Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree entirely. Being a young white male with some moderately conservative ideals in [West coast city] makes you entirely unlikable by most people who find out. This is my first hand experience. Being conservative is the new taboo.
In Russia you can get to prison for being gay. In West Coast US a few people might refuse to date you. These don't seem like the same thing.
Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
181–190 of 196 posts
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#182Just my own opinion, but at this point I think it's prudent to assume that pretty much anything you send out into the digital network world is public. If it's not something you would want the world knowing you said, don't put it out there. Security breaches happen. Bugs happen. Sometimes law enforcement just comes by and says, "Give me everything that user X has ever done." In short, sh!t happens. "Everything I do on…
I'm often surprised how much people share via Slack as if it's an impenetrable fortress: perfect for pasting admin passwords, keys, and incriminating opinions and business secrets... if that floodgate ever opens then it will be a crazy time for us devs!
Good time to remind that hacks notwithstanding, Slack private messages can in many occasions not be private by design (and so shouldn't be considered private to begin with): https://mashable.com/2017/10/26/slack-dms-private
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm often surprised how much people share via Slack as if it's an impenetrable fortress: perfect for pasting admin passwords, keys, and incriminating opinions and business secrets... if that floodgate ever opens then it will be a crazy time for us devs!
Security is always a matter of cost vs. benefit, i.e. you need to weigh the cost of the risk (likelihood * impact) with the benefit of the action. For example, I have shared credentials on Slack before, but that's because said credentials were for a non-critical system, and if hackers somehow a) hacked Slack and b) identified the information I shared and used it, the only thing they would get their hands on would be…
Sharing credentials is not a problem. The more critical ones are probably rotated regularly anyway. But it'll be fun to see all the dirty laundry getting aired publicly if and when Slack gets hacked.
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#184Just my own opinion, but at this point I think it's prudent to assume that pretty much anything you send out into the digital network world is public. If it's not something you would want the world knowing you said, don't put it out there. Security breaches happen. Bugs happen. Sometimes law enforcement just comes by and says, "Give me everything that user X has ever done." In short, sh!t happens. "Everything I do on…
> at this point I think it's prudent to assume that pretty much anything you send out into the digital network world is public So....what? I can't do my banking online? I can't send private correspondence? I can't file my taxes electronically? I can't pay my medical bills online? (Actually all my medical information are put online my insurance co.; I'm pretty sure I can't do anything about that.) I'm not saying you'r…
It leads to a very practical conclusion: don't be surprised when you find out that some or all of the above data is known by third parties.
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
"obviously not true" If you want privacy, you must first have security, and no system is secure. I mean, just for starters, there are a constant stream of zero day exploits in OSes and Browsers that would allow me to install a keylogger on your computer, completely undetected. So why are you so anti-cynical? The situation is dire. I highly recommend "Daemon" and "Freedom" by Daniel Suarez, who was a Security Consulta…
I think you're right in principle but too binary and extreme. You sort of make it sound like people think the internet is completely secure, and you're encouraging them to assume it's completely insecure. In reality it's more like fairly skeptical people using a secure-ish internet. If you're pretty obscure and conservative you're secure enough in practice.
Once upon a time, a country started killing their own citizens. Because of some ancestry they had, or disease, or were a member of some religion, or they used their genitals in a certain way, or co-habitated with someone like that.
Oh wait, that's happened again, and again, and again.
Which specific kinds of people were the targets has changed repeatedly over the years. Literally no one has an absolute guarantee that either they, or their family or children, are without a shadow of doubt free from this concern ever happening to them.
We thought we were anonymous. We thought we were secure. We underestimated how easy it would be to track, correlate, and analyze us.
None of us are safe. None of us have the privacy or security we should.
> If you're pretty obscure and conservative you're secure enough in practice.
You're ignoring the black swans of politics, hackers, militias, etc.
Yes, sure, we're probably all 99.99% safe. But 3 billion people are online. That math alone says 300,000 of the people online are not safe.
Do you really think we're 99.99% safe?
I think we're already tagged and manipulated like cattle. I already think that mega-corporations know entirely too much. I think we're already not safe. Equifax leaks alone prove that to me.
Heck, later down the HN front page today:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/wifi-firmware-bug-affects-lapt...
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
""If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."" ... Says the billionaire to the gay man in Nigeria who could be killed if this were public knowledge? ... Says the billionaire to the journalist with private sources doing legit work? ... Says the billionaire to the person who votes 'ABC' but works in company who votes 'XYZ' and hate those 'ABC voters' an…
I think everyone here is misinterpreting what I meant, and I take full responsibility for that. I think we thought of computers and the internet as our allies in privacy. They are not. They are our enemies. I think we should stop trusting computers, any computers, as much as we possibly can. Especially if you're in a minority that your government may try to punish. --- I care deeply about all those people. I hate tha…
"All that needs to happen is all of human nature needs to change"
No, just some legislation, policies, some new architecture, possibly some technology changes.
If the government for example banned any org from collecting any personal information at all without specific explicit permission, and applied the same to sharing, it would quite fundamentally change the landscape.
In fact, just taking a 'closed' approach to privacy instead of 'open' in most systems, then most privacy problems would be addressed.
Obviously, a 'hacker' could steal stuff, but those are generally marginal cases, and there's no reason that we need to live with that either.
How often to hackers steal money from your regular banks? Not very often. If we treated personal information like private data then we'd be living in a new world, about the 1990's.
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think everyone here is misinterpreting what I meant, and I take full responsibility for that. I think we thought of computers and the internet as our allies in privacy. They are not. They are our enemies. I think we should stop trusting computers, any computers, as much as we possibly can. Especially if you're in a minority that your government may try to punish. --- I care deeply about all those people. I hate tha…
"All that needs to happen is all of human nature needs to change" No, just some legislation, policies, some new architecture, possibly some technology changes. If the government for example banned any org from collecting any personal information at all without specific explicit permission, and applied the same to sharing, it would quite fundamentally change the landscape. In fact, just taking a 'closed' approach to p…
"Click here to surrender your privacy so you can see pictures of cats."
->clickPeople will click the button ever time.
I think human nature needs to change.
Or else we need to work our asses off to invent better technology, but we're nowhere close.
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Russia you can get to prison for being gay. In West Coast US a few people might refuse to date you. These don't seem like the same thing.
https://www.google.com/search?q=moscow+gay+club
You can also Google for prostitution services in places in the US where they are illegal.
Pretty sure I don't need to link to the California Republican Party website.
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sorry, but what? Are you suggesting that being conservative in the United States is somehow equivalent to being gay in Russia?
Yep. Assuming you live in SV, would you like to disprove me by putting a TRUMP 2020 sign on your lawn?
Sure, because that won’t have me thrown in jail or possibly even killed.
Re: Twitter warns that private tweets were public for years
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
This advice works great if a person is in a majority. The problem happens when a person is in a minority. Imagine if in America in the 1910's a person has a reasonable dissenting opinion like, "I think all citizens should have equal civil rights." If I was there I would be hesitant to attach to this opinion to my public identify. Especially if my employment relied on me voicing an opinion in agreement with the majori…
> This advice works great if a person is in a majority I think you mean “group with dominant social power”; that's often confused with majority because of the predominant pattern of race/ethnic/religious (but not economic class) oppression in Western Europe and North America, but consider apartheid South Africa.
That's a great point. It makes more sense to use "group with dominant social power" instead.