9 ms·

I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were co

by junto 13y ago

I would now consider paying for services that offer real private email, social networking and file sharing / cloud backups, where none of those services were controlled by an US controlled entity and where the NSA couldn't snoop around in my private life. However boring my private life is, it is still mine. I wonder if anyone else would part with cold hard cash though, or is it just me? There maybe a niche there.

JamisonM 13y ago
Unfortunately such a social network would probably be so dominated by tinfoil-hat crazies that it would be unusable. The thing about social networks is of course that the people you want to socially network with need to be there. On the other hand you would be fully up to date at all times on the evils of vaccines and water fluoridation.
- robotmay 13y ago
  Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    You could just agree to disagree with them without expanding such emotional energy. Though I wonder when dissemination of vaccines will be more of a science instead of "We know this strand of virus is going around, everyone come here and get a shot of xyz because it is good for you and will protect you all", especially since overdosage of the massess will eventually lead to resistant strands. It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party.
    - criley 13y ago
      >It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party. The point of 23andMe is that they're trying to figure out what all the data means, using the data itself. You can go get your genome sequenced or a partial sequencing like 23andMe does and get the giant, raw output file. And sit and stare at it. I know I've played with that data in bio lab before. It's not exactly easy to infer data out of it. Which is why having a lot of different sets of data, and information about the person the data came from, can help us. Without a third party aggregating genomic data for study, we're not going to be able to understand the genome, and certainly not going to be able to deliver private, accurate and useful analysis of personal data.
    - dorolow 13y ago
      That's certainly the most mature way to handle such disagreements, I don't think there is any disagreement there. However, it's damn hard to accept that line of reasoning when those opinions lead to a decrease in herd immunity and put the lives of immunocompromised individuals, such as myself, and others at risk because of pseudoscience, a single debunked study, and a former porn star. It's not simply unacceptable, it's asinine and infuriating.
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        And putting oneself in a fit because someone is sharing their viewpoint (as opinion or fact) isn't asinine? There is also a decrease in "herd immunity" when a population has been flooded with a drug to the point where such immunizations have no effect à la "superbugs".
        JamisonM 13y ago
        Your comment seems to misunderstand the difference between vaccinations and antibiotic treatments. Herd immunity disallows an organism a foothold in a population, it is not present to become immune - it is something entirely separate from the emergence of superbugs immune to all or most known antibiotic treatments.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        How is the emergence of superbugs immunity to antibiotic treatments entirely separate when they are different strands of organisms that were previously treated?
        JamisonM 13y ago
        Vaccinations and treatment are completely different things and vaccines and antibiotics are also completely different things. There are plenty of resources on the Internet that explain these matters - if you can get past the anti-vaccine psuedoscience search engine spam. For example you can find plenty of people trying to blame resistant Whooping Cough on vaccines when the most likely cause is the reduction of vaccination rates, not the presence of vaccinations in the first place. I'd be the first to admit I am no expert so if you have real interest in the topic I would go looking for someone better qualified to talk to than me.
    - anoncow 13y ago
      can you elaborate on the emergence of resistant strains due to mass vaccination?
  - alive-or-not 13y ago
    Hello, I'm a vaccination denier :) I don't deny the science behind the vaccines, but the motives of the people who ultimately control the process. The same people have taken away the average person privacy IMHO will as easily take away say his capability to produce children. But I guess it's easier to close your eyes and keep imagining that the elite has the same moral as yours and would never do horrible things.
    - JamisonM 13y ago
      If you do not deny the science behind vaccines then you probably have a moral responsibility to make sure you and your children are vaccinated. I know how bad it is to have vaccinated people in the population but you only believe or suspect that the people producing that vaccines are part of an evil cabal of elites looking to destroy society. I think you have to go with the certainty on that one, don't you?
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Don't forget about chemtrails!
wavefunction 13y ago
Paying with your credit card? That's being tracked. Your back account transactions are being indexed and collated. They're probably in all of our computers already. I've been operating a windows7 honeypot as my "main" computer for several years, generating what appears to be legit "personal" traffic. You wouldn't believe the shit I've found, and it doesn't appear to be your garden variety cyber criminals or foreign state actors. And I'm not even that smart.
- _nb 13y ago
  Could you elaborate a bit on what you found on your honeypot?
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    It appears that the honeypot has been compromised in both a domestic botnet running in system memory by "authorities" local to the US, and also that there are background processes in Windows that are inspecting the filesystem for binaries matching certain signatures no matter how the user configures the system, even "stubbing out" the visible processes that would make sense, like their anti-malware and indexing services. Basically a Windows machine is owned from the get go. Unfortunately this is not exactly my particular area of expertise, so for me it's like glimpsing a shadow through smoke and a moving window, mostly an impression but something that has become more and more sophisticated despite my attempts to prevent it via traditional and modern methods of forensics, and even weird things like audible and inaudible platter noise when there shouldn't be heavy (this is the key for me) disk io.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      I should say as well, I am an interested layman when it comes to this stuff. I have a knack for maths and statistical analysis, so please take my comments for what they're worth, which is only anecdotal
    - revscat 13y ago
      Those are pretty explosive claims. a) How are you identifying the processes? 2) How are you determining that they are inspecting the filesystem?
tlrobinson 13y ago
I would, but that doesn't mean it's not a niche. We are on Hacker News, after all.
deanclatworthy 13y ago
I would also consider paying for this. However, as pointed out in the comments below, a social network like Facebook only works because a majority of the majority of people's friends are there. But, I think the more interesting point is that even if the system were hosted outside of US jurisdiction, or anyone's for that matter, they'll just find a way to make it difficult for you to access, as they do with thepiratebay - by blocking access through the ISPs. The inconvenience/complication of working around these ISP level filters, means that a lot of people won't know how or can't be bothered to work around them. The same would apply to a social network.
alan_cx 13y ago
As I understand it, the US has no controls over the NSA spying out side of the US. So, you'd have less protection. Even if they did, as a result of this, and knowing how other governments bend to US will, I wouldn't trust anything connected to the internet at all. Privacy wise, the internet is dead. Just, forget it. The war is lost. They can, there for, they will. And that's that. I mean, does any one seriously think these abilities and powers will be go, or be given up?
Homunculiheaded 13y ago
"Big Data" is the buzzword of the day but I think "Big Privacy" will be a bigger trend in the very near future. Right now it's technically possible to put together the resources to give your self a fairly good bit of privacy, just as it's always been possible to write a cron job to do remote backup before Dropbox. However this takes both a bit of technical skill, a good chunk of time and planning, and there's still a chance you'll miss something. So I believe there's a lot of money to be made in providing instant privacy the same way dropbox provides instant backups. Likewise as statistics + programming = data scientist, statistics + programming + security = privacy scientist Sadly this also means that privacy will become a commodity and I can easily imagine a tiered system of privacy based on cost (eg 19.99/mo get's you a secure network + encrypted files, 99.99/mo get's you text re-structuring to avoid stylometeric identification.)

