personal security

Folks - please be mindful of who you give your data to.  Yes, they can scrape it from a million sources and buy it but why make it easy for them?  I'm no privacy Jedi but I delete cookies on a daily basis on everything but here and a few sites and use a VPN for anything sensitive.

From wikipedia

"The politicalcompass.org website does not reveal the people behind it, beyond the fact that it seems to be based in the United Kingdom.[9][10] At the bottom of any page on the website, it is stated that the political compass's copyright belongs to an organisation named "Pace News Limited".[11] Pace News Limited is a company registered in New Zealand whose Director is Wayne Brittenden. According to The New York Times, the site is the work of Wayne Brittenden, a political journalist.[2] According to Tom Utley, writing in The Daily Telegraph, the site is connected to One World Action, a charity founded by Glenys Kinnock.[7] An early version of the site was published on One World Action's web server.[8]"

Folks - please be mindful of who you give your data to

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Good point . 

Also don't tell my older brother i'm slightly left leaning.  He'll never forgive me. 
He lives in Missouri also JR.  I need to move out of Denver, It's a magnetic pull from Boulder probably .

I think its our own governments we need to be most suspicious of in regards to the safety of our personal data .
As we have seen there's an ever increasing tendency to collate and centralise our data ,in the end this just makes hacking these systems more worthwhile and profitable . Worth a look at whats become of the Indian governments ID card system in this respect.

People give out constantly about North Korea,Russia and China's human rights abuses ,while systematically turning a blind eye to whats going on in their own back yard . The US for instance ,under the guise of Anti terrorism has steadily eroded the privacy of its own citizens carefully concealed by political hop scotching and the use of bases off American soil to bypass what remains of data protection at home  .

I think most of us regardless of which side we happened to land on politically are in agreement that much of whats done in our so called interests by our elected representatives or governments is not in our best interests at all .

Lack of education and an ever growing strangle hold by social media ,especially on the younger generations is leading to a society which looks up to the likes of the Kardashians as paragons or virtue, of course were not all pretty or smart enough to ride that bucking bronco, that is fame, off to the promised land of milk and honey. Those who cant end, up stuck in a positive feedback loop of anxiety,depression, medication and more and more outlandish behaviour to satiate the need for approval ,dissatisfaction  with what they do have is all it leads to in the end. If it was some illeagal substance having this effect on people there would be uproar .

'Thou shalt not worship false gods ', Im no bible basher nor do I even consider myself a religious person ,but there is some wisdom in those words .

I glad you brought this subject up Ruairi,its something very worthy of discussion ,and I look forward to hearing more peoples views on it.

dmp said:

And if you are concerned with privacy don't carry a cell phone.

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I don't

Answering a few questions on a short political compass survey is nothing in comparison.

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How about all those people that pay money to put microphones inside their homes that can listen to everything  and report it back to the mothership. How could that possibly go wrong?  :

JR

PS: At least one TV set maker was caught listening to customers, and one children's toy was logging kid's responses for some future toy/product development.

dmp said:

And if you are concerned with privacy don't carry a cell phone.
Answering a few questions on a short political compass survey is nothing in comparison.

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I don't see it as a binary choice.  Every privacy decision is a trade off and I think it matters to be mindful.

As a simple example every App on my phone has the location settings set to "When in use only", a simple thing that means Uber only knows where I am when it suits me and is necessary.

Clearing cookies (I use an App called "Cookie"), using VPNs etc all makes a difference IMO. 

Another interesting example to me is the 23 and Me debacle, I'm astounded how at how careless people are being with that data, the implications for your future are enormous.

I cannot keep my home safe from a determined intruder but that doesn't mean I should leave the front door open when I leave…

Of course, there is little one can do against NSA level activities except at a political level.  These are very powerful tools and neither the left or right will give them up or temper their use without a fight.

I only got to DMP's response so far ,but yeah never had a mobile phone ,tracking device ,like the old james bond movies ,blips on a radar screen . A lot lot more to come on this subject from me

ruairioflaherty said:

I don't see it as a binary choice.  Every privacy decision is a trade off and I think it matters to be mindful.
As a simple example every App on my phone has the location settings set to "When in use only", a simple thing that means Uber only knows where I am when it suits me and is necessary.
Clearing cookies (I use an App called "Cookie"), using VPNs etc all makes a difference IMO. 
Another interesting example to me is the 23 and Me debacle, I'm astounded how at how careless people are being with that data, the implications for your future are enormous.
I cannot keep my home safe from a determined intruder but that doesn't mean I should leave the front door open when I leave…

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OK, I give up on trying to "herd the cats" and keep the thread on topic.

I am very  interested in privacy and have gone down the rabbit hole myself with it (VPN, TOR, Tails, etc).
But I think perspective is important - I wasn't saying it was a binary choice. A person needs to be very well informed on privacy matters to even be able to make reasonable choices online. I found it laughable that this silly little set of vague political questions would raise alarms (no offense meant).  For instance, reading the news routinely online gives the internet companies much more of a profile than taking a 5 minute test on political orientation with relatively vague questions. I know JR reads the WSJ and so do I, so they have a damn good political profile of both of us - plus our real names and credit card info. That is way more valuable as a dataset than this 5 minute set of questions. Add that to a purchase history too at webstores (amazon, etc) and you have a goldmine of data.

There was a cartoon I saw awhile ago where there's a couple of pigs in a barn saying how great it is - the farmer gives them free food, shelter, etc. The punchline is YOU are the product (for facebook, google, etc... )
Data is valuable to these companies and you bet they are storing everything they can.

I split this into a different thread to stop diluting the original topic. 

JR

Thanks John, apologies for the original thread derail.

ruairioflaherty said:

Thanks John, apologies for the original thread derail.

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No worries, nothing wrong about cats acting like cats...

JR

When answering surveys, I always invent a fictional character..

If anything, system must have classified me as MPD, dissociative identity disorder.  ;D

Jakob E.

JohnRoberts said:

I don'tHow about all those people that pay money to put microphones inside their homes that can listen to everything  and report it back to the mothership. How could that possibly go wrong?  :

JR

PS: At least one TV set maker was caught listening to customers, and one children's toy was logging kid's responses for some future toy/product development.

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Please guys all togheter start a step by step diy thread for build pirate spyware detector
and how to exterminate it ,
like a hi spl low frequency portable generator for crash spy microphones inside internet modem-routers
smart television and other home tools ,

and how to detect spy cameras and set them unusable ?

dmp said:

OK, I give up on trying to "herd the cats" and keep the thread on topic.

I am very  interested in privacy and have gone down the rabbit hole myself with it (VPN, TOR, Tails, etc).
But I think perspective is important - I wasn't saying it was a binary choice. A person needs to be very well informed on privacy matters to even be able to make reasonable choices online. I found it laughable that this silly little set of vague political questions would raise alarms (no offense meant).  For instance, reading the news routinely online gives the internet companies much more of a profile than taking a 5 minute test on political orientation with relatively vague questions. I know JR reads the WSJ and so do I, so they have a damn good political profile of both of us - plus our real names and credit card info. That is way more valuable as a dataset than this 5 minute set of questions. Add that to a purchase history too at webstores (amazon, etc) and you have a goldmine of data.

There was a cartoon I saw awhile ago where there's a couple of pigs in a barn saying how great it is - the farmer gives them free food, shelter, etc. The punchline is YOU are the product (for facebook, google, etc... )
Data is valuable to these companies and you bet they are storing everything they can.

