I don' think this is right. When you were being a "luddite" you probably had less data collected about you, but you couldn't see that. All you can see is the cool tech stuff you are missing out on, so you feel that keenly.
I think the reason a lot of people give up their privacy is that they feel like they have lost it already, so they might as well "Get what they can" from it. I don't think this is the right way to think about things. Not every company is sharing data with every other company (yet), so each new toy/app/gadget you used by a different company creates a new entry in some database about you.
1. Google account - I have one because it's required for Android, but I have never used Gmail, do not search from my Google account or ever log into it from my browser.
2. Facebook or any subsidiaries - never.
3. General Web browsing - reject 3rd party cookies automatically, browse with uBlock Origin, disabled JavaScript (via ScriptSafe) with selective enabling of scripts, Privacy Badger.
4. Only enter my real name online for things I explicitly need/want associated with me. Only enter my real address if actually needed for a delivery or other reason.
5. My mail client is set not to load remote images, which protects me from those 1x1 tracking images.
Many of these make the Internet a better experience, and certainly protect my privacy to a large degree. Yes, corporations have some data on me, but not much, and it's not all correct. I also don't feel I'm missing out on too much cool tech stuff, a lot of the privacy-unfriendly stuff is entirely unnecessary, for me at least, or replaced by alternatives that are not much worse.
I haven't run stock Android in a while (and instead just CyanogenMod), but I'm pretty sure that it's not actually required, i.e. you can skip account creation during setup and then install alternative app stores like F-Droid, Aptoide or Amazon.
If we include CyanogenMod or other ROMs, then it's definitely possible, though. I do own and use an Android phone and deleted my Google-account probably half a year ago...
One of the great things about Cyanogen is maintaining tight control even over Google's apps and how much they track me.
Are you sure? How much is Play Services tracking you?
I run MicroG on my own phone, personally. It's a FOSS implementation of (most of) the Play Services APIs.
Unless you are using some sort of VPN or proxy that's constantly changing your IP as you're browsing, and a browser that consistently changes or masks fingerprintable information and wipes all persistent tracking beacons, then what you're doing is not even remotely sufficient to evade tracking by any entity. What you're doing is definitely not enough to avoid Google or Facebook.
At this time I believe nothing can do this with 100% effectiveness. The closest would be to use Tor Browser and never disable NoScript and only use sites that don't rely on JS... but even then there are many theoretical workarounds, many more to come in the future, and probably various unknown techniques currently being tested or deployed.
I know enough about the technology to realize it saves me a lot of time, effort, and stress to just accept my fate. I no longer include ad networks or big tech companies in my personal threat model, even though I dislike what they're doing.
That's the reasoning I came to as well, I'm fine with certain sites using JS, session data and filling up my .cache if it's convenient.
The more I understand my fingerprint on the web the less paranoid I get. Lots of comments here advising not storing anything, or using anything... they may as well use tails as their main OS or throw out their computers entirely.
The same privacy-intense users lose credibility when they advice people to trust a bunch of add-ons instead of using system-wide blocklists in their host file or strict IDS rulesets.
On the comparatively rare occasions when I need more privacy, I do more. For instance, I tend to use Tor if I'm staying at a hotel that ties the WiFi connection to you personally - I think those connections are as bad as it gets for privacy.
And while his/any steps aren't enough to mitigate all tracking, they do mitigate a lot of tracking, which is far better than doing nothing.
Also, consider that data isn't necessarily properly associated with who you think it is. I often see suggestions that are clearly due to my wife's browsing on her own computer (which is nearly identical to mine in terms of browser fingerprinting). Obviously we have the same IP to the outside world and we share some interests, but not everything!
- Electric, gas, sewer, water, trash utilities that you basically can't live without.
- Thinking of going rustic? Better not own the land in your own name. Most places, parcels are easy to find online.
- Property management companies
- Sites that facilitate rental applications
- Your 100+ year old bank
- Credit card and auto lenders
- Employers and job application websites
- Cell phone networks
- AT&T, Comcast, and all but a handful of indie ISPs
- Insurance companies
- Retail stores and gas stations with your loyalty programs
- People who regularly enter your property like building maintenance, trash collectors (often spies for the municipal building inspector), etc.
