Because then the authorities can get a warrant to access that information if they believe you are guilty of something.
In the case where a law is unjust or puts peoples’ lives at risk, say like abortion laws in some US states, the government can use this against you as proof in a court of law.
Edit: here’s another post about how this information is used against people:
To add to this: Many people shrug this off saying they don’t have anything to hide. Even assuming that is true, they usually mean they don’t have anything to hide right now from their current authorities. Ask yourself the question: Is there absolutely no form of government/regime you might want to hide something from? Are you absolutely certain these authorities might not get access to your data? Doesn’t even have to be a possible future government in your own country, it could be in some other country you might want to visit. Or maybe some terrorist organisation who for some reason targets people like you. Is there really absolutely no one you would mind having access to all the data collected about you?
The thing is, the data isn’t going to be uncollected again. The way things are drifting the number of countries not in some way endangered by antidemocratic movements is constantly decreasing. Call me paranoid but I just don’t want to risk it.
Good counter to people saying they have nothing to hide is the guy that lost his apple or google acct because he sent a photo of his child’s rash to his doctor and it got flagged as CSA.
You don’t need to have anything to hide to get fucked over by a lack of privacy.
Yep, one could imagine scenarios in Texas where women could in theory be arrested if their messaging app snitches on them and tells authorities about their planned abortion (since it’s very easy for AI now to understand your conversations so it should be easy to automate in theory) or Google Maps reports them for having detected that they went to an abortion clinic.
It’s not for your personal privacy, or to spare you personal embarrassment. But rather because large-scale demographic data collection is dangerous.
The Nazis used such collections to locate Jews. America used such collections to locate Japanese-Americans. The Rwanda genocide was facilitated by tribal affiliation being printed on ID cards. In none of these cases were the data collected for the nefarious purposes it was eventually used for.
Information is a form of knowledge, knowledge is power, and power in the wrong hands is dangerous.
People don’t realize how much data is collected, how it’s analyzed to determine things about you, and how it’s given out to nearly anyone. Here are some concerning examples that hopefully speak for themselves.
Hopefully you can see why the information being collected and given out to anyone is concerning. As to how to avoid it, I’m not sure there is any way besides government regulation. Maybe someone else has some answers!
If your friends have Facebook, and they share contacts on their phone, and they communicate with you Facebook has a shadow profile for your phone number. They still track you even without the app or an account.
Yes, that’s why I have two phone numbers. One with an official work number that I give to friends and business partners - Its basically a requirement to have a public phone number if one runs a company where I live, so no hiding there anyways. And then I have a separate number I never give out, for data only.
Oh, you tried to call me but I didn’t pick up? Sorry, I was busy/tired/generic excuse. But if you get on Element I’ll give you my private account. Think of it as a backstage pass, you’ll get in when nobody else does. You’ll be special.
Kindergarten level psychology that works surprisingly well.
Are they both attached to smartphones? Location data can be pulled essentially equating the two numbers. If both devices always are in the same spot it’s the same person etc
Different tools for different threats. I’m not trying to hide from state-level actors and phone data is illegal to sell where I live.
And if I were, surely I wouldn’t talk about it on an open forum. In such a hypothetical scenario I wouldn’t even bring a cellphone, no matter if it’s a smartphone or a plain ol’ Nokia from the last millennium.
My point is they probably know both are you. I have two phones too, it just depends on what your goal is. If it’s not to be tracked by the Google, Microsoft, and Metas of the world you’re probably failing.
How can Google, Meta and Microsoft corrolate two phones where one is completely devoid of any Google Play blobs if they don’t have access to location and triangulation data from the cell towers?
If you somehow have made sure every app you use doesn’t have a meta tracker in it then maybe. Although then you get into the territory of being so unique by blocking everything that you become identifiable that way.
I use custom operating system on my phone and router. I analyze packets, firewalls apps and block known tracking system on DNS level since I run my own In/Out VPN.
I have don’t understand what you’re talking about. Maybe I’m just not on your level.
Thank you for the interaction, but I don’t think either of us will gain any more from this discussion.
I’m aware of browser based tracking and have taken precautions to stop this. I fail to see how this is related to correlating two separate systems.
This continued conversation is wasting both ours time. I’m happy to discuss a different topic with you at another time, but posting links I evaluate to be completely irrelevant and perhaps even ignorant to the topic will only lead to conflict no matter who is right.
I watch a YouTube channel called The Hated One. He explains a lot about how to stay safe on the net. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like it’s possible to be completely safe and to be even a little bit safe is a HUGE PITA.
I remember reading something about a guy that went so hard at being anonymous that the FBI almost arrested him since it looked like he was doing something criminal to want all this anonimity.
There’s no one-liner that will make the importance of privacy “click” for most people, since it requires a bit of abstract thought, but this site is the closest I’ve seen to it: www.socialcooling.com
If you want to do something about it, check out privacyguides.org, or the lemmy community (and instance) run by its owner, !privacyguides
The biggest concern is that even if you are innocent, your data can and likely will at some point be used against you. This was proven by the Snowden Leaks. There are more than enough of these unfortunate cases, here are some examples:
Has everyone already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica, which scraped data from tens of millions of Facebook users and used it to microtarget swing voters in several countries with propaganda and misinformation to get them to either vote for right-wing candidates or stay home on election day?
