So, I recently moved about 6 months ago. Have only given my real address and name to the DMV, Phone Company, Internet, and rental property(obviously knows my real address)
Ran Optery and found out that over 80 data brokers have my legit new address already.
Feeling like privacy is just some kind of wet dream at the moment. I do everything right, I think but no matter what the 4 companies I have given my information too will constantly sell my personal data no matter what.
It’s truly sad the direction America is going towards, all for some more money.
Privacy is a collective “war”, it’s not something that can be fought on individual level. You can adopt some precaution on a personal level, and try to do better, but it’s something that must be brought to a collective level.
Same as climate change policy and worker right.
It’s a collective war that I also feel is lost. Especially, when there is little to no policies in effect to stop these data brokers. Unless you live in California.
We have policies on Europe but even they do not help. The ad business is completely out of control, on some sites there are over 200 as companies gathering your data and selling them through the real time bidding system. it’s impossible to know who bought the data. just have a look what’s been uncovered lately.
I live in Europe, and I feel the battle is still on (but very very difficult)
Not to worry, climate change will bring back privacy
Even then, not so much. I’ve been tugging on those particular wires, and the overall response seems to be, send a reply once, then ghost you until you’ve forgotten that you asked them. They do nothing during that time, and will probably continue to do nothing well after we forget.
I “live” in California to every company that I do business there that also operates in CA…
First, remember that you’re not fighting this war alone. The most important part is educating people who are curious about it around you.
Second, it’s not about winning; it’s about being the biggest pain in the ass possible for people making money off our privacy.
Keep fighting in the way that suits you best.
Second, it’s not about winning; it’s about being the biggest pain in the ass possible for people making money off our privacy.
This. I don’t think I’m “fighting a war,” but I pay for my own email server, self host a number of services, and am waiting on my pixel 8 now to run Graphene OS on. I can’t be “off the grid” but I don’t have to fuel everyone’s data hoarding machines.
If you’re fighting a one man war for privicy? Yeah, that’s pretty much a lost cause. (Also, the “all or nothing” approach will leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth. Pick your fights, and accept that you’ll never be able to keep all away from companies selling em, and that sometimes, sacrifices to your privacy have to be made. Complete removal shouldn’t be the goal when it’s just you going at it–it should be the reduction of what they get as much as feasibly possible without inconveniancing the user)
If you spread and bring that war to the collective? That’s where things are gonna change. Slowly, yeah, but they’ll change.
Your address is public information. Trying to hide that is pointless (well, it can be done, but is complex to do).
“Phone company, internet”
Lol, there you go. Your ISP and wireless carrier are THE worst. They also have a lot of your financial info that they sell off. Tracking too. Your carrier routinely pings your phone for get location and records the calls, where you were at the time, how long etc. Unless it’s encrypted, they see and harvest it all.
ISPs don’t have as much liberty but they too track and sell off a fair bit of your life. They also have your financial info as most almost run a background check these days.
If I may, might privacy be both a personal, individual endeavor and a collective endeavor?
On the personal level, can’t we foil the corporate intrusion by choosing apps in the Fediverse?
And on the collective level, can’t promotion of the Fediverse help?
I’m aware that city and county records often contain my street address and that doesn’t bother me. I’ve got to pay taxes and vote.
But I look at it this way: that’s my front facing public identity. Basically the one I use at work that gets a paycheck. Not private. And yes, that’s a pity and that war is lost, but I lose nothing because of that.
But then there’s my identity that shares the goals of global groups that chafe against injustice and oppression. All that work separated from my public identity by multiple barriers. Personably not perfect privacy — watch The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola for a discussion of perfect privacy.
Is this kind of approach practical and one that means we haven’t lost?
Every fight between people and corporations is a loss cause if corporations continue to control our elected officials.
IMHO it’d be worthwhile to investigate which one actually did leak it without your consent. It might be pointless for your current address but surely would be for the next one, and everybody else.
More pragmatically even though it’s wrong I’m not sure how impactful it is. Namely you can receive spam regardless of where you live. What’s worrisome is arguably when companies know more about you, e.g tastes, political leaning, sexual orientation, etc. This is a lot more than a name on an address. I believe this is harder to get, especially if you are mindful of what you share. So… is it bad? Sure, is it lost? IMHO no.
Yeah, I completely agree. I did this also right before I moved and found out my mental health records were being bought by data brokers.
I totally fell down a rabbit hole with that one. Basically, the 3rd-party software that hospitals and clinics use are subject to sell the data that gets imported into the software.
But, you’re definitely right. I’m pretty sure it’s my rental agency along with everybody else.
When, I first moved here with in the first week I received mail from a bunch of local dealers about my Hyundai which completely freaked me out that they all of a sudden knew what I drove as soon as I entered the state.
I’m not sure how data brokers actually work but they definitely operate like organized crime organizations.
The DMV and the post office(if you submitted am address change) are the most likely offenders.
It’s only a matter of time before those records (and my mental health records too) get involved in a breach.
This does not leave me sleeping well at night.
there is no such thing as a zero-trust society (although I now want to write that scifi story and tease that idea out). As such, the cost of living in a society will always be some amount of infringement of privacy beyond complete anonymity. Even you were comfortable giving your address and name to 4 other parties (under the presumption that only they would use that information), and even then how many individuals within those organizations have access to that information?
Thus privacy cannot be thought of as an all-or-nothing battle. Privacy is a compromise between total anonymity (un-people) and convenience (you can’t get public utilities to your house if they don’t know where you live). The fact is that we have the level of privacy we do right now because of a lot of resistance and hard work. If it wasn’t for all the survivalists and conspiracy theorists and paranoid software devs and whistleblowers and tech journos and anti-authoritarian content creators and anti-surveillance artists and even ordinary joes like me who just want to use online services withouth the digital equivalent of the weird kid in class who stood over your shoulder and watched everything you did (x1000), things could and would be much worse.