- Cops and neighbors who can observe your daily routine
- Vital records offices that know who your families are
Hell, just yesterday Verizon gave my mom a $20/mo discount to plug something into her OBD II port. WTF else can that be for?
Facebook and Google are the kindest to your privacy. Your data is a closely guarded asset, protected by competent engineers, used to tailor your experience and show ads. All these other entities, many of which you basically have to do business with to lead a contemporary life even without social media and smartphones, know who you are, where you live, what you drive, who you care about, how much money and credit you have and how you use it, and they do not even try to keep these data in house. When the government or a PI is looking for someone, that's where they look first - to data bought, volunteered, interviewed, and stolen from every kind of company except modern tech, often through well defined and documented interfaces like LexisNexis and the credit bureaus.
Luddite doesn't do much. You have to sublet informally (usually illegal), get paid in cash (employers don't like to do this unless they are illegal businesses) under a false name (fraud), never use banking or credit, not own, rent, register, or insure any cars, buy single ride subway tickets (more expensive), and have a forgettable face (genetics?) etc. People can't even manage this when their lives depend on it. Fugitives are almost always caught these days - this is how. It's nearly impossible to avoid leaking your biographical data and physical location.
Modern tech might give more insight into your mind, I suppose, but deeper privacy than that is very hard - actors in a capitalist system are starved for information about their counterparties and work hard to get it.
And the other important distinction is that these other things are highly compartmentalized, tech isn't, especially for the kind of person likely to be reading HN. I'm sure I am not alone here in that I basically live on the Internet. I read news online, I buy the books that I read online, discuss topics that interest me, watch movies, research my medical issues, read about stocks I invest into, talk to friends and family. My complete browsing history would certainly reveal more about me than ransacking my house for all the physical items, and corporations like Facebook try to have access to that, plus more - such as your private conversations, which is why they push their own messaging services.
This is the truly scary combination. The extent to which online activities matter in your life (especially for the tech-inclined), and the ability of large companies to automatically process and analyse those activities.
Why would Verizon want to connect anything to your mom's car?
That's very strange. Could it be that they want to monitor cellphone coverage maybe? Or even monitor their competitors' coverage?
It just creeps me the hell out thinking that my telecom would like to connect something to unrelated stuff...
One thing to try, would be to lie more. We don't owe giant corporations the truth, but we especially don't owe them the whole truth. Never use your real name. Use fake addresses when you can. Use different email accounts for each site that needs one. Never use "social media logins". When you have to make payments, do so through Paypal or some other obfuscating service. Zealously delete cookies, and use whatever tech is available to help with that.
There are probably theoretical ways around this, "fingerprinting" etc. It might be like outrunning the lion, however: one might only have to be faster than some other prey, who happily stays logged into FB all the time even when ordering sex toys and vaporizers.
I've been giving city park addresses, lottery hotlines and/or obscure character names to everyone but the essentials & the guv. My first lesson in guerrilla counter-marketing came when my book club mis-typed my middle initial and I was flooded with pre-approved credit cards with said typo. My twelve year old brain was alive with all the possibilities I could buy with free cash! Apparently, without a job, a SS# and that particular middle initial, I wasn't really pre-approved. Meh.
If your answer involves paying cash for airline tickets, then we're back to the high-priced, inconvenient world I'm no longer interested in trying to maintain.
Stuffing databases with fake data is fun when you're signing up for a newspaper paywall, sure, but that's not a sustainable, long-term solution.
This is why I'm looking at law and society, that's the only way these rights will be preserved long-term.
Given that it can probably be traced back to a mailing address and credit card these measures may be worthless anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxLJExWk9GE
He mentions that we are past the point of being a luddite much mattering. Much of your activity can be inferred through activity of your friends, family, and those around you.
It's not all or nothing. Like any security (and confidentiality is one of the three pillars of security), there's no perfect solution but you can make it more costly for attackers. A few things that help for little cost:
* Use a pre-paid phone plan; don't give your identity to the telco. (Maybe not possible in all countries.)
* Use a VPN and/or Tor. Protect your browsing habits from your ISP.
