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I used to have a large online presence pre-Snowden leaks and was signed up to hundreds of services, some even in my legal name. Gradually I attempted to 'go dar

I used to have a large online presence pre-Snowden leaks and was signed up to hundreds of services, some even in my legal name. Gradually I attempted to 'go dark' and delete all those accounts, which was tedious, but worth it. There's two extremes to being online: you can wear your heart on your shirt sleeve and post under your legal name, and share details about your private life, or you can be a ghost and leave no traces, or at least minimize your footprint. There is this thing: some people are just so famous online, that reverting back to some private mode is nearly impossible for them. They're so out there and involved with so many services, that 'going dark' for them would be very difficult, but there are steps you can take to minimize your footprint. It's not too late to take those initial steps. I encourage everyone to attempt to 'go dark' gradually and make it very expensive for people to dox you. If you turn it into a game, it's even better. I said it was tedious, but honestly I kind of like becoming a ghost. I'm so opaque to big tech now, that it must really piss them off, including dragnet surveillance. It's not a life for everyone however, and sometimes I have to participate in big tech like using my smartphone to do online banking, or buying something on Amazon, but 99% of my activities online are all more-or-less anonymous and private now, and I'm happy with that.

gonehome 5y ago
I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. My first suggestion would be to get every account in a password manager like 1Password. In addition to the obvious security benefits, this creates a record of where all your accounts are. For the average person it'll take time for them to remember everything (and they'll realize ones they forgot) - having a place for it all to get documented is the first step. Once you have that, the next step is to go through every account and close the ones you don't need. After that, go into the ones you do need and modify the settings to disable as much of the tracking as possible. I'd also suggest people sign up for deleteme: https://joindeleteme.com/ https://joindeleteme.com/ since these public data collectors can't be stopped without continued effort and I don't think there will be laws to stop them anytime soon. For more technical users, I'd suggest they get their own domain and use fastmail with aliased emails for each account - but realistically regular people will not do that. There are also advantages to having a public presence online (both professional and personal) - the issue isn't so much that you need to be 100% dark, it's that your public presence should be under your own control. One of the reasons I'm excited about Urbit is because it has the potential to give this control back in a way that could actually work. I think culturally we also need to be more understanding of people making mistakes as the grow up and saying stupid things as they learn, but that's somewhat of an orthogonal issue so I'll leave it there.
- ccooffee 5y ago
  DeleteMe's privacy policy and terms of service (both at https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ ) don't seem very reasonable for a company that claims to be in the service of privacy. The website asks for all sorts of personal information at signup and stores it all for use later, with no real promises that they won't do something malicious. (Although the privacy policy currently says they won't sell your data right back to Google, they also retain the right to change the policy at any time for any reason...)
  - gonehome 5y ago
    Yeah - it's a tradeoff. They need that information to actually carry out the service you're requesting of them (namely going around to all these shitty data brokers and going through their intentionally arduous processes to request removal). In order to do that they need to know the info to query against and remove. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that, but of the available options for this kind of thing I thought it was the best one.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  > I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. It doesn't even need to be a middle ground. Even the least effort is enough. Think about smoking, drinking and other risky behaviour. I make a similar plea and argument in Digital Vegan [1] as is made in the blog post. Like plenty of other thinkers now (Newport, Doctorow, Kingsnorth, Vaidhyanathan, Kardaras, Tufekci, Rushkoff, Lanier, Véliz and Oddell) I framed surveillance capitalism, social media and smartphone addiction as a public health issue. This is now the dominant emerging frame. People who use drugs and alcohol use the same sunk-cost fallacy: "Hey, I've been doing this for years now, what's the point in quitting?" The point is that ANY reduction offers an immediate health benefit. You don't have to become an Olympic athlete to eat a little healthier and exercise a tiny bit more. By the same token, any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making - whether that's refusing to give personal data, not participating in the "cashless" society, buying quality, durable digital goods that reduce e-waste, getting a dumb phone or quitting social media... they all count. That's why I think the diet metaphor is very powerful. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net
ranger_danger 5y ago
My biggest source of "being exposed" has been due to the car I drive being unique, which in turn causes people to post pictures of it online, where corrupt local cops who are part of those forums end up posting my name and address online for people to stalk or try to steal the car/rob me/whatever. Do you have any tips for combating this besides getting rid of the car entirely? Keep in mind the operators of these forums do not care who their users dox, and always win any lawsuits/DMCA/etc filed against them (similar to kiwifarms).
- unboxingelf 5y ago
  I’m sorry that’s happened to you, but now you’ve piqued my curiosity - what kind of car gets this type of attention?
  - selestify 5y ago
    And where are you that you get corrupt cops acting in that manner?
    - ranger_danger 5y ago
      I think both of you can understand why I wouldn't want to answer those questions.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
  Honestly, move and consider getting a new rig. Unless your story gets traction with nationwide news or you get the governor's attention, these guys act with impunity. Out of curiosity...are you displaying a "Fuck the Police" kind of message, or do you have a bunch of aftermarket parts that makes you distinctive?
suifbwish 5y ago
One problem with going dark is a lot of people forgot all the accounts they have signed up for.
- cxcorp 5y ago
  I feel that using a password manager makes it easier. Although, it definitely took some time back when I started using one to dig through the services I had registered for from my emails.
helloworld11 5y ago
Could you offer any practical specific tips for going dark as thoroughly as you describe, or guides that you especially recommend? Honestly curious. It's not difficult to find advice for digital privacy online, but finding advice that's genuinely good and useful can be trickier.
stuu99 5y ago
sippeangelo 5y ago
I think there's a big difference between what you choose to share about yourself and what gets taken from you without your knowledge and/or permission. You don't have to "go dark" to remain private. The problem is the massive dragnet of data collection that happens behind our backs!

