Data Privacy

Treasure Rotten Scanner wrote: »

I don't get that at all. Nothing online from me would help any hacker in any way. You'd want to be very naïve to post things on line that could be of value to anybody who might access your data. My online presence is most certainly not a trust relationship nor indeed any kind of relationship at all.

An online presence has a value. If somebody hacked your Facebook page and then interacted with your friends, purporting to be you, how many of them would know this? That's a trust relationship right there. People believe that it's always you posting on your Facebook page despite having no real evidence to support it.

There was the old and much used Gmail hack which sent mails to your contacts saying the user had been robbed on holiday and asking friends to send them money. A lot of poeple fell for that scam and sent money to the hackers.

Many people use the same passwords for their various online presences and one hack can lead to more. The easy one to spot is if there is some overt activity like changing passwords or sending mass mails. But in recent years, hackers have stayed dormant having hacked in and intercept emails that have a financial value. For example somebody booking a holiday and getting an email giving the payment details would not question this if they were expecting such an email. The payment could then be redirected to the hacker.

Penny Tration wrote: »

You sound like my OH's brother, OP. He deleted his online social media accounts, won't use WhatsApp or other messaging services, not even text messages, and exclusively uses protonmail for communicating.

As a result, he doesn't speak to his family much because none of them are arsed to install special sh!t to speak to him.

WhatsApp has end to end encryption. It's probably one of the most secure methods of communication. Not even WhatsApp themselves can read your messages and they are not stored anywhere except on your device.

Penny Tration

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

An online presence has a value. If somebody hacked your Facebook page and then interacted with your friends, purporting to be you, how many of them would know this?

Every one of them would know because I pretty much never reply to messages

seamus

Karson Stocky Guru wrote: »

Steal your identity
Impersonate you
Blackmail you

The government. You're talking about the institution which basically defines what "identity" is. If they wanted to impersonate me they don't need to go trawling through my social media accounts. Between the revenue database and the passport office they have everything they could possibly need to steal my identity and "be" me.

And like any other sane person I don't stick anything online which could be used to blackmail me. I don't even have anything privately stored which I think could be used to blackmail me. My P60 or bank statements are about the most sensitive pieces of data I have.

What if you did something and talked about it and in the future it's illegal and you are retroactively punished?

If the government of the state in which I lived had taken such a draconian step which is in violation of basically all human rights treaties, I would be less concerned about my privacy and more concerned about getting my family to another country.

As Srameen says, there is due care and diligence, and then there's being paranoid about things which have an extremely low likelihood of occurring.

StupidLikeAFox

First they want to read your browsing history, no hassle, who cares. Then they monitor your facebook, sure so what, I want relevant ads. Then you share location, contents of emails etc. Eventually your whole world becomes digital. They digitise the monetary system - no cash. A law is passed to say your phone is now your digital ID - and must be carried at all times. The newspaper of record becomes digital (and can be altered). Governments records and laws are only recorded digitally (so can also be altered). Meanwhile they have built up a profile of you, your interests, your flaws and vices. As more people begin to get all their news from a service like Facebook, Google begins to only show the correct results they can begin to shape public opinion by feeding you the "correct" version of the truth. If you are seen as an aggressor or fit an undesirable profile, they can make you a social pariah by turning others against your viewpoint. They can apply some data analytics to identify who is most likely to commit a crime, and arrest people in advance. "I know you didnt't do anything son, but the data doesn't lie"

By now, Emperor Trump now has a stranglehold on the whole western world, nobody really knows the scale of it because there is nobody reporting it. You feel there may be something up, there may be others who feel the same but you can't organise because there is no way to communicate with others, and they are tracking everyones location anyway, they can monitor if these aggressors are congregating and shut it down.

This is a very extreme example but I do feel we are sleepwalking into a version of it.

nozzferrahhtoo

Karson Stocky Guru wrote: »

I am just wondering do any of you care at all about data privacy and do you think people should take it more seriously.

I think they should probably take it more seriously in the same way you should probably take it less seriously. I do not think it is an issue we should just ignore and fail to push for ethical standards on, but I also do not think it an issue worth obsessing over TOO deeply either to the point you become "that guy" who berates all his friends every time you meet them.

Karson Stocky Guru wrote: »

I simply counter this by telling them to hand me their phone, laptop and keys to their house. They have nothing to hide right? Nobody ever gave me their phones or data so I think the point is clear.

I think your analogy fails for a couple of reasons.

Firstly you seem to use lines like "The government reading all my messages". Do you actually believe they do? Do you imagine them sitting down and reading message after message from everyone's phones?