* Use an ad-blocker or something like uMatrix to stop most tracking
* Pay for things with cash when possible. If it was invented today, we'd all be impressed with the technology: Complete trust between strangers, anonymous financial transactions - all implemented in paper; no encryption needed.
* Use one of the many anonymous, confidential communication services for chat, text and voice.
But I agree that the answer in the law, not technical means.
I do this. The privacy aspect is just a bonus. The main advantage is I consistently spend less and have the world's easiest to manage budget with no forgotten spending, autopayment or contactless swipe. If there's £20 in my pocket after drawing out £50 I spent £30 no matter what I remember or what stuff I now have. I'm immune to 98% of supermarket special offer junk as I draw enough for shopping not shopping + impulse junk.
Done it ever since the dot con crash and we were seriously financially challenged for a while. Fifteen years later I haven't had the least temptation to revert, despite numerous offers of higher credit limits and more cards from assorted banks. Plastic gets used 0-4 times a month - for online shopping.
Despite all the hubris about cashless I don't find it the least bit inconvenient - everywhere takes it, everywhere I spend it has a cashpoint nearby. So all that remains for card and bank is online shopping and bills.
As to the awareness group - I guess this will be controversial - but there are the Pirate Parties with privacy in the core of their ideology.
Personally I think that we'll have to give up strict privacy - it is inevitable that more and more online devices will know more and more about us - but we need some time to adjust, to find out how to make a world without this strict privacy reasonable.
All EU countries have their own intelligence services that are doing substantially the same thing as the NSA does, every day.
You can't. If you want to have the security of a democracy, you have to accept the inefficiencies of a democracy (as far as the power structures are concerned, it's pretty analogous to the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy).
I'm similar to you in many ways on privacy. If the price can come down for the Blackphone and Celluar data, I'd be all for it. It make take time though.
[1] - https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/devices/
I'm in a similar position to you. I value my privacy and think it's an important right the needs to be protected. Unfortunately you miss out on a hell of a lot of things if you are strict about maintaining it (thanks mostly to ad supported web services). I also agree that it's through laws that this can be fixed. I think generally laws just can't keep up with the pace of technological change or are made by people with almost no technical knowledge. I'm actually just about to start studying for a law degree (I'm in my late 20's) so that I can apply my technical knowledge (I've been a full-time dev for the last 7 years) to privacy law. Hence I've been researching it a lot recently. The best group I've come across raising awareness and fighting for privacy is Privacy International. It's definitely worth checking out. They produce reports on privacy rights in countries throughout the world and they fight government legislation trying to erode our privacy rights. As for legislative efforts to strengthen privacy the EU's recent changes to data protection and data use of EU citizens by companies based outside the EU springs to mind (Privacy Shield). It's not great but there is effort to improve.
This helps somewhat and is no real effort.
I find Google to useful when travelling so I use gmail for making travel reservations so Google Now knows what I am doing. So, a few times a year I let myself be tracked for convenience. Otherwise I like private email, Private calendar, etc.
I don't think privacy has to all or nothing deal. Just make choices you are comfortable with.
What I really want is a chroot jail for a browser. This shouldn't be that hard, but the GUI adds some complexity ... and I am not sure how to implement it in OSX.
I can do this immediately with vmware fusion, but that's a lot of overhead - quite expensive - for just a second browser instance. It gets even more expensive if I want a third or a fourth.
What do you mean by that? That phrase always struck me as an argument-ending non-argument. What if I disagree that you have a "right" to privacy in any meaningful way? What if I think that I have a basic human right to control the data you choose to upload to my server?
This isn't because I don't like the specific rights conveyed. Generally, most liberal rights strike me as personally quite desirable. And preferable on a social basis.
It's the latter which I think makes a better basis for arguing for (or against) rights. There are rules of behavior, including rules reserved to individuals, which seem to make for more viable societies, cultures, and civilisations. There are also, though, overabundances of freedoms which can be counterproductive -- as Will Durant has noted, if you've got a choice between an excess of order or an excess of liberty, he'd choose order, because you still have order. (Mind, I'm not entirely convinced he's correct either.)
