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Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

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Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#61
post #10

One interviewee had a credit card in a fake name. How legal is that exactly?

A lot of people get a credit card, and then just get add a fake name to that account. Which is not really a great method of anonymity.

I'm 99% sure it is illegal to get a credit card by supplying false information.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#62

> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them," This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on ever…

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-ph...

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#63

Basically, if you can be observed by a person, then you can definitely be "tracked" by a computer. The thing is, I've never been that upset about this. Technology has only made something that was possible into something that's now feasible , namely observing the public actions of many people to determine what they're doing. I've always known, even as a kid, that if we scattered many small detecting devices (cameras,…

It's the exponential reduction in the resources required to accomplish visibility in public actions which is "new". Sure, you could pay someone to follow another person around in public. Now you don't have to, everyone's followed already. The availability of ALPR data to whoever wants to know the last location of a car was one of the more interesting things in the DEFCON presentations around this.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#64
post #32
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you paid cash for that house, the tax records can be public.

If you can afford it, you pay to found a private company, and have that purchase the house. Preferably with cash, and have the company registered in an offshore tax haven.

Even the 'onshore' tax haven of Delaware allows anonymous corporations.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#65
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of that is that people who don't provide that information are going to be grouped into a pool of relatively high risk people and be forced to pay higher bills. And the incentives line up such that, if you're better than the average non-sharer of personal information, you'll be significantly better off switching to being a sharer, which in turn increases the risk profile of the remaining non-sharers. And…

Is this what happens today with car insurance? I don't think that's the case. Insurance companies offer "good driver discounts" all the time. What's the difference?

Yes, in theory it's just an extension of existing principles, and it will be a fast but gradual process grounded in practices that existed throughout the 20th century or even longer.

Technology changes things, though. A bullet might be considered just a better arrow, and a car a more efficient horse. But that doesn't mean they didn't radically uproot tradition and shared moral convention.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#66
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior. And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willf…

Aaaand that is why single payer means more freedom and not less, as the tinfoil/tebag axis would have it.

I couldn't imagine the government collecting that data on us and using it to change behaviors.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#67

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t." Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like th…

What does "recently" mean? I've been reading exactly this anecdote for years now. Always with the same unnamed insurance executive.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#68

> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them," This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on ever…

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-ph...

How do we get from "hash of the image" to "unique face identification of everyone in the image"?

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#69
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior. And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willf…

Aaaand that is why single payer means more freedom and not less, as the tinfoil/tebag axis would have it.

Until you start getting denied treatment for "risky behavior." Oh, and the ad hominem makes you look like an idiot.

Re: Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

#70
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires That's the first I've heard of it myself, although it seems inevitable since one of the biggest selling points of RFID tags is for inventory management. We are likely to see RFID tags everywhere we currently see barcodes. http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10492011/why-... But... to get back to the RFID in tires thing there is more to it than just that. Curr…

Reading about direct TPMS, it's a shame that the sensors have to be battery powered. I was excited for a minute, thinking maybe they manage to power the device with radio waves, the same way a passive RFID chip replies using power harvested from the query.

Or some other creative solution for supplying power. I mean, it's a shame these devices don't regularly experience some kind of predictable motion that could be used to generate electricity.
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