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The impact on privacy appears positive. Most users remain unaware that ISPs track and monitor traffic, or that services like Google and Cloudflare can fingerpr

The impact on privacy appears positive. Most users remain unaware that ISPs track and monitor traffic, or that services like Google and Cloudflare can fingerprint and statistically aggregate connection meta-data (packet size and timing) to build data sets even where privacy preserving technologies are deployed by the user. Many domestic users could take advantage of this TCP kernel update because of the ubiquity of available connections. In dense urban settings people might have access to one or more wired connections, perhaps a couple of 4G /5G modems lying around, a phone to tether, and perhaps some free-open wifi connections from nearby coffee shops etc. Multi-homing not only offers greater reliability, it can allow connections to evade spying much like "spread spectrum" cryptography, by multiplexing connections - as TCP was designed/intended to accommodate - spreading them randomly over multiple links. Of course there are ways that multi-con TCP could lessen privacy in the hands of a naive user, perhaps by unexpectedly routing through a less secure link, but this comes down to digital literacy and good craft in the end.

tjoff 4y ago
ISP monitoring is illegal in many cases and is the easiest to prevent completely whereas multipath TCP doesn't help much at all in this case. And if you can assume digital literacy and good craft it is a non-issue anyway. If you have access to wired, wifi and 4G/5G the correct use of that is to always in every single case to use wired, until it breaks. Your ISP will get the exact same traffic as it does without multipath TCP (which probably is encrypted anyway). The only difference and advantage is that your connection doesn't break when you switch between them. You'd do the exact same switch without multipath TCP only you'd have to reconnect. On the other hand, you do give google and everyone else you talk to your complete list of endpoints. So your movement can be trivially followed and you have another insanely valuable tracking data that does not necessarily change when you change network. I am flabbergasted that anyone can argue that this is a positive from a privacy point of view. I hope I've missed something obvious.
- b112 4y ago
  People only see privacy issues, after they have been used against them, and further, after they have had detrimental impact. Look at how for decades, people cited Facebook privacy concerns, about their tracking, and data collection policies. People were discussing this, railing against it, for 15 years before it caused election interference(Cambridge), and deaths world wide(civil wars). Most people, including those in the industry, just did not care. Facebook is fun! We make money using it! Who cares! This is quite typical human behaviour. As an example, I note how people who have been worried about Facebook for decades, think using cash is weird. Meanwhile, banks collect immense data about people, share that data with others, including associative data. Banks know more about you than Facebook, and even use their power to restrict cash usage. One day, if this decades long, slow trend continues, two human beings will be unable to exchange money, without a third party being involved. Considering that the US government already tracks many forms of payment in the US, post 9/11, and secondly, purchases tracking info from private corps, anyone who worries about privacy? Well. Such people should be using cash as exclusively as possible. But what do you see from tech inclined privacy advocates? Paying with NFC or RDIF on their phones. Using credit cards. Complaining about cash. Not carrying cash. Not using cash. The battle to retain anonymous fiscal transactions is more important than online tracking, for there is little "out". EG, you can leave your phone at home, but you still must pay for things somehow... So do not be surprised. People only care about privacy after death, destruction, and political destabilization. They only care, after, not before. Convenience first, after all!
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    You might like my Digital Vegan [1] Though I suspect you really don't need to read it. Maybe suggest or review it for others stuck in the same trap of "convenience uber alles". Regards. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > ISP monitoring is illegal in many cases Er, maybe in the EU? Since I've had an ISP mail me a notice that they were planning to monetize my traffic, I can assure you there are jurisdictions where it clearly isn't.
- toast0 4y ago
  > If you have access to wired, wifi and 4G/5G the correct use of that is to always in every single case to use wired, until it breaks. That's not necessarily the case, unless you define 'it breaks' tautologically. If you're connecting to a LAN server where your server has 2x1G, but your client has 1x1G, you can transfer data faster if you use wired and wifi. Same thing if your wired internet connection is bandwidth limited; augmenting with 4G/5G would help transfer data faster. Having access to multiple routes may help in case of congestion or faulty links anywhere on the path (although, of course, there's nothing preventing paths being shared by ISPs on multiple last-mile mediums). On the other hand, MPTCP is difficult to optimize; high performance tcp stacks arrange for all the packets for a given connection to be received on the same cpu to reduce contention; it's hard to arrange that for the two (or more) underlying connections of MPTCP. It's probably better to do MPTCP to protect reachability rather than to improve bulk transfer rates, IMHO.
  - tjoff 4y ago
    Sure, but these are really niche edgecases where you really have to optimize it on a case by case. Augmenting with 4G/5G could really help but before daring to do that you'd really have to make sure that it doesn't incur extra costs or drain the data-plan. And mixing in wifi also begs the question, is this latency bound or not? And do we really want to pollute the spectrum with this high-throughput transfer for a minor speed increase? Potential ruining it for everyone else. To make it sensible the server would also need 2x1G which is already very very niche and if it was a considered usecase you'd probably opt for 10G anyway. In the vast majority of cases and probably the only sensible defaults would be wired > wifi > 4G/5G.

