5 ms·

It's almost like computer security. One little vulnerbility might be nothing. But it allows someone to pivot to something else. Which allows them to pivot to th

by rmc 11y ago

It's almost like computer security. One little vulnerbility might be nothing. But it allows someone to pivot to something else. Which allows them to pivot to the next level. etc. etc.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Except that at this point it's IMO worrying too much. Being afraid of having your name discovered is a bit on the paranoid side for most people. Hell, it's usually trivial to get that data off-line and dangerous people will likely target you directly. By the way, some people don't even try. Few days ago I saw a girl on the tram carrying her CV in such a way it would be trivial to shoulder-surf her name, email, phone number, date of birth and home address.
- Swizec 11y ago
  That attitude changes when you get death threats sent to your email that mention your home address because your dad had a business disagreed with an unstable person. Yeah, that happens irl sometimes. The scary thing is that you don't know who will turn out to be unstable, and it can be someone you never even interact with who is just trying to use you to get under somebody else's skin.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Ouch. That sucks :(. Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally. We need to empower the police to deal better with such cases.
    - Swizec 11y ago
      I agree, we can't live in fear of that. And it's as sinple as making your legsl identity ungooglable. Artists have figured out long ago that pseudonyms serve a purpose. These days we get sinilar levels of exposure online.
    - tripzilch 11y ago
      > Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally. I disagree. Protection of yourself is a multi-angle approach. One of the very practical ways to not live in fear of evil strangers is to practice good online anonimity, pseudonymity and/or compartmentalisation. Back when I first got regular Internet access in 1998, this was a no-brainer. Almost everybody did it, and even if you slipped up at first, it was often possible to just cover some tracks and start over with a new nickname. I walked the web like that for years, until modern Internet made it a lot harder. I was forced to make some hard choices about my own privacy (and thereby automatically about other people's privacy too) versus the ability to stay in contact with certain (groups of) friends. Not for one-to-one messages, email still works fine for that in principle, and everybody still uses it. It's the group communications that were the real issue, forcing very hard choices on people that actually want to choose privacy. But I digress. The point is, simple precautions like this used to be no harder than simple real-life precautions such as locking your door and not leaving your phone or wallet on the bar counter as you go to the toilet. Simple common-sense things such as not writing your street address on your key-chain label. Or in cases of "bad luck", if some creepy guy is being creepy, being able to safely tell the bartender, paying attention that he doesn't see where you're going as you leave, letting a trusted friend know where you are, etc. No it doesn't offer 100% protection, but it helps a lot! Real-life precautions like the above are the "way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves" from these types of real-life attacks and threats. Nobody, corporation or government, would consider making such real-life precautions harder to follow. Or if a corporation would leverage network-effect to turn such a real-life precaution into a social handicap or taboo, people would quickly ask themselves "wait, is this really what we want?", and as soon as the first victims fell, the corp would get a lot of flak for it. I believe we should allow people to be able to afford the same sorts of easy-to-follow on line precautions, without forcing people to make the awkward choice between privacy (and sometimes safety) and partaking in social life without too much inconvenience to themselves, and importantly, their friends too.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        I get it, but I think your examples are not equivalent. I agree that the real-life precautions you mentioned are easy to follow and important. But the equivalent of those on-line would be: not sharing your passwords (especially to bank and e-mail), not posting your home address on public forums, telling your trusted friend you're off-line so if they see any activity from you it means you've been hacked, etc. The real-life equivalents to the on-line precautions you've mentioned would be not telling anyone your name, wearing masks in public, not leaving any trail of your activities, and relocating to another town if anyone accidentally discovered what's your first name. Basically, I don't believe dangers on the Internet warrant such precautions for general population. I also first went on-line around 1998 and in my part of the world, people were just playing around. Nicknames were created not because one needed them, but because mostly nobody asked for real names.

by rmc 11y ago

It's almost like computer security. One little vulnerbility might be nothing. But it allows someone to pivot to something else. Which allows them to pivot to the next level. etc. etc.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Except that at this point it's IMO worrying too much. Being afraid of having your name discovered is a bit on the paranoid side for most people. Hell, it's usually trivial to get that data off-line and dangerous people will likely target you directly. By the way, some people don't even try. Few days ago I saw a girl on the tram carrying her CV in such a way it would be trivial to shoulder-surf her name, email, phone number, date of birth and home address.

Swizec 11y ago
That attitude changes when you get death threats sent to your email that mention your home address because your dad had a business disagreed with an unstable person. Yeah, that happens irl sometimes. The scary thing is that you don't know who will turn out to be unstable, and it can be someone you never even interact with who is just trying to use you to get under somebody else's skin.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Ouch. That sucks :(. Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally. We need to empower the police to deal better with such cases.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    I agree, we can't live in fear of that. And it's as sinple as making your legsl identity ungooglable. Artists have figured out long ago that pseudonyms serve a purpose. These days we get sinilar levels of exposure online.
  - tripzilch 11y ago
    > Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally. I disagree. Protection of yourself is a multi-angle approach. One of the very practical ways to not live in fear of evil strangers is to practice good online anonimity, pseudonymity and/or compartmentalisation. Back when I first got regular Internet access in 1998, this was a no-brainer. Almost everybody did it, and even if you slipped up at first, it was often possible to just cover some tracks and start over with a new nickname. I walked the web like that for years, until modern Internet made it a lot harder. I was forced to make some hard choices about my own privacy (and thereby automatically about other people's privacy too) versus the ability to stay in contact with certain (groups of) friends. Not for one-to-one messages, email still works fine for that in principle, and everybody still uses it. It's the group communications that were the real issue, forcing very hard choices on people that actually want to choose privacy. But I digress. The point is, simple precautions like this used to be no harder than simple real-life precautions such as locking your door and not leaving your phone or wallet on the bar counter as you go to the toilet. Simple common-sense things such as not writing your street address on your key-chain label. Or in cases of "bad luck", if some creepy guy is being creepy, being able to safely tell the bartender, paying attention that he doesn't see where you're going as you leave, letting a trusted friend know where you are, etc. No it doesn't offer 100% protection, but it helps a lot! Real-life precautions like the above are the "way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves" from these types of real-life attacks and threats. Nobody, corporation or government, would consider making such real-life precautions harder to follow. Or if a corporation would leverage network-effect to turn such a real-life precaution into a social handicap or taboo, people would quickly ask themselves "wait, is this really what we want?", and as soon as the first victims fell, the corp would get a lot of flak for it. I believe we should allow people to be able to afford the same sorts of easy-to-follow on line precautions, without forcing people to make the awkward choice between privacy (and sometimes safety) and partaking in social life without too much inconvenience to themselves, and importantly, their friends too.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I get it, but I think your examples are not equivalent. I agree that the real-life precautions you mentioned are easy to follow and important. But the equivalent of those on-line would be: not sharing your passwords (especially to bank and e-mail), not posting your home address on public forums, telling your trusted friend you're off-line so if they see any activity from you it means you've been hacked, etc. The real-life equivalents to the on-line precautions you've mentioned would be not telling anyone your name, wearing masks in public, not leaving any trail of your activities, and relocating to another town if anyone accidentally discovered what's your first name. Basically, I don't believe dangers on the Internet warrant such precautions for general population. I also first went on-line around 1998 and in my part of the world, people were just playing around. Nicknames were created not because one needed them, but because mostly nobody asked for real names.