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I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

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Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#41

Post by mirimir »

ergl wrote: post #34
mirimir wrote: post #22

Huh? A "pile of privacy gadgets"? I do a pretty good job of hiding from everyone. And I don't use any "gadgets". Indeed, not using smartphones is a major boost to privacy. Otherwise, it's just multiple VMs, nested VPN chains, and Tor. All running on ~old i5 boxes that I bought used, for cash.

The irony of complaining about the author using gadgets to keep his privacy, and then going ahead and saying how you also use (software) gadgets to keep yours.

What I object to mainly about TFA is the arch tone, subtly sarcastic and defeatist, which culminates in this:

> Within three weeks, I got tired of being careful. My faraday bag is somewhere in the back of my car, because I like to use my phone for GPS and playing podcasts. I stopped wearing my Reflectacles in public. I haven’t scrubbed my old tweets away with Jumbo in a while. I use my Visa to buy stuff from Amazon, which it delivers to my house. I plugged Alexa back in. Daniel Gillmor of the American Civil Liberties Union wasn’t surprised. “I don’t think the fix to privacy is something that can be done by an individual alone, in the same way I can’t solve the pollution problem by recycling on my own,” he says.

> Until people demand a law that makes privacy the default, I’m going to try to remember, each time I click on something, that free things aren’t free. That when I send an email or a text outside of Signal or MySudo, I should expect those messages to one day be seen. And that if I ever really need privacy, I should feel a little badly about what is going to happen to Leo Selvaggio.

So basically, he's just poking fun at people who try being private. And he doesn't even mention compartmentalization. You know, the first rule of Fight Club?

I mean, I have a phone. Admittedly, not a smartphone. But I do call people. Mainly my wife and medical services, but whatever. And I do get tracked, at least by cell towers. But none of that matters, because I don't talk about Mirimir and my other personas.

I use a credit card for Amazon too. But I just don't buy anything that's linked to anything that Mirimir or my other personas are up to. Including the box that I'm typing this on, just in case some jerks are tracking firmware codes.

And the part about "demanding a law" is just foolish. We already have laws, but they're ignored all the time.

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#43

Post by thaumasiotes »

Juan_Largearm wrote: post #36
brewdad wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that it accomplishes the same thing but for every device on your network rather than having to manage host files on each device. It also works for those where editing the host file isn't possible.

It's also good for systems with hard coded domains that ignore hosts files. Windows will still connect to quite a few even if they are in the hosts file.

A DNS server can't help with that. You'd need a firewall.

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#44

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

Yizahi wrote: post #23

It is impossible to hide from big corporate. People tried (1). There is no was to block all tracking unless you go full luddite and unless every single person you know or simply met randomly does so too. Otherwise big corps would just create tracking profiles for you based on activity of others. Small recent example - remember that russian spying app FaceApp (iirk) which made aged pics out of your photos? Even if you…

> that russian spying app FaceApp

Not that I've used it myself but has this been established as fact now?

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#45

Post by mikekchar »

Yizahi wrote: post #23

It is impossible to hide from big corporate. People tried (1). There is no was to block all tracking unless you go full luddite and unless every single person you know or simply met randomly does so too. Otherwise big corps would just create tracking profiles for you based on activity of others. Small recent example - remember that russian spying app FaceApp (iirk) which made aged pics out of your photos? Even if you…

Drives me crazy: My dad takes a picture of me when I visit my parents. My mom uploads it to Facebook. My cousin tags me. Want to know where I was during my vacations to Canada and who I spent time with? It's all there for the taking and I'm not involved at all!

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#46

Post by Santosh83 »

mirimir wrote: post #35
pferde wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that only works if you compartmentalize from the very beginning, which regular people never do.

Not at all. Only from the beginning of a particular persona. Mirimir is about eight years old.[0] But I had numerous personas before Mirimir. Some you could maybe track back to, if you worked at it, and knew where to look. But some are just too old, and unconnected. I was lots sloppier, when I started going dark, in the late 90s. I even talked about it in meatspace. But gradually, I compartmentalized more and more. A…

How can you keep these various personas unconnected from each other and your 'meatspace' online identity (for family, banking etc I presume, where you simply can't avoid it) with the emergence of browser and device fingerprinting? Also do you always go online through each persona from behind a different VPN IP address so they can't be correlated (except by your VPN provider of course)?

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#47

Post by pferde »

mirimir wrote: post #35
pferde wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that only works if you compartmentalize from the very beginning, which regular people never do.

Not at all. Only from the beginning of a particular persona. Mirimir is about eight years old.[0] But I had numerous personas before Mirimir. Some you could maybe track back to, if you worked at it, and knew where to look. But some are just too old, and unconnected. I was lots sloppier, when I started going dark, in the late 90s. I even talked about it in meatspace. But gradually, I compartmentalized more and more. A…

Well, I actually can see where you're going with this, since my HN account is completely disconnected from almost anything else I do online, or even offline.

Apart from the privacy benefits, however, I feel that it is a net negative, because it prevents me from sharing here a lot of interesting stuff that happens in FOSS projects I am a part of, or at work.

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#48

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

mirimir wrote: post #33
LilBytes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really, really not _that simple_. The majority wouldn't know what VirtualBox and Whonix is, and that's before we start discussing what the benefits of privacy even are. This is the disconnect we have with our peers who don't work in software/IT and why the right to privacy is being lost to jargon and technical expertise. Privacy now is only a right to those who know how to employ it.

Well, TFA is loaded with "gadgets" that I've never heard of. It could just as easily pointed to VirtualBox and Whonix. Or even running VPNs in host and VM to give a simple VPN chain. The AirVPN and IVPN clients for Windows are pretty much leak free. And dead simple. Buy account, download client, install, and run. And for Whonix, it's just download and install VirtualBox. And then download Whonix, import into VirtualB…

Well I've never heard of Whonix, AirVPN or IVPN, so I guess that invalidates those too?

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#49

Post by Santosh83 »

pferde wrote: post #32
LilBytes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really, really not _that simple_. The majority wouldn't know what VirtualBox and Whonix is, and that's before we start discussing what the benefits of privacy even are. This is the disconnect we have with our peers who don't work in software/IT and why the right to privacy is being lost to jargon and technical expertise. Privacy now is only a right to those who know how to employ it.

Hasn't that always been the case throughout the history, though? Everyone always knew everything about everyone else in the village, or neighboring villages. Only the select few knew and cared enough to keep their affairs hidden. Except that now the technology has packed the entire world into a single "global village".

No the power dynamics has shifted. In the old days it is true that everyone pretty much knew lots about each other in a specific locality. But now a relatively small group of people (i.e. the big corps, ISPs and various 3-letter agencies) know everything about everyone in the whole world, more or less. This kind of power is unprecedented in human history.

Re: I Tried Hiding from Big Tech in a Pile of Privacy Gadgets

#50

Post by fit2rule »

colordrops wrote: post #3
oscilloscope wrote: post #2

Since this was about devices and ad-blocking, I expected the Pi-hole to make an appearance. But alas, the author used Brave browser. https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/blob/master/README.md

Brave works. Lots of propaganda on here against Brave for some reason. It's open source based on chromium with all the Google bits taken out, and it has built in ad blocking. So there's an opt-in crypto coin, so what.

> Lots of propaganda on here against Brave for some reason.

Lots of people on HN make money with ad networks or are otherwise invested in the concept of harvesting user data.

Same thing happens with GDPR.

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