The privacy wars are about to get a whole lot worse • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by anexprogrammer » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 5:26 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #74

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 y…

> Pay for things with cash when possible

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.

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

#152

Post by matt_wulfeck » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 5:32 AM UTC

tunap wrote: post #86

ryandrake wrote: post #76

> 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 b…

"They're portraying the negligent company as the victim!" Perhaps that's why Experia's little breach never made the headlines. They couldn't be framed as a victim as the guy bought all the data legally. It's less than reassuring to ponder, depending on the "how" the data is used, anyone with a shell company, a little diligence and, most importantly, cash could buy this info, too. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/03/ex…

How have I not heard of this? What a train wreck. Why steal the data when you can simply buy it legally right from the source.

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

#153

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

skewart wrote: post #135

ryandrake wrote: post #76

> 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 b…

> 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. It's funny how personal data is so clearly valuable - if it weren't companies wouldn't spend resources to hang on to it - and yet that value is so hard to define. I wonder if it would be helpful if personal information were treated like some kind of intellectual property whic…

I think this data gets more valuable in aggregate than it is individually.

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

#154

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:12 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #142

josephg wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that today nobody is responsible for data security. Developers foist the risk onto consumers, who don't have any real choice in the matter, and don't even know what the real risk profile is that they (we) are agreeing to. If you accept that somebody, somewhere needs to be held responsible for data breaches, the most sensible party is us. We have all the domain knowledge and we're the only ones who can…

So -- national building codes for software? Government instpectors who audit code? Building permits required to even write code, or modify existing code? Doesn't seem to line up very well with "Move fast and break things"

Doesn't seem to line up very well with "Move fast and break things"

Maybe "move fast and break things" isn't an unconditionally great idea.

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

#155

Post by mirimir » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:24 AM UTC

ACS_Solver wrote: post #85

superuser2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. The largest threats to your privacy by several orders of magnitude over the stuff we complain about: - 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 - Credi…

People's situations may vary, but most of the ones you list differ in two important ways. One, they need to make an effort to invade your privacy. Yeah, my neighbours could observe my daily routine, my electric company may do more than know my use of electricity, but these would take some effort, while the tech companies can data mine about millions of people at a time. And the other important distinction is that the…

OK, so we just compartmentalize online activity. I use multiple VMs, with uplinks using various combinations of VPN services and Tor. Mirimir, for example, can be profiled as well as anyone. But Mirimir is neither linkable to my official name, nor to other pseudonyms.

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

#156

Post by porlw » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:25 AM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #136

skewart wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we decide when it is negligence, and when there was nothing that could be done? As others have pointed out, that question is one that courts deal with every day in other industries. IANAL but I have some familiarity with the architecture and construction industry, where there are lots of lawsuits around negligence. My understanding is that the question is generally framed as "what would a reasonable professi…

How do architects get away with vague details when lives can be on the line? If they design the building correctly, they should be pushing to make things as explicit as possible so that when contractors make a mistake it is clear where the fault is. It seems unprofessional that they'd be pushing in the other direction.

Typically an architect's design would need to be signed off by a structural engineer before construction begins. The structural engineer would take on the liability for safety critical aspects of the design.

The architect and engineer would presumably collaborate to ensure that the design is at least clear enough to be safely built.

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

#157

Post by Joof » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:42 AM UTC

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.)

There was an attack in black hat recently called HEIST I believe that could target users via issuing a special cookie (say, through an advertisement). The only known way to combat it is to turn off third party cookies.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:42 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by bogomipz » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 8:54 AM UTC

The author states:

"Every page with a Google ad was able to both set and read a Google cookie with your browser (you could turn this off, but no one did), so that Google could get a pretty good picture of which websites you visited."

This is how cookies work. What is unique in this in the context of Google? Google didn't invent cookies. What am I missing?

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

#160

Post by vertex-four » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 9:03 AM UTC

zachsnow wrote: post #148

krupan wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, credit cards are a ridiculous necessity. I think in this case the credit card companies should be liable. I am continually amazed by the simple solution bitcoin provides to this problem: instead of me giving you an account number that you (or anyone who gets the number) pull(s) money from, you give me a number that I push money to. It's going to be a long time before that kind of change in our payment systems…

Perhaps the hack becomes tricking the consumer into pushing to the wrong address. Is that the consumer's fault? I agree that the current system is vulnerable, but perhaps we just get different hacks, not no hacks.

At least it'd be noticed instantly then.