The Post-Snowden Era: How cautious are you online?

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Snowden's NSA-leaks and revelations thereafter have taught us a great deal about how we are all basically screwed: online privacy - more and more synonymous with our privacy full stop - is a complete farce. What we thought was ours alone back in 2003 simply isn't. The melee of synching smartphones and social media and cookies and unprotected web connections degrades us to mere tiny flies stuck in a huge web where we are gobbled up by the big spider of surveillance, tech companies, secret services, big data profiling and the likes. We are trapped in the belly of the horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.

Question is: have you changed your online behavior post-Snowden? Did you take precautionary measurements you wouldn't have a year ago? Are you aware but find protecting your privacy too much of a hassle? Or do you just not give a fuck? I can't guarantee the NSA won't be all over this poll, but I'd like your answer all the same.

Poll Results

OptionVotes
I'm fully aware of how I don't have privacy online anymore and it gives me dystopian nightmares. And I do some here, do 12
I know of the Snowden revelations and the implications, but come on: this is a battle you can't win. I continue to use 11
Privacy? Lol. It never existed and never will. You can buckle up and brace yourself as much as you like, it's all waste 10
Snowed on? Oh Snowden! Yes heard of hi.. Wait: Kittens! And likes! TEH INTERNET! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 6
Darknet baby! I'm only here because TOR and my VPN allow me to, ditched my smartphone, use encrypted email only, exited 3
Snowden did open my eyes: I'm following the news closely and am trying to protect my privacy as best as I can, using to 2
I've heard of this Snowden fella. Left a hot babe at Hawaii to go live in Russia lol what a moron. Ohh more kittens! 0
I have not heard of this Snowden fella. But this sounds quite alarming! Will investigate. 0


a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 02:11 (ten years ago) link

Fuck you for fucking up the line breaks NSA! ;_;

a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 02:11 (ten years ago) link

Poll options:

Darknet baby! I'm only here because TOR and my VPN allow me to, ditched my smartphone, use encrypted email only, exited social media. I'm the baddest crypt0r on the block and am dining with Glenn Greenwald next weekend. Won't tell you where. The government!

Snowden did open my eyes: I'm following the news closely and am trying to protect my privacy as best as I can, using tools, apps, whatever. I'm down with wave of technological initiatives and try to embrace them, even though I'm no wiz. I've got PGP email down and installed baby! But my dumbass friends haven't.... *crickets* ;_;

I'm fully aware of how I don't have privacy online anymore and it gives me dystopian nightmares. And I do some here, do some there. But I'm a defeatist: no measure taken will prohibit my online life to be catalogued; I'm under no illusion, if they want to know, they will know. It makes me paranoid and suspicious though. I'm a rabbit in the headlights. The machine will grind me to bits one day. I don't like it but hey, what can I do?

I know of the Snowden revelations and the implications, but come on: this is a battle you can't win. I continue to use my smartphone and Facebook and whatnot, knowing fully well my information is copied, stored, sold, abused. But hey, we only live once, idgaf.

Snowed on? Oh Snowden! Yes heard of hi.. Wait: Kittens! And likes! TEH INTERNET! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've heard of this Snowden fella. Left a hot babe at Hawaii to go live in Russia lol what a moron. Ohh more kittens!

I have not heard of this Snowden fella. But this sounds quite alarming! Will investigate.

Privacy? Lol. It never existed and never will. You can buckle up and brace yourself as much as you like, it's all wasted energy. YOLO and proud.

a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 02:12 (ten years ago) link

kittens

mitt fleekwood (get bent), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 02:13 (ten years ago) link

nsa just helping because your options were stupid

mookieproof, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 02:15 (ten years ago) link

Options 4 & 8 are pretty close

Mordy, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 02:17 (ten years ago) link

I have no control over public records, many of which are online like where I live, how often I vote, whether I own my residence or pay my taxes. Nor do I have control over the widespread availability of my credit records. Many vile corporations, such as my godforsaken bank & Gooogle, collect info on me and sell it at every opportunity. Aggregators pull together hundreds of bits of data on me daily so as to more effectively sell me crap.

Websites try to dump cookies on my computer in wholesale lots, but I block about 98% of them. I use my basic barebones cell phone less than once a month and then only for a few minutes at a time. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or other big social media. I am not foolish enough to believe this gives me privacy of any sort.

