the most honest reason I read about is probably that former Twitter user who felt out of place on Mastodon or other Activitypub servers because the “Nerds” who care about privacy and decentral systems which were already on it have a different microblogging culture and they didn’t want adept
so now a new competitor gets traction because the people who felt out of place on Mastodon can relife the Twitter experience from over a decade ago
the fake exclusivity even make you feel special despite the lack of features
Almost every OS nowadays has some form of microphone detection right? So if this was on, you would be aware of it? And to jump ahead, even google is incentivised to prevent this company listening in, as they are direct competitor.
I wonder if this company is just trying to fleece advertisers with a made up tech? The “Claim your exclusive territory before your competitor” feels like the high pressure tactics that other scams use?
I might go disable the microphone in my TV remote anyway :/
OSes have protections built in, yup, but that’s no guarantee. we like hardware switches because there’s physically no way that the mic/cam can be in use: software is always 1 bug or exploit away from not doing what it’s supposed to
Yup, for sure, but while a nation state can risk exploitting a zero day to turn on your microphone, an ad tech company certainly can’t. As soon as it get patched they’d be ruined.
Minimal risk for them. The state of monitoring as a whole is such that they can use such an 0-day for a couple of years before anybody notices it. It’s far more likely that the vulnerability is noticed and patched without anyone even realizing that it’s been actively exploited.
They are literally publically claiming that they have a zero day (or at least a zero day level capability). Google/Apple would be all over it trying to fix it. Cyber security researchers would be all over it as well.
NSA can get away with using 0 days for years because they keep quiet about them, and dont use them frivilously.
Lol you are the only person with a brain in this thread. This entire service they’re advertising sounds like a scam.
People really think these apps are bypassing the Android OS protections that show the microphone icon when the mic is listening?
And what apps are widespread enough that it can capture a wide enough range of people to target the things their customers would want while also not getting discovered or someone working for the app disclosing it?
I’ve been very happy with my Nvidia Shield. It’s powerful enough for all 4k HDR media and runs Android so it’s customizable but I don’t have to think about it.
There is a bigger model that lays flat which has great hardware and then there is a “tube” model similar to the Amazon Fire stick size which is 32 bit only and has hardware issues also.
I like my Shield but it was a real bummer that I couldn’t just plug in a USB drive and play movies on it. It’s annoying that I have to setup Plex or Jellyfin or whatever to serve movies to the Shield
Electronic ids can provide the age verification without giving out any personal information. This is a solved problem at least for a lot of ids in the EU.
But no i still find it a stupid idea. It is the parents job to parent them.
thanks! if implemented correctly, this is a decent way of verifying age. Although I’d rather not have any but it’s definitely better than taking a selfie.
give it time. the government (us) wants to put interlock gadgets into every new car to prevent drunks from driving. driving under the influence is illegal and those that do are more likely to kill someone. so is driving without a license, and so are those drivers.
There are also circumstances where it’s legal to drive over the legal bac. If someone is having a medical emergency then it’s legal to drive them to a hospital.
I suspect you haven’t worked with governments before.
Just because something is technically possible, it’s no guarantee that it will be the chosen mechanism for something. More likely the contract will be awarded to either the lowest possible bidder, or to a friend of a friend. Cronyism is depressingly common at all levels.
I suspect you haven’t worked with governments before.
Just because something is technically possible, it’s no guarantee that it will be the chosen mechanism for something. More likely the contract will be awarded to either the lowest possible bidder, or to a friend of a friend. Cronyism is depressingly common at all levels.
Not sure why you are under that impression. I never discussed the potential chosen mechanism.
I stated that it is possible and that it is already implemented into the id card of many eu citizens.
Yes, it is not as decentralised as you have thought. I thought this is a fairly known fact. If you need something truly decentralized, I2P is probably the way.
Traffic is flowing through computers of volunteers, that part is indeed decentralized, but your client needs to find them, and that happens through a centralized service, through a “directory authory” if I’m not mistaken
I2P has a mechsnism for banning routers, permanently or temporarily.
It looks it knows what to block from a local blocklist file and from a “blocklist feed”, but I don’t know what’s the latter right now. I hope you can excuse me on that, I’m also quite new on the topic.
So how does I2P work, I vaguely remember something about it like slowly building a network as you keep your own connection on, and that the architecture makes it much better for torrenting. Is it worth looking into and learning about or is it just slow bad internet?
Well, yeah, about the speed… it’s not fast. And probably never will be fast as plain internet. Just imagine what is happening: each service you connect to is usually 6 hops away, which in the worst case (where each pair of peers is the furthest possible from each other) would require traffic to take 3 rounds between e.g. west asia and the usa. Here’s an other explanation with a diagram: geti2p.net/en/faq#slow
But that’s just the latency, and it can be tuned. If you want to play online games with a group of people over I2P, you could use for instance a 1-hop tunnel, and ask the others too to use a 1-hop tunnel, and now it’s totally different. Of course this hurts your and the other players anonymity, but it could be acceptable, especially if you make it select a router relatively close to you.
Bandwidth is again a different topic, I think that could improve even without sacrificing on the tunnel length, with more (relatively) high bandwidth routers joining the network, but of course your tunnel’s bandwidth will always be limited by the slowest router in the chain. Fortunately there are ways to have a tunnel through more performant routers.
On how does it work: when you start up your router (a software package, through which other programs can use the network), it asks a bunch of preconfigured servers about known I2P peers, through a process called reseeding. Afaik there are currently 12 preconfigured reseed servers, but you can bring your own, or if you know someone with an I2P router who you trust, they can make a reseed file for you which you can import.
After that, your router will talk to the other routers it now knows about, and ask them too about the routers they know.
This means that it’s better (while not necessary) to have a dedicated machine on which a router is always running and online, instead of having it run for the 30 minutes every time you power on your desktop. It doesn’t have to be powerful, it can be a low power consumption SBC (like a raspberri pi or similar), and I think it’s also possible to set up an unused android phone for this purpose with an app, but you probably don’t want it to use your mobile data plan.
On why is it better for torrenting: I don’t remember the details on that.
What I remember is that it’s often said that the protocol was “built for that”.
But there’s also another thing: vandwitdh is naturally less of a scarcity here, compared to Tor. Connecting to the network requires the use of a “router”, which besides giving access to it for you, also automatically contributes to the network with your internet connection’s bandwidth capacity (except if limited by the tech of your ISP, like with CGNAT; it can still contribute some but usually it’s less), and in turn most users will provide a “relay” to the network. On the Tor network, most users are just users, their clients are not participating in routing the traffic of other users, and so they are only consuming the capacity provided by others.
Also, afaik torrenting on Tor always needs to make use of an exit node to access the tracker and all the peers, while on I2P it all happens inside the network, without placing a huge load on outproxies (exit nodes in I2P terms)
It may seem that I2P has a bunch of downsides, and it may discourage you from using it, but let me tell you how I think about it.
I don’t use it for everything, just as I don’t use the Tor network on a daily basis, but when I need it it’s there, it makes me easier to search on a few private matters, and it runs in the background so I’m basically effortlessly helping the other users, when not counting the initial setup and the electricity costs of course (the former was not much, and the latter does not depend on this in my case)
Very interesting, and thank you for the write up! Might be worth looking and preconfigured reseeds if I was to dabble in it, but generally I just don’t have use for powerful anonymity tools currently. Always rad to hear about the tech though!
So like… all Searx instances are independent, but I can save my preferences in a reproducible query string? Or like… how’s this a long-term, easy, good move for me? (I know ≈nothing).
Do all the Searx instances generate and keep independent indexes of the entire internet, or is it more like Lemmy (where, maybe, each instance is a window into the entirety of the index)?
Good question! I wish I knew, but unfortunately this is outside the scope of my knowledge. Someone on !privacyguides could probably tell you immediately
Kagi was my favorite but their pricing model is a little too high still. If it was $5 for 500 searches I would do that but the unlimited for $10 is just a bit too high for me.
I get that not everyone has extra cash to spend. I’m very fortunate to be able to throw $10 at a problem. I don’t begrudge you if you need to save cash (I have no kids to raise, for example). But I think $10 is fair if you search a bunch. Maybe I’m overvaluing it; I have heard great things about Kagi, but I’m still fucking around on Google cause it’s “good enough,” even though it’s in great decline. Fuck it, I’m a hypocrite.
I believe that Firefox has a mechanism where millions of users all have the same fingerprint, which makes the whole concept of browser fingerprinting useless.
It’s under the shield on the left of the address bar, better protection against tracking enables this and a bunch of other features. Also on by default in private mode.
But if Windows is sending all of your data, including stored files and passwords for some third party like its TOS says it can, than that’s Windows breaching your privacy. Or if the remote management hardware that comes with every computer is allowing some third party to access it with more capabilities than even you have, like they are normally designed, than that’s your CPU’s manufacturer breaching your privacy (but those are supposed to be turned off).
You are looking at the wrong place. The TPM is a very standard piece of hardware, that shouldn’t even need firmware (it would completely cancel the entire point of it). It enables a whole lot of shit, but it isn’t the thing that does the shit.
