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The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

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Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#71

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

shostack wrote: post #59
Sylos wrote: post #4

I mean, it's already happening. People walk around with smartphones, tablets and laptops which constantly record audio for their virtual assistants, and I have not once consented to having my voice recorded by any of those devices.

Has this actually been verified that they are recording without people's knowledge or consent and sending that data home vs just listening locally for a specific wake up word? Don't get me wrong... I think it is horrid and the trend is worrisome, but I haven't seen conclusive proof this is happening yet.

Hey Siri is completely local. If you turn on Airplane Mode, it still works.

However, it can mishear you sometimes and thereby send a snippet of your conversation to Apple, I suppose.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#72

Post by bpchaps »

sounds wrote: post #22

I'm waiting to see if this gets traction on HN. In case it doesn't, and so I can propose something only to the few who dig to the bottom of the comments: The problem is social. A technological solution will not suffice.

Agreed. I'm working on a project with FOIA to build paths towards bulk communication records in Chicago. It's gone much better than I'd have hoped in comparison to the state it started in. If others would like to help out, I'd like to start expanding it out to all of the US. :)

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#73

Post by SEJeff »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #61
SEJeff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a somewhat spooky, but eerily relevant talk from the CEO of In-Q-Tell, the venture capital arm of the CIA he gave at a security conference not long ago: 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.

This is a great talk, the speaker details some of the ways he tries to protect his own privacy and how useless that can be.

And of all the people sans Snowden, or people like him, this guy is also in a place to know.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#74

Post by hackuser »

Frondo wrote: post #8

I used to feel strongly about not trading my privacy away for some convenience. For a long time I took a luddite pride in not being on various services, having a dumb phone, keeping it turned off, etc. Over time, though, I've found myself having a change of heart. What started as little inconveniences have turned into big ones, as I'm more and more out of touch with my peers, contemporaries, and family. I don't like…

> Companies can still track me, my data's still out there.

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.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#75

Post by Silhouette »

craigsmansion wrote: post #44
gavinpc wrote: post #21

Why doesn't Firefox ship with third-party cookies disabled? What would it break that isn't user-hostile? ( edit Chrome, IE, Safari, I understand, but privacy is one of Firefox's main differentiators.)

According to Gervase Markham of Mozilla: "If you believe you have a right to access all the free content on the Internet while blocking the ads which fund it, you continue to believe that [..]" Mozilla seems to not want to interfere with online advertising practices.

"If you believe you have a right to access all the free content on the Internet while blocking the ads which fund it, you continue to believe that [..]"

Thanks, I will. I've been using the Internet since before online advertising became a big deal. I've run web sites of varying scales, often with original content, sometimes with original content that cost a lot of time and/or money to produce. I've also contributed widely to many more web sites and other online forums. I've paid for things online. I've charged for things online.

And I've never once, in all that time, relied on ads to fund any of my or my various businesses' contributions.

Online advertising has served a useful purpose in some cases, and I sympathise with those who have chosen to rely on it as a funding model and are now losing out because of ad blockers and the like. But online advertising has also led to huge amounts of ad-ridden junk clogging up any forum it can invade. It has led to serious degradation in both the performance and the security of the greatest information-sharing medium in the history of the world. Perhaps worst of all, it has led to a culture where other ways of compensating those whose work we truly value and of discovering new material of interest are a lot harder than they might have been. None of those are positive influences, and I'm not at all sure that online advertising hasn't done far more harm than good overall, even taking into account the great value that some ad-funded content and services have offered to some people.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#76

Post by ryandrake »

> Eventually, some lawyer is going to convince a judge that, say, 1% the victims of a deep-pocketed company’s breach will end up losing their houses to identity thieves as a result of the data that the company has leaked, and that the damages should be equal to 1% of all the property owned by a 53 million (or 500 million!) customers whom the company has wronged. It will take down a Fortune 100 company, and transfer billions from investors and insurers to lawyers and their clients.

This highlights a major problem with tort law: It's monetary damages or GTFO. In other words, it's nearly impossible to make a case for damages when there is no obvious monetary aspect of the harm done. I can't sue Home Depot for giving up my credit card info to hackers unless I can prove that it led to someone running up my credit card bill. Either this needs to change, or it should be a crime for companies to release customers' personal information to unauthorized third parties.

Part of the problem is how these data breaches are framed in the media. It's always "Company X was HACKED!" and "Company Y SUFFERED a major data breach!". They're portraying the negligent company as the victim! It should be "Company A carelessly released their customers' data." or "Company B failed to protect 10 million credit card numbers." Once we stop pretending these companies are victims, we can start making and enforcing tougher privacy laws.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#77

Post by knz »

Frondo wrote: post #35
jessaustin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to give up, and I don't want to check out. 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 s…

Yeah, but the convenience is, for example, I get cheap flight tickets, Cortana picks those out of my email and adds the trip to my calendar automatically, etc. How am I going to lie about any of that? 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 signin…

Isn't being selective with what you lie about the answer to this? If you don't care that Google know about a purchase then use your normal email/credit card etc. If you want additional privacy then use methods that allow this. Privacy can be a continuum.

Given that it can probably be traced back to a mailing address and credit card these measures may be worthless anyway.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#78

Post by ryandrake »

Frondo wrote: post #39
HSO wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also try to find a compromise. If we're talking pragmatic, as opposed to ideal, my suggestions in the current environment are: 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…

If you're happy with that kind of marginal existence, then that's great. It works for 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…

It's a stretch to call that a "marginal existence". If that were true, most of us were living a marginal existence 30 years ago. Almost nobody was "online" or used E-mail, yet somehow, by some great miracle, we all kept contact with friends and family, had social connections and lives, talked to our neighbors, etc. You don't need Facebook to have a social life.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#79

Post by Silhouette »

sounds wrote: post #22

I'm waiting to see if this gets traction on HN. In case it doesn't, and so I can propose something only to the few who dig to the bottom of the comments: The problem is social. A technological solution will not suffice.

The problem is social. A technological solution will not suffice.

But technological solutions are probably necessary to some extent even if not sufficient, particularly when we're talking about communications channels where you're sharing something deliberately with one party but other parties are involved along the way.

Re: The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse

#80

Post by hackuser »

lordcorusa wrote: post #37
jgaosgxy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always disable third-party cookies and very rarely does it break something. The most recent one I remember is logging in at the Origin website (online game store). The login form at checkout doesn't load at all without third-party cookies. While I would love to browse the web with all security and privacy features enabled and things like JavaScript disabled, it breaks too much. The middle ground between security/pr…

I agree. I used to use NoScript, RequestPolicy, and BetterPrivacy, but I finally realized I was spending far more time tuning policies than I was actually using the web. And they were TOTALLY unusable by non technically inclined people. My compromise now is to use uBlock Origin (virtually never breaks anything), HTTPS Everywhere (on rare occasion breaks a site), Self-Destructing Cookies (by design cannot break sites)…

Try uMatrix, which combines many of those functions into one extension. It's by the same person as uBlock Origin.
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