In short, any determined person or organization could put together an enormous dossier on my personal habits and preferences. It is hard to say what they would do with it, but they could amass it without my knowledge or cooperation. The NSA, being far better equipped to snoop on me, could probably scoop up every known fact about me that resides in electronic form somewhere within 20 minutes of conceiving the idea that I was interesting enough to snoop on.

earthface, windface and fireface (Aimless), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 03:07 (ten years ago) link

privacy lol u dont have it and u certainly dont control it and I'm not sure that its even a right i m that bothered about let it all hang out baby

local eire man (darraghmac), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 03:18 (ten years ago) link

"Other" option is missing, so I didn't vote.

I hardly use the Internet/Web now, which is weird for someone into computers, I guess? I'm not sure it was because of Snowden, though. The only thing I do is read random articles on random sites or on a news aggregator.

I have a smartphone but only use it for Spotify. No social media (deleted). No linked accounts. I am considering getting a dumb phone and an MP3 player. I would get a land-line but this would certainly cause havoc in my family circle.

I buy from Amazon less and less, and buy things in general less and less. Trying to keep it down to just one credit card, as well.

But I travel, and they finger-print and photograph you and see your insides all the time at Customs and Immigration, so I'm not deluding myself into thinking I'm completely off the radar.

I guess part of me has stopped participating so much in the Internet Circus and the other part really doesn't care.

, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 17:22 (ten years ago) link

afaik only i can let thoughts out of my head so until there's a microchip reading my thoughts i'm more or less ok, yolo etc

vigetable (La Lechera), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 17:32 (ten years ago) link

When I start Peer Block, which supposedly blocks dodgy spyware servers and evil megacorps from snooping at your naughty P2P activity, the waht you are blocking list literally never stops scrolling down and it is blocking stuff that sounds like shady CCP internet agencies (China Unicom Shandong,ChinaNet Yunnan) and deceptively innocuous sounding fuckers like the Ohio Public Library InformationNetwork + the Russian Federal University Network every second. I don't really understand how it works, but there seems to be a hell of a lot of busy fuckers that want to know what you are doing.

xelab, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 21:23 (ten years ago) link

gov't was fully capable of finding out everything about me pre-Snowden and could probably have had me killed if they wanted to, I'm under no illusions about that. (I didn't find anything Snowden "revealed" to be particularly revelatory, all this shit was right there in the Patriot Act way back when).

Corporations having access to what I buy and read and who I talk to = eh who cares, I would gain nothing by removing myself from their systems and they wouldn't miss me so what's the point? I have a twitter account but it isn't linked to anything. I don't keep any financial info on my phone. I don't use Facebook. I don't use P2P services or bittorrents or any of that shit. I have dummy Yahoo accounts I use for various junk (including ILX). All my other e-mail is through my work account, the same one I've had for 15+ years, obviously that's the company's property.

So Snowden doesn't really bother me (not as much as illegal drone strikes and the prospect of more in the future do anyway)

I don't really like any of the poll options tbh so, not voting.

Οὖτις, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 21:48 (ten years ago) link

I'm broadly indifferent. I've always more or less assumed that if any authority wanted to review my internet behaviour, they could. I've also always assumed that the authorities have better things to do.

I have written for a national newspaper under my real name, use it on Twitter and Facebook and have a LinkedIn account that will give you my university background and current workplace in about thirty seconds, just like millions of other people. The only practical safeguard is to avoid getting into online beef with malicious people.

I would think that anyone using TOR and proxies would raise more red flags with the government than standard internet users are ever likely to and, given that the former has largely been funded by the U.S. government, have a limited amount of trust.

Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:04 (ten years ago) link

iirc changing ilx username wipes all previous internet activity

local eire man (darraghmac), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:06 (ten years ago) link

I'm broadly indifferent. I've always more or less assumed that if any authority wanted to review my internet behaviour, they could. I've also always assumed that the authorities have better things to do.

this is a more succinct summation of my position - well put

Οὖτις, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:09 (ten years ago) link

no smartphone now or ever. I sorta wish I'd never joined FB. Option 3 above probably closest.

When I was apartment hunting in 1994, a prospective landlord told me of my credit history "You don't exist." Much easier to pull off back then.

touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:11 (ten years ago) link

Nothing wrong with asking the question. But whether you personally would change your behavior is a minor consideration. Much less whether you are or are not surprised by the Snowden revelations. The now constant reflex of judging news in terms of whether it is "surprising" or not is irritatingly self-centered - congratulations on your lack of surprise. Evidence matters whether you saw it coming or not.

