Story time: I've hanged around hacker/infosec circles for quite a few years. I have a terrible personality where I can't get close to anyone or open up(not a jo

Story time: I've hanged around hacker/infosec circles for quite a few years. I have a terrible personality where I can't get close to anyone or open up(not a joiner),that meant I couldn't be part of any inner circles. Eventually, over the course of many years I discovered all the ways my IRL identity could be correlated with my online activity. I also discovered groups of hackers(not the nice kind) make a hobby out of deanonymizing people,especially anyone that has remotely anything to do with infosec. I also realized many (not all) of these people had real jobs and that they could affect my life in very real ways. For example,I am using a VPN now and my browser has strong privacy protections configured. I am very confident that my identity could still be revealed by analyzing my writing style and correlating other behavorial metadata. Although I am not certain,I assume anyone in infosec that is interested in my off-work activity is monitoring my hn posts. Ways I've screwes up over the years: * Forgot to sanitize my whois * Used my regular email when consulting about IT work with IT/infosec people I did not know * Reused passwords for many years. * Didn't change reused password after inadvertently posting it on a public forum/chat. * Didn't use a VPN or Tor for many many years. * Assumed for a long time that 0days were used by an elite few and that nobody would burn one on a boring person like myself. * Assumed IT coworkers/bosses would never actively stalk me off-work because I assumed only a serious psycopath would do that to a human they see everyday. * Assumed my home computers' security without considering how easy it is for anyone to literally break into my place (has happened). * much more All in all, acheiving a reasonable level of security and privacy is a very difficult task for an individual. One of the reasons I got into security is because I kept thinking "I do IT for a living. What about all the normal unsuspecting people? What about my family members,heck pretty much anyone." It feels too much like a one-sided war against the 99% of people who are not tech-savvy. I want to help protect people who don't know how to protect themselves. Interestingly,the most diffult part is making people understand that they are under attack by extremely hostile parties. Fortunately there are many pros that share my view. @evacide on twitter for example helps women who have had their devices hacked by a stalker/hacker. For someone who does not work in IT, being monitored by a hacker practically drives them into extreme paranoia. It causes real mental harm. IMO,it should be treated as assault. I realize most of what I said is about hackers deanonymizing people and not the other way around like the article. I just thought it was important to note how many hackers are part of the problem and that we should consider how much more non-hackers need anonymity,pseudonymity and privacy in general. Lastly, I'd like to say this to anyone who tracks or monitors people(analytics count): consent is key. Imagine someone looking at you bare naked,this is fine if and only if they have your consent.