Come off it. The sheer ENORMITY of the quantity of data alone would make this impossible. Let alone that most of it will be mind numbingly mundane... petty.... and meaningless without context. I webhosted an irish chat room for awhile once and it did log every message public and private before people really cared about that kind of thing. And I can tell you now sheer quantity alone..... let alone the sheer inanity of just about all the content...... would render any parsing and processing of it by an actual human simply impossible.

So no I do not expect anyone is literally sitting there reading your messages. There may be algorithms scanning your messages for consistent use of certain keywords and patterns, but that is not even remotely comparable.

Secondly I mentioned above "context" and context is everything. I can not think of a single message or email I have written that it would bother me if some semi official in an office was sitting there reading them. Most of it would have no meaning to them, and what little did I honestly do not care. But a friend reading them would actually have the context to parse my messages in a way more than mere meaningless words in a text.... but in a way that would render it personal and invasive.

So no, I do not see people handing your their phones and house keys as even remotely analogous to the Data Privacy issues that are bothering you. And therefore I do not think their refusal to hand over their phone or keys is making the point you think it is making. At. All.

But if you are worried about mindless algorithms trolling your content for certain key words and patterns against your wishes then you should simply mess with their minds and constantly find ways to USE those keywords and patterns in order to bugger their algorithms. If everyone started doing that tomorrow, their algorithms would be well buggered.

Could you imagine what would happen to their algorithms if even 1% of americans tomorrow made a point daily of signing off some emails or messaging app messages with "allahu akbar" "Death to Obama" "the west will pay" or periodically downloading random copies of Dabiq?

But when I see rhetoric like "they are reading all your messages" I only see people trying to be emotive and scare mongering when the reality is likely massively different to what those words evoke.

But all that said, as I said above, data privacy is not something we should not care AT ALL about either. We should be pushing for good and ethical legislation and practices on this all the time. And a certain level of common sense and caution applied to what you do and say on line pays anyway. I constantly operate under the assumption that any words I write on line and hit "submit" are "out there" and out of my control forever. Some small level of awareness goes a long way.

Karson Stocky Guru wrote: »

I think you should too. *******is a paid service and ***** is free.

Just edited the names out of your post there. You know.... just in case this is less of a rant about data privacy and more of a case that you are on commission

Your post started to read a little like a paid endorsement at the end of a podcast or vlog for a minute there.

Karson Stocky Guru wrote: »

Also a lot of people simply cannot fathom the idea of paying for software services which I find quite sad. An app can only cost as little as 2€.

Not just software. People have gotten used to the idea that content is free too. Sam Harris write and speaks well on this in his blog and podcast. Talking about the ways in which people providing content have to finance it.

Often by click bait adds or product endorsement. He himself wants to use neither so he has gone for a patreon style model as well as the AMAZON AFFILIATE PURCHASES model. Patreon seems good though in that you can do monthly donations if you like, but also per podcast donations (with a cap).

But Harris claims he has about 2% of his follower/subscriber base who actually contribute anything at all, and most of those are low contributions like a dollar a month. So yes we have become VERY used to the free content model for content and software. And this has good sides and bad.

It is certainly good when people like John and Hank Green and many others can produce good quality on line educational content on everything from science to literature. Much of that content being adopted, and used, by teachers in schools and so forth..... not just for their educational value on specific topics.... but for their ability to generate interest in those subjects as a whole.

draiochtanois

This post has been deleted.

[Deleted User]

draiochtanois wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Oooo-oooo-ooo do me do me! You could be the boards.ie version of a /whois command - where we feed you a username and you summarise their entire post history.

Arthur.beaker

draiochtanois wrote: »

Your post history here indicates:

You graduated from M.Sc. in Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing in TCD.

You speak German fluently and have lived in Munich before

You worked for a German car company in China

One doesn't need to be in the CIA and FBI to track you down ...

Plus we know that he (or she) has at least 3 testicles.

[Deleted User]

Arthur.beaker wrote: »

Plus we know that he (or she) has at least 3 testicles.

Well in fairness can we be so sure of that rather than he _is_ someone's third testicle?

Penny Tration wrote: »

Every one of them would know because I pretty much never reply to messages

Well even posting on your timeline is interaction. And just in case you haven't posted in a while, Facebook will send you an email to inform you of that fact. :rolleyes:

Although I don't go in for what the OP is saying with regard to data privacy, I do believe that people take data security too much for granted.

An example (and this really happened - although I'm not mentioning the name; PM me if you want it) of a holiday letting portal that hosts thousands of properties to let all around the world. The properties are typically managed by a letting agent, a letting agency or the owner who is contactable via their email address on the portal.