Of course not. But in peoples defence, you can’t forget if you never knew. And I seem to have the impression that this was a thing and then it’s was pretty much gone again. Not brought up again and again over years like other, less important topics may have been.
Non-interested people would have been left with the impression it was bad, but it must have been fixed or else we’d hear more about it.
It’s funny, the more likely you are to admit you can be manipulated the more likely you’ll notice when it’s happening. So I just go around telling everyone how easy it is to manipulate me.
Well the other crazy thing with voting is how narrow the margins are.
It doesn’t have to convince everyone. Only a small percentage across the country mixed with a few people in key locations and you can change everything.
Miami-Dade and Palm Beach says hello. A 537 vote margin in a few Florida counties decided the 2000 US Presidential Election.
One wonders how different the world would be today if George W. Bush didn’t get that first term.
(Fun fact: the usual chicanery to depress Democratic votes also happened in 2000 - voter roll purges, roadblocks in Democratic areas, too few voter areas in cities… In many ways it was a trial run for the bullshit Republicans pull now)
My big two are long form chemistry videos (codyslab, nilered) and old archived hours of the first version of the AI show Nothing Forever. Very easy listening IMO and should hit most of your bases. Maybe also look for podcasts on a topic you like, those can be hours long
Personally, I find American candy way too sweet. As in one full-sized bar of any chocolate candy is disgustingly sweet, and makes me feel unwell if I get anywhere close to finishing a bar
I am American btw, and I grew up eating this stuff for a few weeks after Halloween, but then my tastebuds developed and my answer to that question is to “just eat a couple of pieces a day”
If you want an actual answer, I’d consider trying to remove willpower from the equation and donate or throw away a majority of the candy you have. If you still want to keep candy, then putting it in inconvenient places might make it easier to eat less. Think like keeping it on the opposite side of your residence where you would usually lounge/mindlessly snack and only eating it in a designated area.
You can also try to buy one of those kSafes to prevent yourself from eating it all too. The idea isn’t to depend on your current willpower to decide for you, but rather the rational thought of your past self to allot yourself a certain amount.
It’s like a cheat day, if you designate a day where you can pig out, it’s easier to maintain a well-balanced diet outside of the chest day
If so, What sorts of things can i do to avoid being tracked? Preferably without too much comprimise.
Stop using Chrome based browsers. Use Firefox or a Firefox derivative. Use adblockers such as Ublock origin or Adnausem, a plugin that will hide ads from you and click on the ads to mess up your digital footprint. Consent-o-matic is a plugin that will decline any cookies request from sites.
More technical inclined, For your home set your DNS servers to DNS.adguard.com, again blocks ads. Use containers with Firefox, it will limit the cross site tracking when you see a share with Google/Facebook/twitter. Those share butts are particularly nasty.
Do routers resolve domains for DNS? Would i need to enter an IP address? How will my router resolve DNS.adguard.com if it needs to use DNS to resolve the domain name? Sorry, that might be a dumb question.
Something to keep in mind is that some ISP will intercept your DNS request and redirect them their own servers. DNS is done in clear text. If you are concerned about that you can use DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS to hide your queries. But that is a complex set up and not all devices/apps support DoT or DoH
Besides what other people are saying, big data is a thing, sometimes there are correlations no one is aware of, but an unbiased algorithm finds. Let me give you two facts:
Insurance companies analyse personal history as well as general statistics when determining if they’ll accept you and how much they’ll charge you. e.g. a White middle aged man with some family history of heart problems will have a much higher price than a Black young woman without family history. This does not limit to insurance companies, banks can choose to not give you a loan based on any factors they choose, in fact any private business can do it.
Some of the companies that do big data can predict that you’re pregnant even before you know it, just basing on random factors like search queries and email contents. Think about this for a moment, you don’t know that you’re pregnant, but because you searched certain terms (even if they’re completely unrelated to pregnancy) a company can know it. This is also true of other stuff, but because currently this is used for ads there’s not much reason to specialise this to find things like health or financial conditions.
It’s not unlikely that in the future insurance companies could buy that data and use it as an extra point of data to give you a quote or to deny you entirely. And this would be something like In average, 90% of people living in NY who search for the price of a flight to Rome within a couple of days of sending an email with the words “cigarette” and “help” suffer a heart attack within 5 years, so because you’re trying to help a friend quit his cigarette addiction and are planning to visit Rome your insurance just went up, because there is a 90% chance you’ll have a heart attack within some years based on big data analysis.
I'm sure there is a LOT of additional information about "what you can do", but here are some very simple starting points. You can do these today if you want.
Only use Firefox with uBlock Origin installed/active for web browsing.
Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). https://protonvpn.com is considered one of the best.
Turn off location services on your phone (this will probably be controversial but I think it makes a lot of sense).
For more, subscribe to @privacy and read and support eff.org
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