by junto 13y ago

JamisonM 13y ago

Unfortunately such a social network would probably be so dominated by tinfoil-hat crazies that it would be unusable. The thing about social networks is of course that the people you want to socially network with need to be there. On the other hand you would be fully up to date at all times on the evils of vaccines and water fluoridation.

robotmay 13y ago
Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  You could just agree to disagree with them without expanding such emotional energy. Though I wonder when dissemination of vaccines will be more of a science instead of "We know this strand of virus is going around, everyone come here and get a shot of xyz because it is good for you and will protect you all", especially since overdosage of the massess will eventually lead to resistant strands. It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party.
  - criley 13y ago
    >It would be really cool to have a personal 23andMe api where people can test themselves without sending data to a 3rd party. The point of 23andMe is that they're trying to figure out what all the data means, using the data itself. You can go get your genome sequenced or a partial sequencing like 23andMe does and get the giant, raw output file. And sit and stare at it. I know I've played with that data in bio lab before. It's not exactly easy to infer data out of it. Which is why having a lot of different sets of data, and information about the person the data came from, can help us. Without a third party aggregating genomic data for study, we're not going to be able to understand the genome, and certainly not going to be able to deliver private, accurate and useful analysis of personal data.
  - dorolow 13y ago
    That's certainly the most mature way to handle such disagreements, I don't think there is any disagreement there. However, it's damn hard to accept that line of reasoning when those opinions lead to a decrease in herd immunity and put the lives of immunocompromised individuals, such as myself, and others at risk because of pseudoscience, a single debunked study, and a former porn star. It's not simply unacceptable, it's asinine and infuriating.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      And putting oneself in a fit because someone is sharing their viewpoint (as opinion or fact) isn't asinine? There is also a decrease in "herd immunity" when a population has been flooded with a drug to the point where such immunizations have no effect à la "superbugs".
      - JamisonM 13y ago
        Your comment seems to misunderstand the difference between vaccinations and antibiotic treatments. Herd immunity disallows an organism a foothold in a population, it is not present to become immune - it is something entirely separate from the emergence of superbugs immune to all or most known antibiotic treatments.
        cinquemb 13y ago
        How is the emergence of superbugs immunity to antibiotic treatments entirely separate when they are different strands of organisms that were previously treated?
        JamisonM 13y ago
        Vaccinations and treatment are completely different things and vaccines and antibiotics are also completely different things. There are plenty of resources on the Internet that explain these matters - if you can get past the anti-vaccine psuedoscience search engine spam. For example you can find plenty of people trying to blame resistant Whooping Cough on vaccines when the most likely cause is the reduction of vaccination rates, not the presence of vaccinations in the first place. I'd be the first to admit I am no expert so if you have real interest in the topic I would go looking for someone better qualified to talk to than me.
  - anoncow 13y ago
    can you elaborate on the emergence of resistant strains due to mass vaccination?
- alive-or-not 13y ago
  Hello, I'm a vaccination denier :) I don't deny the science behind the vaccines, but the motives of the people who ultimately control the process. The same people have taken away the average person privacy IMHO will as easily take away say his capability to produce children. But I guess it's easier to close your eyes and keep imagining that the elite has the same moral as yours and would never do horrible things.
  - JamisonM 13y ago
    If you do not deny the science behind vaccines then you probably have a moral responsibility to make sure you and your children are vaccinated. I know how bad it is to have vaccinated people in the population but you only believe or suspect that the people producing that vaccines are part of an evil cabal of elites looking to destroy society. I think you have to go with the certainty on that one, don't you?
tlrobinson 13y ago
Don't forget about chemtrails!