That person receives an enquiry about a property and in the course of discussion about a possible letting, receives an attachment from the purported lessee that they are expecting. The attachment contains a payload that sits on their computer and relays passwords and other log in details back to the hacker. They then gain access to the agent's email account and monitor it for letting enquiries, intercepting those that meet their criteria and deleting them so that the owner/agent is never aware of them.

They have registered a domain with a very close relationship to the domain of the portal, open a matching bank account in a European city and then let and re-let the same properties over and over again for roughly the same time period. They request payment for these lets by bank transfer to the bank account and conduct all correspondence in a professional manner with nicely formatted html emails containing the portal's logos and other info.

The owner/agent is totally unaware of these transactions and communications and the hackers close the account and get away with hundreds of thousands of euro before the poor defrauded holidaymakers are aware that there is a problem.

This kind of social engineering and hacking can be targetted to any individual who is routinely involved in financial transactions through their work or personal life.

ThinkProgress

Facebook etc was cooked up by the Illuminati as a means for mass public surveillance... and the cheeky bast*rds were even brazen enough to figure out a way to milk vast sums of money off us in the process, by creating overpriced tech that we must purchase in order to avail of these surveillance services!

We have essentially paid (through the nose) for the right to be tracked night and day by those who wish to control us! Gotta give them their due props... it was all very cleverly thought out. :P

There will be a technological revolt... it's coming!

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

An online presence has a value. If somebody hacked your Facebook page and then interacted with your friends, purporting to be you, how many of them would know this? That's a trust relationship right there. People believe that it's always you posting on your Facebook page despite having no real evidence to support it.

There was the old and much used Gmail hack which sent mails to your contacts saying the user had been robbed on holiday and asking friends to send them money. A lot of poeple fell for that scam and sent money to the hackers.

Many people use the same passwords for their various online presences and one hack can lead to more. The easy one to spot is if there is some overt activity like changing passwords or sending mass mails. But in recent years, hackers have stayed dormant having hacked in and intercept emails that have a financial value. For example somebody booking a holiday and getting an email giving the payment details would not question this if they were expecting such an email. The payment could then be redirected to the hacker.

Oh I can assure you if anybody I know was 'interacted' with by me on Facebook they'd know instantly it wasn't me.

Treasure Rotten Scanner wrote: »

Oh I can assure you if anybody I know was 'interacted' with by me on Facebook they'd know instantly it wasn't me.

Would they though? I mean if you've never interacted with people on Facebook, there might be an issue, but it's surprising how little notice people take of sudden Facebook activity after even years of inaction.

I'm speaking from experience here in that I stayed away from it for years and recently logged in to wish a friend in foreign parts a happy birthday. The response I got was "It's about time...".

If you're posting regularly, it's easy to mimic you.

seamus wrote: »

The government. You're talking about the institution which basically defines what "identity" is. If they wanted to impersonate me they don't need to go trawling through my social media accounts. Between the revenue database and the passport office they have everything they could possibly need to steal my identity and "be" me.

And like any other sane person I don't stick anything online which could be used to blackmail me. I don't even have anything privately stored which I think could be used to blackmail me. My P60 or bank statements are about the most sensitive pieces of data I have.

If the government of the state in which I lived had taken such a draconian step which is in violation of basically all human rights treaties, I would be less concerned about my privacy and more concerned about getting my family to another country.

As Srameen says, there is due care and diligence, and then there's being paranoid about things which have an extremely low likelihood of occurring.

But if it isn't for 'paranoid' people - people who recognise the dangers and potential dangers - we won't know about the draconian steps being taken. And there won't be another country to go. It's a slow process but how a reasonable person can't see the natural conclusion, based on the evidence exposed, is strange.

Based on what you're saying here, with things having such a low likelihood of occurring, nobody working for governments like Ed Snowden should raise the alarm in the future? You don't put anything worthwhile online, so you would have no problem with governments continuing to enhance these programs?

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

Would they though? I mean if you've never interacted with people on Facebook, there might be an issue, but it's surprising how little notice people take of sudden Facebook activity after even years of inaction.

I'm speaking from experience here in that I stayed away from it for years and recently logged in to wish a friend in foreign parts a happy birthday. The response I got was "It's about time...".

If you're posting regularly, it's easy to mimic you.

You don't seem to get it. They'd know for sure it wasn't me. Some of us actually speak to our friends for real.

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

You don't put anything worthwhile online, so you would have no problem with governments continuing to enhance these programs?

That's it in a nutshell. No more than I have a problem with CCTV cameras in public places. Nothing to see, nothing to hide, nothing to dig up.

Treasure Rotten Scanner wrote: »

You don't seem to get it. They'd know for sure it wasn't me. Some of us actually speak to our friends for real.

