Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, tunneling your web traffic to some random "VPN" provider and having all traffic flow out in the open to the internet is just defending against your last mile ISP basically. A real encrypted overlay would be a fully connected mesh between all the nodes of the network. Like IPSec was originally meant to work (transport mode, anyone being able to set up a security association to any other IP address with common PK…
Thanks. > Well, tunneling your web traffic to some random "VPN" provider and having all traffic flow out in the open to the internet is just defending against your last mile ISP basically. People use VPN services because they can't trust their ISPs. ISPs log traffic, shape traffic, share data with adversaries, etc, etc. People instead choose to trust VPN providers. Typically, there are few ISPs to choose from. But th…
Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people
121–125 of 125 posts
Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people
#122> Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people Caveat: normal people don't care about such things.
I have found that normal people are those that care most about it, once they experience that the social contract that governs private space has being violated. How many people become victims to identity theft per year? How many people end up in a bad breakup where their ex uses private information in some action of revenge? How many people get falsely accused each year by the police? Ask them if they care about priva…
The term "normal person" is referring to your average person, and the average person has not been through such an experience.
Also, the whole "once it happens to someone, they care" applies to pretty much anything. Find someone who invests a lot of their time speaking in public for any cause you can imagine. Someone who talks to audiences about the perils of alcohol, drugs, any cancer or disease - basically anything that is harmful/dangerous/deadly. How many of them do you think ever gave a second thought to their cause, before it affected their lives personally (themselves, a family member, or close friend)? Practically none of them. People generally don't care about the consequences of anything until they've been slapped in the face by it.
Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't about privilege. It is more about whether privacy is something that you are worried about or not. Most people don't care about it and don't even think about protecting it.
Anyone with curtains on their windows, or who closes the door to their bathroom cares about privacy.
Yeah, but that's "real" privacy and they understand it quite easily. Meanwhile virtual privacy is something different and more complicated.
Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Wait, did you really mean "TLD", or just "domain"?
Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do a lecture at local hackerspaces about basic security for the common person and anonymity is far down on the list. Much higher on the list are basic protection from dangers on the internet, like browser based exploits. So Noscript is one major selling point for Firefox due to most browser based exploits using Javascript. Even if you whitelist all the sites you're still more secure with noscript than without simpl…
Until my aging mother can use NoScript and still understand why many websites just don't seem to work, it isn't covering the majority use cases.
Have you explained to her that NoScript intentionally breaks websites, making them not operate as the designer intended, so that the website (and by extension the underlying computer) only does what you want it to do, and not the (potentially nefarious) activities planned by the designer?
When I try explaining this to other people, even other engineers, they usually tangent into a discussion about how paranoia and an inability to trust are unhealthy. And they stand their ground in the face of mounting evidence, insisting the designer is a humble, well-meaning person like themselves, and would have no reason for doing such evil things.