by anonypla on 7/4/21, 8:49 PM with 17 comments
by anonypla on 7/4/21, 8:51 PM
by theden on 7/4/21, 11:07 PM
Years of using FB when I was younger, general lapses in judgement or overlooks in privacy when in tense or pressing situations, compromises I've made in using services with certain people or jobs, many regretful apps or purchases and sign ups, years of my email and phone number shared to 3rd parties, I could go on...
And that's just the data I've shared knowingly, mostly due to the social contract when functioning in certain groups. The odds are stacked up against an individual.
The reason I mentioned that it's a platonic ideal is because it takes a lot of education and experience for one to even _know_ how to be anonymous—we're not born a priori with an understanding of privacy wrt technology, and we don't learn about tech privacy early say compared to privacy in the physical world. Maybe older folk that were wise to all of these violations as they became prevalent, but younger people are already profiled and marketed to before they understand any of these concepts—it's so dire. I think an approach that may work is for the blocking and scrubbing to be on the hardware and software vendors level with privacy-options baked in and set as default. A given, sort of like how you expect a bathroom stall to be private.
Another solution, assuming we can't escape being tracked, would be to weaponise our data with tools like trackmenot[0] and adnauseam[1].
by Syonyk on 7/4/21, 10:27 PM
Always a good read, I'll see if I find anything in particular that stands out as lacking or wrong!
by uyt on 7/4/21, 11:28 PM
For a historic example, '...although Newton's solution was anonymous, he was recognized by Bernoulli as its author; "tanquam ex ungue leonem" (we recognize the lion by his claw).' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Later_life_of_Isaac_Newton#Ber... I am guessing the proof techniques were so hard/original that Bernoulli concluded only Newton could've come up with it at that time.
Likewise, I would assume there's only a handful of people in the world who have this level of expertise on online anonymity. So do you then have to keep this expertise completely isolate to one particular anonymous account to avoid being correlated?
My concern applies to knowledge that isn't particularly world class too, as long as it's in a unique combination. I guess in some sense what we know makes us who we are so it's hard to avoid being "identified" that way without splitting your personality?
by DoreenMichele on 7/4/21, 11:34 PM
I think you left out the word know from the above paragraph.
For a lot of people, their biggest threats will be personal relationships: an abusive relative or ex, someone they are currently divorcing. That seems to not make your threat assessment chart and I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
by CA0DA on 7/4/21, 11:15 PM