Well that helps

Treasure Rotten Scanner wrote: »

That's it in a nutshell. No more than I have a problem with CCTV cameras in public places. Nothing to see, nothing to hide, nothing to dig up.

Interesting. CCTV in your home? Private communications (telephone call or online). On principle, does the same attitude hold? There is a line for you, where you do want privacy?

2ygb4cmqetsjhx

johnty56 wrote: »

I think the reality for many, having grown up in a bubble of 'acceptance' is that they are unaware of how quickly reality can change. There are still people alive who can remember the systematic slaughter of 6000000 human beings, and not long before that 20,000,000 people were murdered by their own government ( Stalin's Russia) for 'non conformism'. In the case of Russia, many were condemned to death on the basis of information supplied by their family, friends, neighbours or work colleagues. Imagine what Stalin would have done with the information freely divulged by individuals today.

Homosexuality was illegal in many Western states until relatively recently. In Nazi Germany it could have resulted in your death. In the space of 30 years it went from being something a westerner had to hide, often in fear of their life, to something that is completely acceptable and commonplace. Imagine if that were to swing the other way. And millions of homosexuals had attested to their own 'crime' by their technological footprint.

Substitute homosexuality for any number of other 'transgressions;' and you might understand. No one in Germany in 1937 thought they would be shovelling murdered human bodies into incinerators in 5 years time. But they were.

Exactly my point!

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

Interesting. CCTV in your home? Private communications (telephone call or online). On principle, does the same attitude hold? There is a line for you, where you do want privacy?

Bedroom and toilet privacy would be appreciated.

Do you really think anybody would be capable or vaguely interested in my humdrum life? Let's get real here.

Treasure Rotten Scanner wrote: »

Bedroom and toilet privacy would be appreciated.

Do you really think anybody would be capable or vaguely interested in my humdrum life? Let's get real here.

No I don't think anyone wants to sit watching you watch netflix. If that's what you think of the whole thing we just look at it differently.

you do think people want to watch you pooping though?

MOH

CMOTDibbler wrote: »

Well even posting on your timeline is interaction. And just in case you haven't posted in a while, Facebook will send you an email to inform you of that fact. :rolleyes:

Somebody posted a proof of concept recently of determining sleeping habits of Facebook contacts based on their Facebook activity.

Or there's the "Here's me at the airport off on my holidays" posts.
"By the way my house will be unoccupied for the next week if you fancy robbing me"

Blowfish

Treasure Rotten Scanner wrote: »

Bedroom and toilet privacy would be appreciated.

Interesting. I'm sure you don't have anything particularly unusual in your bedroom/toilet habits, yet it doesn't seem like you'd be happy with them being live streamed on the internet.

Can you understand that the same reasoning you have above applies to how some people feel about their personal data? They may not have anything in particular to hide, but that doesn't mean they'd have no problem with personal data or conversations being made available to others outside of their control.

Blowfish wrote: »

Interesting. I'm sure you don't have anything particularly unusual in your bedroom/toilet habits, yet it doesn't seem like you'd be happy with them being live streamed on the internet.

Can you understand that the same reasoning you have above applies to how some people feel about their personal data? They may not have anything in particular to hide, but that doesn't mean they'd have no problem with personal data or conversations being made available to others outside of their control.

I was being facetious.

Of course some people would not want their personal data scrutinized, just as others will have no problem with it, but can we each not have our own opinions on the matter as they pertain to the OP's question?

seamus

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

But if it isn't for 'paranoid' people - people who recognise the dangers and potential dangers - we won't know about the draconian steps being taken. And there won't be another country to go. It's a slow process but how a reasonable person can't see the natural conclusion, based on the evidence exposed, is strange.

There is no "natural conclusion" unless you make many assumptions about intent. For a start, different governments and different states having differing intents. The usual "natural conclusion" usually starts with the assumption that there is a small group of secret individuals looking to control the world. Which is a bad place to start.

Based on what you're saying here, with things having such a low likelihood of occurring, nobody working for governments like Ed Snowden should raise the alarm in the future?

No? I'm not sure where you got that from.
Edward Snowden raised the alarm about things that were actually happening, not things that weren't.

You don't put anything worthwhile online, so you would have no problem with governments continuing to enhance these programs?

Again, didn't say anything like that. Just pointing out that the claim that a government would use this information to impersonate or blackmail the ordinary individual is a massive stretch. Whether they even could is a question in itself.

seamus wrote: »

Again, didn't say anything like that. Just pointing out that the claim that a government would use this information to impersonate or blackmail the ordinary individual is a massive stretch. Whether they even could is a question in itself.

+1

If a government was of a mind to go that far, you're already in deep doodoo. The presence or lack thereof of something incriminating would hardly be a barrier to them in either case.