Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people • Hacker News Board

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#71

Post by Chris2048 » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

sleepychu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble finding it but the perfect example of this is a census that collected religious affiliation (for innocent statistics) that some brave citizens went to great lengths to destroy when they came under Nazi occupation in order to try and protect Jewish residents.

While an interesting story, I don't think it is as meaningful as people try to make it here. Sure, the census might have helped Nazis quite a lot in committing atrocities. But it doesn't mean the census wasn't genuinely useful, and - more generally - you can't make day-to-day decisions on the assumption that you'll get invaded and conquered by extermination-minded people.

Are you allowed to weigh the benefits versus the costs of participating? To whom were the stats "genuinely useful"?

You don't need to weigh things against extermination explicitly, just any bad consequence, including political ones.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#72

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #46

geocar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think about whether you'd rather have your bank statement made public or a large, visualizable data set representing most of your browsing history. If someone got access to my banking details, they could do far more damage than just make my bank statements public. Now I've dealt with identity theft and credit card fraud, and I work in digital marketing, so I know which one I'd choose: Nobody is going to visualise m…

People's browsing histories are regularly used in court....

But in those cases it sounds like it was because they didn't even use private mode, were logged in, or didn't clear history. Not because LE got a subpoena for shady-ad-network.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#73

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

tiatia wrote: post #40

auganov wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a properly setup TORbrowser it will use a different tor circuit for every host. Using a [single] VPN "centralizes" your exit connections. For HTTPS enabled sites TOR is perhaps a better choice, just have to be careful of sslstrip.

I even vaguely remember that in one of Snowdens released documents, the NSA wrote in a powerpoint presentation that this setup causes head aches. Will try to find it again.

It's important to note which things are theoretically hard vs lack of tooling.

Using a VPN after Tor might defeat a bad exit node sniffing or changing content. But a VPN absolutely hurts anonymity. Plus there's no way to be sure the VPN op isn't keeping logs.

If I were at the NSA and concerned about any of this, I'd start a few VPN companies. And run Bitcoin exchangers/vendors.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#74

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

elcapitan wrote: post #22

evgen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it makes a nice story, if you think that lacking this information would have seriously slowed down the Holocaust you are sadly mistaken.

That is actually not correct. You should read "IBM and the Holocaust" to get a good account on exact that - there are good comparisons of countries that had very detailed census (typically "more organized" northern European) like Holland, where the majority of jewish population got killed, while in other countries like France it was as "low" as 25%. In France in particular there is the example of https://en.wikipedia…

Why would citizens accurately report a prohibited (or highly disfavored) religion? I can understand using existing census data, but a new census, after it's obvious what the government wants, seems not-so-useful?

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#75

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:46 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #71

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While an interesting story, I don't think it is as meaningful as people try to make it here. Sure, the census might have helped Nazis quite a lot in committing atrocities. But it doesn't mean the census wasn't genuinely useful, and - more generally - you can't make day-to-day decisions on the assumption that you'll get invaded and conquered by extermination-minded people.

Are you allowed to weigh the benefits versus the costs of participating? To whom were the stats "genuinely useful"? You don't need to weigh things against extermination explicitly, just any bad consequence, including political ones.

You are basically asking about the usefulness of demography in the society. I think it's pretty easy to imagine plenty of uses.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#76

Post by mirimir » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:46 PM UTC

It's a good piece, but the treatment of VPNs is bad. There's a new site about choosing a VPN service: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/ It summarizes a huge amount of information, for 159 VPN services.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#77

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 19, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

rkrzr wrote: post #20

TLDR: Use a VPN + Incognito mode + fake email and info The VPN hides your IP. Incognito mode prevents your cookies from giving away your identity. And the fake info helps with things like sites being hacked and the data being dumped online.

[deleted]

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#78

Post by fulafel » Thu, May 19, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

The article exemplifies why the widespread misappropriation of of the VPN term is unfortunate (in same series as "router" for NAT boxes...), it serves to confuse people about the potential of real overlay networks.

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#79

Post by Chris2048 » Thu, May 19, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #75

Chris2048 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you allowed to weigh the benefits versus the costs of participating? To whom were the stats "genuinely useful"? You don't need to weigh things against extermination explicitly, just any bad consequence, including political ones.

You are basically asking about the usefulness of demography in the society. I think it's pretty easy to imagine plenty of uses. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography

> it's pretty easy to imagine plenty of uses

To all individuals equally? weighed against individual risk?

Re: Going dark: online privacy and anonymity for normal people

#80

Post by craigds » Thu, May 19, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

xrorre wrote: post #44

I appreciate the intention of this article. Written for people only starting to change their surfing habits in light of Snowden. But the example of the tools they should use are not thought out very well. First: Freedome by F-Secure is closed source and there is no OpenVPN alternative. Always choose a VPN that has OpenVPN so that users can configure the connection to their needs. No need for this bloated mess. Second…

I don't see the point of using honeywords. I mean, I've used them a bit, but any spammer is going to strip them immediately, so they're useless for identifying which provider leaked your address, right? And now to login, you need to remember the honeyword you used to register, which is a big inconvenience for anyone not using a password manager. (Use a password manager!)