If you must think of it as a war, consider it to be analogous to state-vs-collective wars of history: our “opponents” are organizations that are constrained by their hierarchical nature to certain unspoken rules of engagement, and we are a guerilla collective bound only by our shared value(s). Think the Texas Revolution, Vietnam, African National Congress, Zapatistas, IRA, Black Panthers or pretty much anything the Romans did with northern European Barbarians. I won’t sit here and lie to you that the devastation that happened to these peoples and their homelands was “winning,” but I can tell you that the dominators certainly didn’t get their way either.
there is no such thing as a zero-trust society (although I now want to write that scifi story and tease that idea out).
It’s been done, kinda. Guy named Hannu Rajaniemi wrote a dilogy called “Jean le Flambeur.” I think it’s in the second book, The Fractal Prince, the lead character visits Mars, which has a society where everyone has the ability to encrypt and/or sign all interactions; citizens have an organ that facilitates this, making the operations as fluid and natural as speaking. It’s well thought out, well written, and the series is an entertaining read. It reminded me of John C Wright’s “The Golden Oecumene” trilogy.
I was hoping someone would comment telling me they already read that story! Thanks, gonna read it asap!
If it wasn’t for all the survivalists and conspiracy theorists and paranoid software devs and whistleblowers and tech journos and anti-authoritarian content creators and anti-surveillance artists and even ordinary joes like me who just want to use online services withouth the digital equivalent of the weird kid in class who stood over your shoulder and watched everything you did (x1000), things could and would be much worse.
this. this is the privacy truth of the year right here. shout out to all the insane people. we dont deserve them.
Even you were comfortable giving your address and name to 4 other parties
They have never said that, did they?
Have only given my real address and name to the DMV, Phone Company, Internet, and rental property
Where did they say that they were comfortable doing that? I don’t see a word or an acronym of it.
Sometimes you must do things that you are not comfortable doing, but you just can’t avoid it. Doing that for the ISP (who need to set up the cable into your home and the gateway) is not the same as doing that for e.g. netflix or facebook.
Fine, in that case: more comfortable than the alternative. No one’s kicking down your door and forcing you to get phone or internet, you don’t have to live on-grid to survive, it’s not illegal to not own a vehicle.
*Comfy EU noises*
LOL! That’s the lie of the century. I’m thinking you dont pay attention to the last handful of years and the legislation the EU is trying to pass? The EU is NOT privacy respecting. They just have a half descent data policy with GDPR, which many US states also have.
Time to look at the larger picture.
Well, if you didn’t take all the precautions you took, over a 1000 data brokers could’ve had access to your address, and so much more about you.
And while I most certainly don’t like it, I know that I’m still stopping them from learning even more about me, and my search results are still secure.
Everyone I get to talk to me on Signal is having a secure conversation with me.
Everything to an extent is a win, so don’t give up king.
Did you update your address with your bank or credit cards? Your workplace?
I’m sure it got out from the credit reporting agencies if so.
USPS sold you out. (If in the US). They literally sell “change of address” updates to marketing companies. You think they survive on selling stamps?
I never updated my address and they have still found me. Personally i think it is mortgage companies.
I guess that is one good thing about renting. Your name isn’t really tied to a property at least as far as public records are concerned.
Unlike most privacy concerned people. I don’t believe that privacy is very useful without anonymity. metadata is at the heart of surveillance and tracking. In this regard I was a little optimistic when tor came out and hoped that many technologies will be build around that. that didn’t happen because you can’t build a business and make a profit by providing anonymity. now half websites are systematically blocking tor exit nodes. it can’t be used safely with torrents. and even briar the messenger built to use tor has been compromised by its developers so that you can’t be anonymous on briar . All in all I share the same frustration and can’t see a brighter future for privacy and anonymity .
Can you elaborate on the Briar claim? Very curious.
Briar shares your hardware’s Bluetooth MAC address with your contacts even if you haven’t added that contact or connected with that contact using Bluetooth. meaning all your briar contacts even those on groups are storing your MAC address ( a unique device identifier) which makes plausible deniability virtual impossible. I remember reading the devs themselves acknowledge that briar isn’t a anonymous chat app (somewhere in their git repo or the wiki or the blog, can’t remember where exactly), so beware of this aspect.
I never needed hardcore anonymity but I was always sceptical why people think Briar is anonymous when it uses Bluetooth. Now that I know that the MAC is shared even without using Bluetooth, I’m even more confused. Thanks for the info.
Don’t forget that the government owes like 75% of the exit nodes.
This is a myth that’s been addressed by the project. For starters, there are no disclosures about the amount of nodes owned by the Government/NSA/CIA/etc. You’re probably thinking how the project, in 2012, received 80% of its funding from the US Gov source.
You may make the argument of “follow the money”, or you could also make the argument that this type of tech this widely distributed benefits the government too (field agents for some agencies allegedly use Tor, as do foreign defectors) and compromising the network would lead to a potential vector to compromise their interests.
It’s also worth noting that Tor uses 3 hops (entry, relay, and exit nodes) and you can check the location/IP of your current route at any time to ensure geographic diversity. An actor would have to own all 3 to know what you were visiting and trace the traffic back to you.
A real war has risk for all the participants.
Here you bear all the risk, and the counterparty, the internet company for example, bears no risk.
If and when you create the risk for the counterparty, where no risk has existed before, then and only then do you have a right to call it a war. In other words you have to in some way threaten the counterparty and make good on those threats to be at war.