People who are more likely to be targeted and harassed and intimidated are now even easier targets. I suspect they do things differently now. Unless they don't know they are more likely to be such people, or are just counting on everything staying pretty much the same as they've always expected.

Vic Perry, Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:39 (ten years ago) link

congratulations on yr irritation

local eire man (darraghmac), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:41 (ten years ago) link

Hahaha, damn you D, wine coming through my nose

a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:44 (ten years ago) link

i'm broadly pro-snowden, but ppl have been "targeted and harassed and intimidated" in the united states for more than 200 years, often at levels far more intense and systematic than we see today.

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:54 (ten years ago) link

I don't think the intensity and systematization is the point -- it's that it's EASIER now, and we don't know what the govt will try in the immediate Pre-Waterworld Era.

Also if I ever lose my current job i'm pretty sure i'll be unemployed for the remainder of my life, but i would not want a prospective employer having access to what they will have access to.

touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 6 January 2015 22:59 (ten years ago) link

Pseuds as far as the eye can see and always have. Obviously anyone with any interest could find me with a little effort - but then, that's true of most people.

Googling me won't bring up anything; I do have FB, but have deleted many social media accounts over the years (not that I kid myself that it's not rotting away on a server farm somewhere, I just honestly doubt anyone would care).

Surveillance is easier for govs/various factions now of course, but I recall reading that intelligence agencies can rely too much on the reams of data and not enough on what it actually means. iirc the Mumbai attacks were picked up ahead of time by surveillance but various agencies didn't compare notes til after?

Anti-gov elements, protesters etc are early adopters for most encryption technologies and with all the huge data leaks and breaches of the past few years, I hope this means companies will actually pay attention to what they're securing and storing. But...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Personally, my concern has always been far more with former friends and the shit they'd have on me, but that would be true of me in any era. I've been really anxious about this stuff in the past but the world is so fucked in so many ways, it's kind of settled into a vague unease.

tl;dr my position is
http://i.imgur.com/PQhFkTA.jpg

gyac, Wednesday, 7 January 2015 00:29 (ten years ago) link

I'm trying to imagine a thread on racial profiling on ILE in which most of the participants would be content to say it doesn't affect them personally so meh.

Vic Perry, Wednesday, 7 January 2015 02:06 (ten years ago) link

i have a friend who's gone full-blown option #1, occasionally receiving emails from him directing me towards some mysterious website that demands i answer questions only the two of us would know the answer to before it unencrypts the message makes the whole deal seem quite exciting. but personally while i recognise the importance i struggle to motivate myself beyond sharivari's 'broadly indifferent' answer.

Merdeyeux, Wednesday, 7 January 2015 02:35 (ten years ago) link

xp, the question is explicitly about changes to personal behaviour not whether major surveillance is A Good Thing.

Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Wednesday, 7 January 2015 08:24 (ten years ago) link

^^ Yes.

a pleasant little psychedelic detour in the elevator (Amory Blaine), Wednesday, 7 January 2015 21:05 (ten years ago) link

and so naturally all the posts have carefully stuck to simply detailing personal behavior rather than talking about the relative importance of surveillance....no, they haven't, any more than mine did

Vic Perry, Wednesday, 7 January 2015 21:34 (ten years ago) link

u know VP every day i log into ilx and bemoan the absence of smug leftists so thank u for filling the void

Mordy, Wednesday, 7 January 2015 22:41 (ten years ago) link

Mordy wants one flavor of smug here.

Vic Perry, Wednesday, 7 January 2015 23:36 (ten years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

System, Monday, 12 January 2015 00:01 (nine years ago) link

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

System, Tuesday, 13 January 2015 00:01 (nine years ago) link

four months pass...

http://www.uncomputing.org/?p=1658

One phenomenon that has so far flown under the radar in discussions of peer-to-peer production and the sharing economy but that demands recognition on its own is one for which I think an apt name would be crowdforcing. Crowdforcing in the sense I am using it refers to practices in which one or more persons decides for one or more others whether he or she will share his or her resources, without the other person’s consent or even, perhaps more worryingly, knowledge. While this process has analogs and has even itself occurred prior to the digital revolution and the widespread use of computational tools, it has positively exploded thanks to them, and thus in the digital age may well constitute a difference in kind as well as amount.

j., Thursday, 11 June 2015 16:47 (nine years ago) link

nine years pass...

standing up for the head honcho of Telegram is pretty special

trm (tombotomod), Sunday, 25 August 2024 20:54 (four months ago) link


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