gonehome 5y ago

I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. My first suggestion would be to get every account in a password manager like 1Password. In addition to the obvious security benefits, this creates a record of where all your accounts are. For the average person it'll take time for them to remember everything (and they'll realize ones they forgot) - having a place for it all to get documented is the first step. Once you have that, the next step is to go through every account and close the ones you don't need. After that, go into the ones you do need and modify the settings to disable as much of the tracking as possible. I'd also suggest people sign up for deleteme: https://joindeleteme.com/ https://joindeleteme.com/ since these public data collectors can't be stopped without continued effort and I don't think there will be laws to stop them anytime soon. For more technical users, I'd suggest they get their own domain and use fastmail with aliased emails for each account - but realistically regular people will not do that. There are also advantages to having a public presence online (both professional and personal) - the issue isn't so much that you need to be 100% dark, it's that your public presence should be under your own control. One of the reasons I'm excited about Urbit is because it has the potential to give this control back in a way that could actually work. I think culturally we also need to be more understanding of people making mistakes as the grow up and saying stupid things as they learn, but that's somewhat of an orthogonal issue so I'll leave it there.

ccooffee 5y ago
DeleteMe's privacy policy and terms of service (both at https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ https://joindeleteme.com/legal/ ) don't seem very reasonable for a company that claims to be in the service of privacy. The website asks for all sorts of personal information at signup and stores it all for use later, with no real promises that they won't do something malicious. (Although the privacy policy currently says they won't sell your data right back to Google, they also retain the right to change the policy at any time for any reason...)
- gonehome 5y ago
  Yeah - it's a tradeoff. They need that information to actually carry out the service you're requesting of them (namely going around to all these shitty data brokers and going through their intentionally arduous processes to request removal). In order to do that they need to know the info to query against and remove. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to do that, but of the available options for this kind of thing I thought it was the best one.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
> I think there's an accessible middle ground for most people. It doesn't even need to be a middle ground. Even the least effort is enough. Think about smoking, drinking and other risky behaviour. I make a similar plea and argument in Digital Vegan [1] as is made in the blog post. Like plenty of other thinkers now (Newport, Doctorow, Kingsnorth, Vaidhyanathan, Kardaras, Tufekci, Rushkoff, Lanier, Véliz and Oddell) I framed surveillance capitalism, social media and smartphone addiction as a public health issue. This is now the dominant emerging frame. People who use drugs and alcohol use the same sunk-cost fallacy: "Hey, I've been doing this for years now, what's the point in quitting?" The point is that ANY reduction offers an immediate health benefit. You don't have to become an Olympic athlete to eat a little healthier and exercise a tiny bit more. By the same token, any improvement to your digital lifestyle is worth making - whether that's refusing to give personal data, not participating in the "cashless" society, buying quality, durable digital goods that reduce e-waste, getting a dumb phone or quitting social media... they all count. That's why I think the diet metaphor is very powerful. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net

ranger_danger 5y ago

My biggest source of "being exposed" has been due to the car I drive being unique, which in turn causes people to post pictures of it online, where corrupt local cops who are part of those forums end up posting my name and address online for people to stalk or try to steal the car/rob me/whatever. Do you have any tips for combating this besides getting rid of the car entirely? Keep in mind the operators of these forums do not care who their users dox, and always win any lawsuits/DMCA/etc filed against them (similar to kiwifarms).

unboxingelf 5y ago
I’m sorry that’s happened to you, but now you’ve piqued my curiosity - what kind of car gets this type of attention?
- selestify 5y ago
  And where are you that you get corrupt cops acting in that manner?
  - ranger_danger 5y ago
    I think both of you can understand why I wouldn't want to answer those questions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
Honestly, move and consider getting a new rig. Unless your story gets traction with nationwide news or you get the governor's attention, these guys act with impunity. Out of curiosity...are you displaying a "Fuck the Police" kind of message, or do you have a bunch of aftermarket parts that makes you distinctive?

suifbwish 5y ago

One problem with going dark is a lot of people forgot all the accounts they have signed up for.

cxcorp 5y ago
I feel that using a password manager makes it easier. Although, it definitely took some time back when I started using one to dig through the services I had registered for from my emails.

helloworld11 5y ago

Could you offer any practical specific tips for going dark as thoroughly as you describe, or guides that you especially recommend? Honestly curious. It's not difficult to find advice for digital privacy online, but finding advice that's genuinely good and useful can be trickier.

stuu99 5y ago

sippeangelo 5y ago

I think there's a big difference between what you choose to share about yourself and what gets taken from you without your knowledge and/or permission. You don't have to "go dark" to remain private. The problem is the massive dragnet of data collection that happens behind our backs!