is the phrase, "WE OWN YOUR DATA".
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What you're *giving* these companies is something far more valuable: your personal data
If I don't watch their ads, how valuable is this data really ?
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doesn't matter, they're getting paid by the page impression, clickthrough referrals are a bonus.
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nice if you've got last.net email domain to validate your account on.
If it's a US company it can be served with a NSL (Score:2)
It was for the bulk of human history, too (Score:3, Insightful)
"Privacy" as formulated in 2015 is frankly a fairly modern concept. As much as people seem to assert "we used to have privacy" I suspect it was about as real as the 'Father Knows Best' prototypical TV family - ie not really.
For the bulk of human existence, we have lived in small family or clan groups. This meant that everyone not only knew everything about you, but (usually) everything about everyone you were related to, and your ancestors. Had a crazy g'great grandfather that got caught cheating on his wife? Everyone knows, and likely expects that you're not terribly faithful either. Mother was a drunk? Everyone knows, and expects you're probably a drunk too. You said bad things about the clan chief, odds are eventually he knew. You were not only responsible for what you said or believed, you were frequently called to account for it (fairly or not).
Privacy - the very concept of anonymity - was extraordinarily limited until literacy was widespread, and even then the idea that you'd write something and nobody knew who wrote it was ridiculous really until the printing press, and even then the number of people involved meant your risk of discovery probably was a steeper curve than your audience breadth until the modern era, and small-shop copy machines/mimeographs.
Re:It was for the bulk of human history, too (Score:5, Insightful)
We had more privacy simply because information was limited by a lack of technology. Pre-internet, you could often move away from your past, your drinking escapades weren't posted on somebody's Facebook feed, and when the government wanted to watch you, it required a certain degree of manpower and physical retention that meant it generally wasn't worth it for trivial details.
Yours is a broken argument (Score:1)
Don't forget that this knowledge was mutual: Everyone else knew everything about you, and you, about them just as much. Since knowledge is power, both sides knowing everything balances the power in the relationship. This gets harder in cities, and now with the internet much harder still. Thus we have information asymmetry and therefore a power imbalance. The simple fix is to make sure both sides know nothing, hence privacy.
It's a challenge because lots of previous assumptions will have to be revisited, proc
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As usual, what matters is not what has been gained or lost, but the imbalance in who is gaining or losing.
Corporations know everything about what you do. You know little about what corporations do.
The government know everything about what you do. You know little about what the government does.
This is just like the problem with automation of jobs. If jobs can be done by robots and humans can relax and have fun, that's good. If all the robots are owned by a handful of corporations, so all the profits go to th
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"buffer between consumers and companies" (Score:1)
This is well-meaning but actually a mistake, for it reinforces this power imbalance between two types of actors, (big) "companies" and (small) "consumers" where you could work on balancing the imbalance instead.
How? By working on systems that allow for everyone to be a first-class citizen within the system, having different capabilities arise from the relationships between actors rather than from their entry point to the system. As an example, classic big corp "identity" systems provide for exactly one iden
To force change... (Score:2)
attack them with loads of false data. Make their data worthless and they will have to adapt. Hopefully by moving towards strong user privacy and consent policies.
There need to be regulations ... (Score:1)
...or they can track the initial visit to a high quality proxy being run by a reputable person or company, perhaps in another country if that's what it takes.
The idea that only regulations and government can solve problems is corrosive.
"privacy protection tools" (Score:1)
One thing cool about the rich, not all of them are very smart. Business in the snake oil trade is always very good. These are the same people who buy "unbreakable DRM" also, right? What the hell, let's milk 'em for all they got.
affordable anonymity (Score:2)
If you have a name like Ichabod Rumpelstiltskin you will find it hard to hide on the internet. Change it to John or Mary Smith and you will be difficult to pinpoint. Change it to common words and searching you out will be nearly impossible. Consider words like 'and', 'the', 'if', or 'swell'. You could start a baseball team and call it Who's On First. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Privacy is for the ultra rich ... (Score:1)
and the ultra poor.
cameras and physical privacy (Score:2)
When I read the title I was thinking of cameras and such - until I read all the cyberprivacy stuff.
It seems to apply to that too.
Since poor people need to go through public places to get to food stores, private, they need to go through 2 sets of cameras.
"You have no expection of privacy in public," and, "It's private so they can do whatever they want," statements are used.
A poor person can't hire someone else and must go themselves and hence be caught on camera.
503 service unavailable (Score:1, Informative)
What the fuck is with these constant fuckups with the site the last week?!!!