Advice Request Online privacy

Please provide comments and solutions that are helpful to the author of this topic.

Do you care about your online privacy?

  • No

  • Yes

  • Sometimes


Results are only viewable after voting.

Deletedmessiah

Level 25
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Jan 16, 2017
1,469
I turn off the available "Improve experience" and spying settings, use adblockers. Maybe use telemetry turn off apps like O&O shutup 10 if I was using Windows 10. I deny permissions that I find unnecessary in Android phone. Nowadays thats about it. Going out of the way to ensure privacy is a hassle and I still won't able to get much privacy. I'm over the stupid privacy paranoia. Took time to realize. I'm not saying privacy is nonsense but people on the internet overreact way too much. I have many more important and bigger issues in life to deal with.
 

conceptualclarity

Level 21
Verified
Honorary Member
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Aug 23, 2013
1,072
The drug dealers at the Darknet are anonymous, otherwise they would all be in prison. Ergo: Online security is very easy to reach, but you have to make compromises. I have done a tutorial for my browser configuration.
How-to Guide - [Tutorial] Browser configuration of askalan for Firefox
At the end of this tutorial, you'll know how to properly configure your Tor browser for everyday use and then after watching you've already done something for your privacy. It's a foundation to build on.

Sorry, I've got some not so great news for Tor users.

In the USA on the weekends on the cable channel C-SPAN II there is an excellent feature called Book TV which features English language nonfiction authors giving lectures about their books. I saw a lecture by Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley, a lecture which is certainly colored by his rather peripheral political perspective*. Surveillance Valley, Feb 13 2018 | Video | C-SPAN.org (The transcript there covers only a small slice of the lecture.) Well into the lecture Levine mentions Tor browser. He says although people use it for privacy, the result is the opposite. The people who choose to go on Tor are watched very closely by aspects of the US government, presumably the National Security Agency. In fact Levine asserts that Tor was invented by the US government.

If you're a German private citizen uninvolved in international terrorism or drug trafficking or other big crime I imagine the NSA is quite uninterested in you. After the recent abuses by the Internal Revenue Service, I do not take it for granted that US government bureaucracies will play by the rule book with US citizens such as myself.


*Levine speaks as though there was something wrong with wanting to see Communist insurgencies not succeed. Considering the horrors that ensued wherever Communist insurgencies did succeed, I find his attitude to be one of willful blindness.
 

Thales

Level 15
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Nov 26, 2017
708
There is no online privacy, those trying to achieve such state are gentle ignorant dreamers...
The only thing you can do is to reduce your footprint to some extent, which means for example, avoid using your real name as much as possible.

This!

I think we should focus on security because that is achievable.
 

Daviworld

Level 2
Verified
Feb 19, 2018
60
I chose yes. Why?

Simply because you need to know your targeted threat level toward's yourself, so you can accurately assess your security posture. There is no such thing as 100% security & privacy, and everything made by human's has flaw's. Similarly, all human's can't be monitored all the time by other human's or data constantly abused due to our biological limitation's. Which is why we build algorithms, A.I, and machine's to compensate for our lack thereof.

I believe as a US citizen, I could thwart an individual hacker with limited resources and time. However, a state-backed actor with resources and unlimited time to target me with all their backdoor access, exploit's, and gag-order's, and control over the infrastructure would be much more difficult to impossible to prevent. Weather that be in-house(NSA, FBI) or out house (GHCQ, KGB, etc).

However you can make it difficult to build up a profile on you by utilizing pseudonyms, using burner phone's, prepaid card's, and paying with cash when possible. Choose and control who you want to potentially hack you, such as I would use Chinese or Russian Service's due to them not potentially wanting to share intelligence with US intelligence

Don't think you won't be hacked, there is only two target's out there. Those who have been hacked, and those who haven't been hacked yet. Backup, Backup, Backup, this will save you from almost any foul play. Think of your security posture as a first line of defense that will prevent most, not all attacks and plan accordingly.

Lastly, privacy is in a direct war with convenience in the information age. Some level of privacy is attainable, but at what cost to your convenience? So, it boil's down to what do you value more, your convenience or your privacy?
 

00alex00

Level 1
Apr 16, 2018
13
Do you care about your online privacy?

Please comment why you made your chose if you would like! Thanks.

Maybe that's weird, but I'm not concerned about privacy on a personal level. I known how to protect myself, and I am pretty careful about what I post, where I comment, or what kind of information I share.

However, I am concerned about privacy in the grand scheme of things... People are careless, and that obviously affects government ellections, helps those spreading propaganda, etc. Basically, I'm mostly concerned about those careless people who do not understand what online privacy entails because, ultimately, that effects us all.
 
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Deleted member 178

You can be totally anonymous, but it involves lot of preparations and sacrifices; which isn't worth the benefits unless you have something to really hide.
 
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