But generally: a right (conditional, empirically-based, predicated on an increase in overall social welfare) to privacy strikes me as something which, on balance, tends to promote rather than diminish preferred function of society as a whole. And a loss of that privacy generates highly negative consequences.
I'm les
Since you can never raise enough taxes to pay for everyone's needs, there's no consistent way to implement the modern notion of rights, so it simply becomes a list of irrational demands.
The only consistent system of rights (of rights which can be granted to everyone equally), take the right to life as a fundamental, and derive other rights from that. The derivative rights in such a system are the Enlightenment-era rights, I.e, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.
I'm not even entirely concerned with rights being apparently, at least at first blush, inconsistent.
What I am concerned with is what you've just done: to elevate a single right or a single set of rights to some priveleged status, simply on a say-so. These turn out to be both exceptionally arbitrary, on close examination, and frequently dysfunctional. Take a trolly problem, or a unit in battle, or a sinking ocean liner, or any number of other conditions, with your primacy of right-to-life, for example.
Note that life, liberty, and happiness are given in the US Declaration of Independence (though not the Constitution) as unalienable rights. That is, not rights which must be granted (any two-bit punk can claim your life, a zip-tie can restrict your liberty, and a wailing child can remove your happiness), but they cannot be given to another -- unlike your property, or business income, or even spouse and children.
So no, actually, I don't find that a convincing argument, though thanks.
So the thing that comes closest is the culture and history we've been carrying with us. And that the 'right' to privacy has been a 'right' for a long time (eg. the right to private conversations and mail etc.)
Moreover you don't need new laws to have privacy. Or looked at from another angle, even if you had laws protecting your privacy you should not rely on laws to keep your private information secure.
If all real time communication were secured with endpoint-generated ephemeral keys, and all storage and store-and-forward payloads were secured with keys distributed with a web-of-trust ket distribution infrastructure, the surveillance state and other commerce-oriented snoops would have to work much much harder to glean far less information.
1) Be offline as much as possible. I have banished the webbrowser from my phone and tablets. The main computer is completely airgapped; I keep an old laptop around to go online. But I installed an app called Self-Control and use it in whitelist mode. I keep a separate To Do list for things that require internet access and when the time I set in Self-Control has passed, I do all my "internet errands" in one go. Usually does not take more than 1-2 hours/ week all in all.
2) Since you care about privacy, you already do all this but for completeness sake: ublock, ghostery, etc. are your friend. I also use an app called Little Snitch. Very useful! Obviously, I don't approve of Facebook, Google etc. but I actually went one step further and block all their properties in Little Snitch. No beacons, "like buttons" or supercookies for me, thank you.
3) Even with (2), I avoid the web as much as possible. In fact, with the exception of HN, I'm usually not on the web anymore. For news or some light magazine reading, I download the PDF editions (or have them sent to my email). For documentation and manuals, I use an offline reader called Dash. When I want to watch a video, I use youtube-dl (on my "internet groceries day"). For ebooks, I have a dedicated reader that is completely offline (needless to say, I do not sync with "the cloud"; Marvin is an excellent alternative to iBooks for reading epubs). In general, all my media library is local: Music, movies, TV shows, magazines/newspapers,…. I don't do streaming, I don't do "cloud". Storage is cheap, why give up your privacy for nothing? Unlike fking webpages, PDFs don't track your reading/thinking behind your back, you can annotate them if you want, and overall I think they offer a better reading experience compared to a webbrowser, esp. on a bigger tablet like the iPad Pro or (haven't tried but should be the same) Surface. Since I really, really dislike ads (= being told what to think, how to feel, etc) I even paste over all the ads before I read a magazine or newspaper! After a bit of practice, I can do it now in about 1-2 minutes per PDF. It's a small price to pay to keep these mercenary memes from infiltrating your mind.
4) For email, I switched to Protonmail. I understand that the NSA can hack them if they really want, but that's okay, they are not my threat model. My goal is to keep what I write in confidence from being read by Google/Gmail, Microsoft/Hotmail etc. So I usually send "pseudo-encrypted" versions to such addresses (where the reader has to enter a simple password, just to keep it from being machine-read as per default). Alternatively, I might send an encrypted PDF if it's more formal or important.
