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The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

commit.pizza

111–120 of 261 posts

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My grandmother never locked her door when she was at home This whole 'golden age' of Sweden is just such a bunch of bs. Take a look, for instance, at this article about a part of central Stockholm which is now extremely expensive real estate: https://skarn.se/hans-marmbo/ (in Swedish) I thoroughly recommend running the page through Google translate or DeepL for an insight into the reality of Stockholm just 50 years…

yeah, and that was literally front page news and was an incredibly unusual event. Furthermore, Östermalm has always been a place full of somewhat disreputable people, even though it ended up a place where relatively rich people lived. Notice that the story you're talking about involves prostitutes and all sorts of deranged stuff. These people may have been associates of the upper class, but there is a reason we Swede…

> that was literally front page news and was an incredibly unusual event.

My point wasn't about the specific case (obviously multiple horrific murders are not a common occurrence), I meant the general milieu of drug addiction, law-breaking, prostitution; the disgustingly dirty slum conditions that people lived in - all of which was accompanied by police corruption and brutality.

Naturally none of this is popular to bring up in front of Swedes nowadays.

As I see that the downvote of my Swedish-negative comments speaks volumes about how much you guys value freedom of expression.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, and that was literally front page news and was an incredibly unusual event. Furthermore, Östermalm has always been a place full of somewhat disreputable people, even though it ended up a place where relatively rich people lived. Notice that the story you're talking about involves prostitutes and all sorts of deranged stuff. These people may have been associates of the upper class, but there is a reason we Swede…

> that was literally front page news and was an incredibly unusual event. My point wasn't about the specific case (obviously multiple horrific murders are not a common occurrence), I meant the general milieu of drug addiction, law-breaking, prostitution; the disgustingly dirty slum conditions that people lived in - all of which was accompanied by police corruption and brutality. Naturally none of this is popular to b…

I don't have enough comments to be able to downvote, so it's not me and it's far from certain that it's a Swede. This is a forum very few people from here frequent.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#113
There is not much good in making the data public. For example, information about salary helps scammers to pick "fat" victims. A perfect victim is someone in their 60s-70s who had a good salary once and probably has savings. The crime rate might be low in Sweden but this information can be used by foreign scammers.

Also this information can be useful for foreign spies (for example to find employees of companies doing work for defence).

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#114
post #63

Initial reaction: WTF?! The more I think about it though, the more I'm aligned with the idea — except the home address part, that's just mental and dangerous. So all your details like salary, social security number, etc. are public. What's the end result? For me, nothing. I _could_ care less, but not by much. I know people get all worked up about things like their social security number being exposed, "because fraud!…

> So all your details like salary, social security number, etc. are public. What's the end result? For me, nothing. I _could_ care less, but not by much. I'm pretty sure my antisocial neighbor would consider robbing me if he knew my net worth.

Net worth is not public, "only" your taxable income.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#115
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, out of those trillion ways, how many actually happened? This Swedish info is actually public since quite a while, and I have yet to hear of lives destroyed. I'm not saying it cannot be, just that I didn't hear.

This makes me wonder why ordinary people are not swatted, police called on them, deliveries made in their name, etc. in Sweden when a country that doesn't have such public records like USA has this so regularly several people have died.

Swatting doesn't work in any other country than America because in any other country than America, the police won't immediately murder someone based on a phone call.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#116

One upside of everyone's name, date of birth, address and personal ID number being public knowledge in Sweden is that organisations don't treat knowing any of those as proof of your identity. It's absurd how that's not the case in other places.

This is a really nice benefit. It honestly was weird coming from a country where knowing the social security number alone lets you take over someone's life and as such is highly regulated and locked down. The first time a random site prompted me for my personnummer I had a heart attack.

But once you adjust to it for a second, it's quite nice. My personnummer is public info, and that's fine. With just that number alone, you can't do jack shit. Everywhere it's used online requires you to confirm/sign an action with BankID, or requires a valid ID and physical presence IRL. That's not to say it's impossible to social engineer your way into getting a BankID issued to you for your victim, but it's on the level of "getting someone's social security number" in other countries hard. Any site using BankID for auth doesn't get access to the cert so they can't leak it, and you can revoke your BankID for individual authenticators (like your phone) which you can't do with an SSN.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#117
post #49

I was biking in the northern Sweden and stopping by a restaurant. I left my luggage on my unlocked bike outside while going in for lunch for an hour. Nothing strange about that, why would anyone steal a bike? Noone locked their bikes! Instead of saying openess is bad, let's say what kind of society you would like to live in and then work towards it. Personally I would rather not have a bike lock, nor door lock.

> Noone locked their bikes!

Wow this is a surreal comment. More than 65,000 bikes are reported stolen each year in Sweden [0] - but this is just the tip of the iceberg, as a stolen bike is so common that hardly anyone even bothers reporting it.

[0] https://bra.se/statistik/statistik-utifran-brottstyper/cykel...

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#118
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 35-40 years ago. My grandmother never locked her door when she was at home, for example, even in 2020, because she'd lived so long in society as it was that she literally couldn't believe that it could end up as it had; and this wasn't due to stupidity. It was actually safe and normal once.

Do you mean when she wasn't home? Or is it customary to lock you're home even when you're home now?

Yes, these days we lock our homes even when we're home.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#119
post #45
post #35

IANAL but in EU the EU laws override member laws. So, since GDPR if you want your info to be removed you' ll be able to do it. Of course maybe you' ll need to go to EUCJ to acheive it

He says the Swedish government ignores GDPR complaints, because they're unconstitutional. I don't understand how that could work though. I mean, unless EU laws are like "You must follow these laws! Unless you don't want to".

Member states often don't fully follow EU law. Yes, it's theoretically forbidden, but only the most extreme cases lead to repercussions.

Re: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal?

#120
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The barrier to be accepted is very low. And there is another, lower "mark" as well called "Sekretessmarkering" ("Privacy mark") which can give you similar benefits and has even lower barrier. Or are you saying you did apply for this and it wasn't successful?

As mentioned previously, I applied and got denied. For obvious reasons I don't really want to go into details, but the experience I have of the swedish police force is that it is completely meaningless to even report things to them.

In the UK the next step would be to approach either the Police and Crime Commissioner (an elected person who oversees the local Police service), or the local Member of Parliament, or to seek a Judicial Review via the courts.

If you’re genuinely at risk then surely this can be established and must become actionable?

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