Now, you can go look at the always-on network enabled uncontrollable management unity that exists inside your computer’s processor… Intel pinky swears they can’t access them in any way and will only activate them if you pay extra¹; AMD AFAIK doesn’t even try to say anything.
1 - Makes sense to you? Well, how do they activate it if they can’t access it?
I imagine that for a very small minority of the population, that’s actually their kink. Writing sexually explicit and politically suspect text messages in order to force some unwitting federal employee to participate in some deranged message-au-trois. The world is filled with all kinds of people.
Are you absolutely sure that you flat-out “don’t have anything to hide” and would readily and truthfully furnish me with every information I asked of you? :P
I wouldn’t mind you finding out any information about me. I would mind you feeling entitled to me putting in effort and time to answer you. I’ve read all the suggestions people here posted and none made me reflect or get anywhere near changing my mind. Privacy centric people just have to accept not everyone is like them. I respect your need for privacy. I don’t understand why you obsessively require me to hold the same belief.
I wouldn’t mind you finding out any information about me. I would mind you feeling entitled to me putting in effort and time to answer you. I’ve read all the suggestions people here posted and none made me reflect or get anywhere near changing my mind. Privacy centric people just have to accept not everyone is like them. I respect your need for privacy. I don’t understand why you obsessively require me to hold the same belief.
I don’t think anyone requires you to hold any specific beliefs, nobody within this comment chain anyway.
It’s a bit akin to meeting someone on the street and being told “It’s nighttime!” while the sun is out. I’d definitely be interested in understanding why that other person considers it to be nighttime and I would at the very least be disappointed not to get a conversation out of it.
Three different fictitious requests:
“Can you spare some change?”
“Would you let me skip ahead of the queue please? I have an urgent appointment later on.”
“Will you let us share your user data with our partners in order to improve our services?”
I’m assuming here - and please correct me if I am wrong - that you would be likely to acquiesce to 3. in most contexts, maybe even more likely than to acquiesce to 1. or 2.?
Privacy sentiments are subjective beliefs, not an objective fact like nature.
I genuinely don’t see a point in engaging with you, even just based on what I stated above where you use your personal beliefs in line with objective, provable elements of the natural world. So I’ll choose not to. Cheers. 👍
Privacy sentiments are subjective beliefs, not an objective fact like nature.
I genuinely don’t see a point in engaging with you, even just based on what I stated above where you use your personal beliefs in line with objective, provable elements of the natural world. So I’ll choose not to. Cheers. 👍
While I obviously cannot force you to continue a conversation you do not wish to have, I’m a bit perplexed by what you’re saying here and at what point “belief” entered the conversation. If you’re saying that data, personal and otherwise, has no real, objective, provable value then surely that would go against all physical evidence? There must be some kind of misunderstanding here. Well, cheers ✋
Let me scroll through your phone, see if there are some nice pictures or chats, the google search history, browser history… Uuh what’s that Lovense Buttplug App for? Do you have any medical conditions or mental health struggles? How do you approach people on Tinder? What’s your salary?
“The you won’t kind providing me with your full birth name, ss#, address, mother’s maiden name, bank account number, pin, computer login, phone login” etc, etc.
You unfortunately can’t teach something like this to someone who doesn’t even understand the consequences of it. Or care. Leading a horse to water n all that.
You unfortunately can’t teach something like this to someone who doesn’t even understand the consequences of it. Or care.
You can absolutely explain it and teach it and make people care. It’s just not easy. I’ve only ever encountered uninformed “I have nothing to hide”-responses to equally lackluster throwaway explanations . It’s a very difficult and abstract topic, it doesn’t come naturally! Don’t treat privacy concerns as equivalent to pointing out dirt on someone’s clothes, treat it like calculus. Successfully conveying it requires time, conversation and didactics.
I once saw the explanation that when someone is looking through your window at your house you also close the blinds or even call the police even though you have nothing to hide.
I got someone to use Signal recently, because I don’t text outside of it. Last week, she asked me why that is. I sent this Bruce Schneier essay on the eternal value of privacy to someone who knows absolutely nothing about tech, and she understood.
I’m gonna try it again next time it comes up with someone else. I think this essay does a really good job of putting it into perspective, so I’m hoping this is the silver bullet I can continue to send when someone asks.
Overall, in general, I try to keep it in real world terms. Why do you close the door when you go to the bathroom? Why do you lock your doors? Why do you have curtains/blinds? etc., along with what some other intelligent people responded here.
Generally I’ve found the people who say this get privacy and secrecy confused. You close the door when you go to the bathroom because you want privacy, not because you have anything to hide. Everyone has a pretty good idea what you’re doing in there but you close the door anyways. Secrecy would be if you were cooking Meth in the bathroom and wanted to keep it a secret.
privacy
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.