Here are some of the considerations I've been wondering about:
- Is hiding or obfuscating writing style viable, and how can one do so effectively? I've heard AI tools to correlate users based on messages have been developed, and I've seen some people here obfuscate the text they send, such as by removing or replacing letters. So it seems important. I wonder whether you'd need an AI to effectively mask it though, so that accidental habits don't remain? (By the way, I know someone in particular has mentioned in their status that there is more info available in their profile. So I do intend to check it out if/when I receive permissions to view people's profiles, unless that's not how it works and it's actually not a permission that's freely available.)
- In a similar vein, is obfuscating your username, status, signature, and profile picture preferences worthwhile? (Perhaps there's more to mention I'm not aware of.)
- I know how tying identities is a bad idea for opsec, so I assume it's best to avoid mentioning information that could be linked back to your other identities, including interests or health information. But I wonder whether the privacy risk of mentioning health information and living situation is outweighed by the benefit in CTB reliability earned from having more information to base decisions off of.
- Also, I have taken precautions like system encryption, VPN/Tor/proxy use post-registration, only browsing this forum in the safest available environment from eavesdropping, and avoiding talking about this topic. (And now that I'm on this forum it should hopefully be easier to resist any urges to talk about it elsewhere.)
- Perhaps it is good to also ask in another place where privacy is comparably important, and precautions more tried and tested, like a DN forum with regard to DNMs and similar activities?
- I read through the privacy tips on https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/rules-and-faq.4/ and I remember reading another post a while back but can't remember the details. (I have tried using a search engine but couldn't find it.)
Since it's probably best to start making privacy precautions as early as possible, I'd like to clarify these things before talking too much on other topics. I likely will discuss CTB and advance in that direction personally later though, so I assume my threat actors possibly include law enforcement or agencies/businesses doing mass surveillance (figuring out your identity for involuntary hospitalisation, flagging your purchases for inspection, etc). And so that's why I'm looking into this topic, and any other advice useful to CTB safety and privacy in general would be equally appreciated.
I apologize if there is a similar post easily available by search, since I don't yet have access to the search feature and the 3 suggested threads based on title weren't what I was looking for.
You can get very high levels of privacy and security anywhere, if you really need them, but the more you want the greater the effort involved. If your day job was, for example, spying for China, you would probably want the highest possible levels. But since all you are doing here is talking about suicide, you don't need that level of paranoia. Nobody is going to spend an enormous amount of time and effort trying to figure out who you are. Nobody cares that much. You're not that important.
Just avoiding mentioning personal details that could identify you, such as where you live, should be enough for most people. (Saying you live in "America" would probably be OK, but there is no need to say which state.) Don't mention what kind of work you do. Don't mention your other interests, especially if they are unusual.
Use a good VPN, or even Tor, if you are concerned about your ISP spying on you. However, use of Tor is more likely to attract attention.
You could leave a false trail to confuse any adversary. If you are 25 and live in Texas, you could say you are 30 and live in Canada, for example. (Just remember to be consistent if you do that.) That would be best combined with use of a VPN.
Use good anti-virus software, and keep it up to date. That makes it harder for people to spy on you via malware.
Use Linux in preference to any Microsoft OS, if you have the necessary skills. Microsoft spies on you. Linus itself doesn't (though some applications running under Linux might).
If there is any danger of anyone investigating you after obtaining physical access to your computer, there are many things you can do to count
er that, including:
(1) Delete traces of your web browsing regularly. Clearing your browser history is a good start, but that doesn't overwrite any web pages that the browser might have stored on your computer. A determined adversary can still recover them. (It's isn't difficult for someone who has a good level of IT skills to do that - I have written simple software of that kind - but most people can't, so don't worry about family or friends doing it.) If you want to counter that risk, regularly run software that securely over-writes things. EastTec Eraser is good, but there are many others.
(2) If you know what you are doing, you can encrypt an entire disc partition, including the partition your browser lives on, so that even if anyone does obtain physical access to your computer they won't be able to see what you have been doing. VeraCrypt is your best option for that. However, it's technically moderately complicated to set it up, and of course it can be defeated if an adversary manages to put a keystroke logger on your machine and capture the decryption password. (If you use VeraCrypt make sure you download it only from a trusted source.)
(3) If you want a rather high level of paranoia, you could use the tails OS together with Tor, or you could boot to a volatile OS (such as Knoppix) provided you don't mount any partitions. Either of those should avoid leaving any traces of your activity on your machine.
Plus that would be an outright dox of myself