tjoff 4y ago

ISP monitoring is illegal in many cases and is the easiest to prevent completely whereas multipath TCP doesn't help much at all in this case. And if you can assume digital literacy and good craft it is a non-issue anyway. If you have access to wired, wifi and 4G/5G the correct use of that is to always in every single case to use wired, until it breaks. Your ISP will get the exact same traffic as it does without multipath TCP (which probably is encrypted anyway). The only difference and advantage is that your connection doesn't break when you switch between them. You'd do the exact same switch without multipath TCP only you'd have to reconnect. On the other hand, you do give google and everyone else you talk to your complete list of endpoints. So your movement can be trivially followed and you have another insanely valuable tracking data that does not necessarily change when you change network. I am flabbergasted that anyone can argue that this is a positive from a privacy point of view. I hope I've missed something obvious.

b112 4y ago
People only see privacy issues, after they have been used against them, and further, after they have had detrimental impact. Look at how for decades, people cited Facebook privacy concerns, about their tracking, and data collection policies. People were discussing this, railing against it, for 15 years before it caused election interference(Cambridge), and deaths world wide(civil wars). Most people, including those in the industry, just did not care. Facebook is fun! We make money using it! Who cares! This is quite typical human behaviour. As an example, I note how people who have been worried about Facebook for decades, think using cash is weird. Meanwhile, banks collect immense data about people, share that data with others, including associative data. Banks know more about you than Facebook, and even use their power to restrict cash usage. One day, if this decades long, slow trend continues, two human beings will be unable to exchange money, without a third party being involved. Considering that the US government already tracks many forms of payment in the US, post 9/11, and secondly, purchases tracking info from private corps, anyone who worries about privacy? Well. Such people should be using cash as exclusively as possible. But what do you see from tech inclined privacy advocates? Paying with NFC or RDIF on their phones. Using credit cards. Complaining about cash. Not carrying cash. Not using cash. The battle to retain anonymous fiscal transactions is more important than online tracking, for there is little "out". EG, you can leave your phone at home, but you still must pay for things somehow... So do not be surprised. People only care about privacy after death, destruction, and political destabilization. They only care, after, not before. Convenience first, after all!
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  You might like my Digital Vegan [1] Though I suspect you really don't need to read it. Maybe suggest or review it for others stuck in the same trap of "convenience uber alles". Regards. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> ISP monitoring is illegal in many cases Er, maybe in the EU? Since I've had an ISP mail me a notice that they were planning to monetize my traffic, I can assure you there are jurisdictions where it clearly isn't.
toast0 4y ago
> If you have access to wired, wifi and 4G/5G the correct use of that is to always in every single case to use wired, until it breaks. That's not necessarily the case, unless you define 'it breaks' tautologically. If you're connecting to a LAN server where your server has 2x1G, but your client has 1x1G, you can transfer data faster if you use wired and wifi. Same thing if your wired internet connection is bandwidth limited; augmenting with 4G/5G would help transfer data faster. Having access to multiple routes may help in case of congestion or faulty links anywhere on the path (although, of course, there's nothing preventing paths being shared by ISPs on multiple last-mile mediums). On the other hand, MPTCP is difficult to optimize; high performance tcp stacks arrange for all the packets for a given connection to be received on the same cpu to reduce contention; it's hard to arrange that for the two (or more) underlying connections of MPTCP. It's probably better to do MPTCP to protect reachability rather than to improve bulk transfer rates, IMHO.
- tjoff 4y ago
  Sure, but these are really niche edgecases where you really have to optimize it on a case by case. Augmenting with 4G/5G could really help but before daring to do that you'd really have to make sure that it doesn't incur extra costs or drain the data-plan. And mixing in wifi also begs the question, is this latency bound or not? And do we really want to pollute the spectrum with this high-throughput transfer for a minor speed increase? Potential ruining it for everyone else. To make it sensible the server would also need 2x1G which is already very very niche and if it was a considered usecase you'd probably opt for 10G anyway. In the vast majority of cases and probably the only sensible defaults would be wired > wifi > 4G/5G.