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Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

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Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#81
post #78

The article exemplifies why the widespread misappropriation of of the VPN term is unfortunate (in same series as "router" for NAT boxes...), it serves to confuse people about the potential of real overlay networks.

Please say more about "the potential of real overlay networks".

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#83
post #34
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it sad? I live in the moment and I'm very happy. I'm not saying everyone should be like me though.

It's sad because it seems to treat the entire future as a kind of lost cause, which to me is primally saddening, like nihilism or solipsism.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I care about privacy for other peoples' sake and partly for my own. But my own personal future is a non-issue. The future of the world is not.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#84
post #41

> Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people Caveat: normal people don't care about such things.

Privacy is for everyone, not just the privileged few.

Privacy doesn't even work that well until you get it to be common practice. Otherwise, practicing privacy is just a big red flag.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#85
post #80
post #44

I appreciate the intention of this article. Written for people only starting to change their surfing habits in light of Snowden. But the example of the tools they should use are not thought out very well. First: Freedome by F-Secure is closed source and there is no OpenVPN alternative. Always choose a VPN that has OpenVPN so that users can configure the connection to their needs. No need for this bloated mess. Second…

I don't see the point of using honeywords. I mean, I've used them a bit, but any spammer is going to strip them immediately, so they're useless for identifying which provider leaked your address, right? And now to login, you need to remember the honeyword you used to register, which is a big inconvenience for anyone not using a password manager. (Use a password manager!)

If you primarily use honeywords, then you can filter out anything going to craigds@host.tld as spam. The hard part would be transitioning people you want to communicate with to craigds+{family,friends,correspondence}@host.tld.

Optionally, retain craigds@host.tld for personal and professional communication/correspondence, and move everything else to craigds1+{something}@host.tld (or a different host).

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically asking about the usefulness of demography in the society. I think it's pretty easy to imagine plenty of uses. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography

> it's pretty easy to imagine plenty of uses To all individuals equally? weighed against individual risk?

Here are some things people were targeted over in the past:

- generic wealth level - generic education level - living in a particular area of the country - disabilities - having small children

You could probably find more examples like those if you browse the history of humanity. The point is, you can be targeted over anything, and you can't predict what it will be in advance. The Nazis exterminated members of religious minorities and different sexual orientation, which was somewhat unusual in history. The Soviets killed people with high educational credentials and with lots of wealth. Who knows what the next evil empire will pick as an excuse to murder people?

You can't run a society on the assumption it's doomed and everyone will get massacred. That some particular demographical data will be used to select and murder people is a low-probability hypothetical. That it is useful for managing a country right now is a fact. I get one not wanting to be oversharing about oneself, but I don't think that a remote possibility that a piece of demographic data will be used for evil purposes is grounds for ditching censuses altogether. This is not something we should be paranoid about.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#88
As I am cranking away on some Go services on my laptop on my local coffee shop wifi, I see log entries popup of people trying to access php pages.

I go and ask the staff, and they said their POS is full of some weird software.

a good VPN provider is worth it, but finding one that will not keep logs on you is another story.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#89
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the point of using honeywords. I mean, I've used them a bit, but any spammer is going to strip them immediately, so they're useless for identifying which provider leaked your address, right? And now to login, you need to remember the honeyword you used to register, which is a big inconvenience for anyone not using a password manager. (Use a password manager!)

If you primarily use honeywords, then you can filter out anything going to craigds@host.tld as spam. The hard part would be transitioning people you want to communicate with to craigds+{family,friends,correspondence}@host.tld. Optionally, retain craigds@host.tld for personal and professional communication/correspondence, and move everything else to craigds1+{something}@host.tld (or a different host).

I just bought an entire TLD for signups/spam and made it a catchall. One positive is I know when companies are breached often before they announce it as my pagerduty@domain.com told me a little while ago.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/31/incident_managers_pa...

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#90
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of digital chaff: publishing huge amounts of completely erroneous information about yourself and everyone else means that no one knows what to believe anymore. Shouldn't a service like this exist?

What would this look like? Maybe a bot that went to dodgy sites, and signed up for accounts in your name, with random-but-valid data? Maybe it would go into comment threads, Google the title, and post a blurb paragraph from a top result? Use karma and elastic search to machine learn which sites and topics to post? It might even respond to questions with the specific random data for that site from when it signed up, t…

I mean, what you describe is most comments on Youtube or anywhere really. Can't we just pay a measly sum to some troll and let them run loose with a bot network conditioned on the fever-rants of 4chan/b/? Would this make the net worse? Could we tell?
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