5) For more fluid, extemporaneous communications with friends and family, I mainly use iMessages. In general, Apple is your sole remaining friend among the mainstream vendors (and like I said, I'm talking pragmatic here, not ideal). If someone is on Android, there's still the cross-platform Signal app. Facebook-owned Whatsapp is an obvious no-go. I found that people usually can understand if I explain it to them why. It's like second-hand smoking, only worse. If they insist on exposing me to their "smoke" (or, negative externalities), then I cut the contact.
One last comment: If you feel like you are getting "de-synchronized" from your environment, consider that that might actually be a sign that you are detaching from the hivemind and starting to think on your own again. It's not a guarantee that you will be more (or more often) right than the crowd but at least you have a chance of thinking an interesting thought or developing your own good taste, of not being trite. So take courage! :-) I found that with a bit of effort, it's possible to keep some measure of privacy and make it a bit harder for these people to psychologically profile and manipulate you.
I don't want to lose touch with people, because I don't view my contact with people as being part of a "hivemind". I view my time on Earth as one marked by civic and human engagement, where I want to share my ideas, bounce them off other people, strive to improve my community and the world, etc.
Stepping away from that to be a hermit, intellectually speaking? No thank you--there's too much living to do.
Besides, I realize that you don't really know me at all, and are just offering your comments out in a general sense, but it's pretty presumptuous to assert that people who want to live in a connected world are less likely to think interesting thoughts or develop their own sense of taste. Silly, too.
None of the little tricks or habits I listed above leads to a "marginal existence" or makes you a "hermit". They serve to cut out the middleman, or to minimize my data trail, given that I still want the benefits of technology. Why should Google/Gmail be allowed to analyze my communications with my friends or colleagues, esp. if I'm not even using Gmail? Why should Netflix be allowed to record what I watch, when, and in what order? Why should Facebook be notified that I read article X, esp. since I am not even on their network?!
What you said therefore makes no sense to me, it's a false dichotomy.
And before you congratulate yourself publicly on your own "civic and human engagement", consider that even just ten years ago people managed to be engaged without apprising Google, Facebook, et al. about their every impulse, incessantly. Yes, you could watch a DVD, read a book, or talk to your parents and no Evil Corp. was silently adding that to its Stasi dossier about you and your predilections. Somehow life went on anyway, and nobody called you a "hermit, intellectually speaking" for that. Talk about resetting expectations, jeez…
I'm not satisfied with that kind of inconvenience. These are, ultimately, social issues, not technical ones. For me, the solution must come from society (and consequently, become enshrined in law).
Dodging the big picture privacy issue with "avoiding the web as much as possible" and "cutting the contact" doesn't work for me.
EDIT: Whoa! You made some pretty big edits there! Mark those puppies next time, mister!
I respect that sentiment, and agree with it. However, I think that it's much harder to do what you're talking about online. I would go so far as to say that the tendency of the internet is to encourage the "hivemind" and other bad practices. See, e.g., the eternal September, endless takes on how to moderate forums, algorithmic content filtering, etc...
I think the internet works great for making transactions between total strangers possible. I can collaborate on an open-source project or buy some widget. But I think that to really connect with people or improve my community or to delve deep into ideas, IRL is where it's at.
As we've seen with the NSA over the last few years, mere laws will not stop the government from spying on you (if you can convince them to implement token restrictions on government surveillance in the first place, which is not often the case).
But I still care about privacy. It's a basic human right. What I've realized is that our laws are lousy at enshrining that right--companies can largely do what they want, etc.,--and we're lousy as a society at recognizing the value of that right.
So I'm curious, are there any cities, counties, states with any sort of legislative efforts going on to strengthen the citizens' rights to privacy and ownership of data? Is there anyone we can look to as a model for "privacy and data ownership done right," something to work toward implementing at a national level?
Is there any awareness group working to raise these issues in a way that's actually accessible to the general public? (Are they doing a good job at it?)
I don't want to give up, and I don't want to check out. I like my shiny devices and assistants now, they make my life easier in little ways all the time. How can we balance that with the basic human right to own our data and retain our privacy?