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Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

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31–40 of 98 posts

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPNs, proxies, Tor, you name it.

Ooof, yeah. I was trying to make a new, purely anonymized identity. Went through an anonymized bitcoin VPN with TOR on top. Registered an email through Protonmail. Pretty much no social media platform will accept Protonmail as an address without also having a phone number. Got banned from Discord within 3 hours, literally all I'd done was send three friend requests and join one discord. My IP was rotating and I then…

And even if you can get through all this, you might eventually get locked out anyway and get told to submit a photo of your government identification.

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPNs, proxies, Tor, you name it.

Ooof, yeah. I was trying to make a new, purely anonymized identity. Went through an anonymized bitcoin VPN with TOR on top. Registered an email through Protonmail. Pretty much no social media platform will accept Protonmail as an address without also having a phone number. Got banned from Discord within 3 hours, literally all I'd done was send three friend requests and join one discord. My IP was rotating and I then…

Sorry to say, but if you act like someone you aren't, you are not going to be welcome at websites that want to know they are responding to a real person.

Basically you are acting like you have something to hide which typically is something that people up to no good would do. I'm not saying you are up to no good, but your activity mirrors as such.

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooof, yeah. I was trying to make a new, purely anonymized identity. Went through an anonymized bitcoin VPN with TOR on top. Registered an email through Protonmail. Pretty much no social media platform will accept Protonmail as an address without also having a phone number. Got banned from Discord within 3 hours, literally all I'd done was send three friend requests and join one discord. My IP was rotating and I then…

And even if you can get through all this, you might eventually get locked out anyway and get told to submit a photo of your government identification.

What websites ask for that?

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#34
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then do go to those websites. It's not a right that you have access to a website. Seek out only sites that don't block adblock, or has no ads. This might include a paid option (for example, youtube premium, or twitch subscription for ad-free viewing).

I may not have the right to have access to most of these websites but I do have the right to complain about how unethical I find it. And of course this situation has different implications if the website offers some sort of an essential service, but that's an entirely different discussion.

Is unethical the right word?

Unpleasant might fit better.

It doesn't break ethical rules to ensure ads are shown so income can be generated to pay for hosting.

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooof, yeah. I was trying to make a new, purely anonymized identity. Went through an anonymized bitcoin VPN with TOR on top. Registered an email through Protonmail. Pretty much no social media platform will accept Protonmail as an address without also having a phone number. Got banned from Discord within 3 hours, literally all I'd done was send three friend requests and join one discord. My IP was rotating and I then…

Sorry to say, but if you act like someone you aren't, you are not going to be welcome at websites that want to know they are responding to a real person. Basically you are acting like you have something to hide which typically is something that people up to no good would do. I'm not saying you are up to no good, but your activity mirrors as such.

It's just unfortunate that companies are employing precog future-crime concepts to what (should) be standard privacy approaches.

And, to be clear, I'm not acting like someone I'm not. I'm forthcoming that I have an identity, and I'm even willing to prove that I'm a self-consistent individual. I'm acting like someone that has purchased a month-to-month phone, and have signed up for a free email account, and values their internet privacy. It's become apparent to me that a number of companies discriminate against people for whom this is their only choice... heaven help you if you can't afford a proper phone (or don't have the credit to open a proper cellphone account).

As a transgendered person that's been discriminated against, I do indeed have valid reasons for wanting my most personal conversations to be secure from being used against me. There are other aspects of my private life that that would be wildly misinterpreted if taken out of context. I would prefer to keep my private life wholly separate from my public persona, and that's... harder to do in the age of COVID isolation where everything is online.

It's astonishing to me how many people just... don't care about their privacy these days. And that the bar is so crazy high to be anonymous. To the point that wanting to be anonymous for a few hours is indistinguishable from being up to no good?!

Hell, I'd have to _break_ the law and craft a truly new identity just to be able to be anonymous on some of these platforms that don't have real-world identities as a sign-up requirement.

The argument of "you're not doing anything wrong, so why be concerned about your privacy" is disingenuous. https://lifehacker.com/why-your-privacy-matters-even-if-your...

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooof, yeah. I was trying to make a new, purely anonymized identity. Went through an anonymized bitcoin VPN with TOR on top. Registered an email through Protonmail. Pretty much no social media platform will accept Protonmail as an address without also having a phone number. Got banned from Discord within 3 hours, literally all I'd done was send three friend requests and join one discord. My IP was rotating and I then…

Sorry to say, but if you act like someone you aren't, you are not going to be welcome at websites that want to know they are responding to a real person. Basically you are acting like you have something to hide which typically is something that people up to no good would do. I'm not saying you are up to no good, but your activity mirrors as such.

I think the thrust of the complaint is that the society doesn't sufficiently value privacy for its own sake.

In a different kind of society, websites of the sort that you describe would be unpopular, because users at large would place less value on the real-person guarantee than on the non-collection of their identifying information.

Closely related to this is the topic of end-to-end encryption. To withstand attacks that I expect will continue to be mounted on it, I think the society has to believe in privacy as a terminal good. The answer to the argument that "we could catch such and such criminals if we had key escrow" ought to be "yes, and not catching those criminals is a price we agree to pay, because privacy is just that valuable to us".

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if you can get through all this, you might eventually get locked out anyway and get told to submit a photo of your government identification.

What websites ask for that?

I know Twitter does this. Also saw someone mention Facebook asked for the same when they tried to delete their account. It's a mad mad world out there.

Re: Virtual Machine Detection in the Browser (2019)

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as much a choice as installing an .exe. Treat the web browser like the OS of old, because that's exactly what browser makers think of it.

True in theory but good luck explaining this to my grandma/99% of internet users. People click links freely even if they shouldn’t,

Twenty years ago they ran .exes just as freely.
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