wavefunction 13y ago

Paying with your credit card? That's being tracked. Your back account transactions are being indexed and collated. They're probably in all of our computers already. I've been operating a windows7 honeypot as my "main" computer for several years, generating what appears to be legit "personal" traffic. You wouldn't believe the shit I've found, and it doesn't appear to be your garden variety cyber criminals or foreign state actors. And I'm not even that smart.

_nb 13y ago
Could you elaborate a bit on what you found on your honeypot?
- wavefunction 13y ago
  It appears that the honeypot has been compromised in both a domestic botnet running in system memory by "authorities" local to the US, and also that there are background processes in Windows that are inspecting the filesystem for binaries matching certain signatures no matter how the user configures the system, even "stubbing out" the visible processes that would make sense, like their anti-malware and indexing services. Basically a Windows machine is owned from the get go. Unfortunately this is not exactly my particular area of expertise, so for me it's like glimpsing a shadow through smoke and a moving window, mostly an impression but something that has become more and more sophisticated despite my attempts to prevent it via traditional and modern methods of forensics, and even weird things like audible and inaudible platter noise when there shouldn't be heavy (this is the key for me) disk io.
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    I should say as well, I am an interested layman when it comes to this stuff. I have a knack for maths and statistical analysis, so please take my comments for what they're worth, which is only anecdotal
  - revscat 13y ago
    Those are pretty explosive claims. a) How are you identifying the processes? 2) How are you determining that they are inspecting the filesystem?

tlrobinson 13y ago

I would, but that doesn't mean it's not a niche. We are on Hacker News, after all.

deanclatworthy 13y ago

I would also consider paying for this. However, as pointed out in the comments below, a social network like Facebook only works because a majority of the majority of people's friends are there. But, I think the more interesting point is that even if the system were hosted outside of US jurisdiction, or anyone's for that matter, they'll just find a way to make it difficult for you to access, as they do with thepiratebay - by blocking access through the ISPs. The inconvenience/complication of working around these ISP level filters, means that a lot of people won't know how or can't be bothered to work around them. The same would apply to a social network.

alan_cx 13y ago

As I understand it, the US has no controls over the NSA spying out side of the US. So, you'd have less protection. Even if they did, as a result of this, and knowing how other governments bend to US will, I wouldn't trust anything connected to the internet at all. Privacy wise, the internet is dead. Just, forget it. The war is lost. They can, there for, they will. And that's that. I mean, does any one seriously think these abilities and powers will be go, or be given up?

Homunculiheaded 13y ago

"Big Data" is the buzzword of the day but I think "Big Privacy" will be a bigger trend in the very near future. Right now it's technically possible to put together the resources to give your self a fairly good bit of privacy, just as it's always been possible to write a cron job to do remote backup before Dropbox. However this takes both a bit of technical skill, a good chunk of time and planning, and there's still a chance you'll miss something. So I believe there's a lot of money to be made in providing instant privacy the same way dropbox provides instant backups. Likewise as statistics + programming = data scientist, statistics + programming + security = privacy scientist Sadly this also means that privacy will become a commodity and I can easily imagine a tiered system of privacy based on cost (eg 19.99/mo get's you a secure network + encrypted files, 99.99/mo get's you text re-structuring to avoid stylometeric identification.)