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"they "want rule the world…
"mao-met-to" restless faithful  , a comfortable cover… ?

wich empire is still alive ?

roman empire over , holy roman empire over , gengis khan over,
carlo the great over, alexander the great over , napoleon over, austro-hungaric empire over,………..
who the "next" to over ?

planet earth has a certain expiration date …as the bio fresh food ,
sun have more about 4 billions years life  before explode ,

but planet earth end will be very much before ,
no more water in 500 millions  years , unfortunately,

the sun expansion will increase temperature ,
wich will evaporate all the water …..

"last minute" meteorites and viral epidemics apart ,

are "they" surpassing the no return point ?

I think the likelyhood is we'll end up doing ourselves a mischief long before the solar system renders the planet unlivable in any case ,Social media already has our souls bought and sold without any fight whatsoever,facilitated by boot licker governments.Were fast heading for a situation where normal human reproduction is impossible ,so what next ? a patent on life itself with its associated contracts and financial hurdles where only the chosen people get to reproduce ? its certainly not unprecedented ,think passover ,think ubermensch,think of imperialist ethnic cleansing ,the Nazi's ,the idea of embettering the world through selective breeding isnt new and its not gone away either ,but just look what what we've done to mans best friend(dog) by indulging our vanity .

SIXTYNINER said:

Please guys all togheter start a step by step diy thread for build pirate spyware detector
and how to exterminate it ,
like a hi spl low frequency portable generator for crash spy microphones inside internet modem-routers
smart television and other home tools ,

and how to detect spy cameras and set them unusable ?

Click to expand...

I wanted to figure out how send electrical shocks over the WWW... that would really be reaching out and touching people.

JR

SIXTYNINER said:

Please guys all togheter start a step by step diy thread for build pirate spyware detector
and how to exterminate it ,
like a hi spl low frequency portable generator for crash spy microphones inside internet modem-routers
smart television and other home tools ,

and how to detect spy cameras and set them unusable ?

Click to expand...

This is a case of 'Physician heal thyself'. 

Probably 99% of modern comprimises are made by the 'Human Factor'.  If you use the Internet, use a proxy server to isolate and disguise your Internet activities;  take precautions that are proprtionate and  understand what you are dealing with. 

Governments are not the main problem here, they at least have some form of intent, accountability and regulation within their borders.  The bad guys are those motivated by greed - Google, Facebook and Youtube etc.  The intent is monetary greed, the accountability is zero, the regulation on their activities is zero.  They hoover up the Internet, move and process data across borders and mine it without any oversight whatsoever.  They  are big business at its worst in my view.

I also find it interesting that younger folk are somewhat niaive in their Internet activities: they want all the 'benefits' of social media without accountability, and they cry like babies when their comments come back to bite them on the a*s in later life.

For starters, take a look at 'How to disappear' by Frank M Ahern,  'Caution - Wireless Networking' by Jack McCullough.

Happy browsing 

Mike

It all ends up in a conflict of interest when politicians start doing business via social media ,Ireland really has had sucess bringing the likes of Facebook Twitter etc to our shores ,but I think one of the main reasons they came in the first place was lax privacy laws. There has been at least one serious challenge to the way social media opperators process data here that ended up in the european court of human rights ,theres also the GDPR reg's due in soon and most companies and indeed the government are still not anywhere near up to speed as regards their obligations.The government certainly are busy trying to get in legislation on the quiet which indemnifies them in cases of data breaches or loss .  Its a coalition type setup were running under here at the moment so luckily theres some checks and balances built in and the main party certainly isnt getting it all its own way .

Somewhat related to the topic - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump

Not a closed case by any means but some interesting info on approaches to data collection in the private sector.

Evidently law enforcement is using license plate scanners throughout cities to automatically track and store the location of cars.
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-eyes-of-texas-cops-are-upon-you/

Reports say they located the Austin bomber after they discovered a unexploded bomb at a Fedex distribution center, pulled the tracking number off it, got surveillance video from the Fed Ex store where it was dropped off, got his license plate outside with a camera, then pulled up the log of license plate locations all over the city.