5 ms·
In 2001 or so I considered entering into an encrypted email correspondence with my brother, for fun. I quickly gave up on the idea because I realized that I did
by mordymoop 5y ago
In 2001 or so I considered entering into an encrypted email correspondence with my brother, for fun. I quickly gave up on the idea because I realized that I didn’t trust that my computer or my brother’s computer didn’t already have spyware of some kind, I didn’t trust the integrity of any encryption/decryption tools that existed, didn’t trust myself not to lose the passwords or leave them lying around, and didn’t trust that some day I wouldn’t just stupidly leave my laptop somewhere with the password entered. Etc., etc. It was obvious that actually having even one meaningfully secret conversation would actually require involved and somewhat ridiculous lifestyle changes.
Having thought this through long ago, I have never understood why people behave as though a chat client or browser that they download from the open internet would be meaningfully secure.
- pedro2 5y agoSo closing your bathroom door isn’t worth it because someone can ram it? :)
- moron4hire 5y agoI live in a house with toddlers. This is absolutely true. I leave the door open so it doesn't bash into my leg when they come hammering on it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yakubin 5y agoWhat is "it" that would bash into your leg? The door? Are your toddlers strong enough to ram closed door with enough force for it to bash into your leg?
- mordymoop 5y agoIf I suspect there are invisible people who can make money off of pictures of me taking a dump and can phase through doors, then I indeed might not close the bathroom doors. These metaphors never work because encrypting your text messages is qualitatively different from quotidian intuitions about privacy.
- robertlagrant 5y agoExactly. I sleep outside because a meteorite would crush a house; therefore a house is useless.
- dmm 5y agoDo you lock the doors on your house? Why bother? Someone could break a window? Security is about identifying and mitigating threat models. For example, if you're concerned with mass surveillance an encrypted messenger will stop that. Just because something doesn't protect against CIA 0days doesn't make it worthless.
- mordymoop 5y agoA house is almost nothing like a computer along any dimension that the metaphor could possibly make sense. Besides, unless you've built your own encrypted messenger, you're still putting trust in several agents that you have no reason to trust.
- jonathansampson 5y agoYou can pretty easily check how private and secure a browser is; setting up a "man in the middle" to monitor its communication is something we do routinely at Brave (see https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/), and what others have done as well (see https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf).