On the Issue of Privacy

[PatKat]

Behind Tor, HTTPS everywhere, and VPN.

 

[Severen]

Behind Tor, HTTPS everywhere, and VPN.

Personally I'd avoid Tor and just stick to a VPN service you can trust. Just by using Tor, you single yourself out...

 

[PatKat]

Personally I'd avoid Tor and just stick to a VPN service you can trust. Just by using Tor, you single yourself out...

Good point, I have a great VPN I researched then quite a bit and paid with BTC. I'm in Zurich ;)

 

[Severen]

Good point, I have a great VPN I researched then quite a bit and paid with BTC. I'm in Zurich ;)

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com never snitched on any of their customers so I would go with them. A lot of VPNs will snitch on you. And a lot of VPNs keep records of your activities. You should avoid those VPN services.

 

[Severen]

Private Internet Access' "No-Logging" Claims Proven True Again in Court * TorrentFreak

VPN provider Private Internet Access, which has a strict no-logging policy, has proven once again that it is unable to link online activities with a user's identity. The conclusion, which was revealed as part of a hacking trial in San Jose federal court, is the second time that the provider's...

torrentfreak.com

Which VPN Providers Take Privacy Seriously in 2024? * TorrentFreak

To help you pick the best VPN, we asked dozens of VPNs to detail their logging practices, how they handle torrent users, and more.

torrentfreak.com

 

[not_a_robot]

It's not that I don't care about my privacy. It's just that my privacy has been hacked/violated so many times, by so many people, that there's just nothing left to protect. So fuck it.
Creepy stalking has always been peoples' favorite way of showing me affection, I'm over it.

 

[inconsequential]

It's not that I don't care about my privacy. It's just that my privacy has been hacked/violated so many times, by so many people, that there's just nothing left to protect. So fuck it.
Creepy stalking has always been peoples' favorite way of showing me affection, I'm over it.

Feels. Someone I never even dated & stopped having sex with in 2010 still stalks me. It never ends, no matter what I change, what precautions I take, what op-sec strategies I use. Nothing helps.

 

[not_a_robot]

Yeah, if you don't want to deal with this 1984 stuff, then you have to live like a normal person in the 1970s and 1980s. So I don't see it as a big deal. Ditch the smartphone, ditch the internet etc. People shouldn't be spending so much time with technology, anyway. But yes, I do find it disturbing to know, we live under governments comprised of people who are control freaks. Because the majority of people, don't have anything illegal to hide or at least not so illegal, the authorities should be concerned. And who the hell wants to spy on a population when there are so many people into some nasty porn, anyway.

I actually am grateful for the creepy surveillance agencies when they manage to take down kidporn and child abuse sites. Other than that, meh.

Feels. Someone I never even dated & stopped having sex with in 2010 still stalks me. It never ends, no matter what I change, what precautions I take, what op-sec strategies I use. Nothing helps. Yeah techie-guys always try to act like being hacked for personal reasons is unlikely because hackers only want bank info, but in my experience it's always personal, and much more common than people think. Spying on friends and loved ones' online activity is the new American pastime. People are universally nosyand manipulative, and the tools are cheap. It's child's play to people who know what they're doing.

 

[Ladylethal]

Forgive me for my ignorance : but why does it matter if someone wishes to go through all that trouble if I'm going to kill myself soon? Or is this really about protecting yourself from getting a silly visit from nosey police? Which is completely understandable. Again for give me for my ignorance. I just don't really understand. I'm at a place now that if someone wanted to hurt me it just doesn't matter anymore. So I'm confused.

 

[Empty Smile]

Forgive me for my ignorance : but why does it matter if someone wishes to go through all that trouble if I'm going to kill myself soon? Or is this really about protecting yourself from getting a silly visit from nosey police? Which is completely understandable. Again for give me for my ignorance. I just don't really understand. I'm at a place now that if someone wanted to hurt me it just doesn't matter anymore. So I'm confused.

Its basically people who want to be "good Samaritans" by keeping you alive. They don't give a shit about your misery and pain and suffering. They want to look like they did you a favor and be labeled a hero.

This is just protecting yourself from being found on the internet visiting a site like SS and contemplating suicide, and being sanctioned to a happy house. That's why on your first day here, someone recommended you delete your email address.

 

[Severen]

Its basically people who want to be "good Samaritans" by keeping you alive. They don't give a shit about your misery and pain and suffering. They want to look like they did you a favor and be labeled a hero.

This is just protecting yourself from being found on the internet visiting a site like SS and contemplating suicide, and being sanctioned to a happy house. That's why on your first day here, someone recommended you delete your email address.

Yeah, virtue signaling. People use it as currency.

 

[Lefty]

This is good advice. Anything on the internet can be recorded, traced or whatnot. It always good to try to use as much privacy measures as you can. Though the only way to avoid all this is not to use the internet, cell phones, gps or any technology that can be traced. I used adblock, firewalls, anti-virus and more.

 

[Death666]

Thank you

 

[alizee]

It's not that I don't care about my privacy. It's just that my privacy has been hacked/violated so many times, by so many people, that there's just nothing left to protect. So fuck it.
Creepy stalking has always been peoples' favorite way of showing me affection, I'm over it.

I totally can relate to what you wrote. People that snoop on others are responsible for the consequences of damaging another person when acting ill from that gathering information; which wouldn't normally be obtained and used if it wasn't or snooping. I have no problem with no privacy if people don't use the information gathered to fuck with a person that hasn't done anything morally or ethnically wrong. People are so controlling and they will never apologize or remedy the victim.

 

[Ruffian]

Private Internet Access' "No-Logging" Claims Proven True Again in Court * TorrentFreak

VPN provider Private Internet Access, which has a strict no-logging policy, has proven once again that it is unable to link online activities with a user's identity. The conclusion, which was revealed as part of a hacking trial in San Jose federal court, is the second time that the provider's...

torrentfreak.com

Which VPN Providers Take Privacy Seriously in 2024? * TorrentFreak

To help you pick the best VPN, we asked dozens of VPNs to detail their logging practices, how they handle torrent users, and more.

torrentfreak.com

I know this is an older post, but thank you very much for all this valuable information. I need to research some oc the terms, but it's a good tool to get someone a good starting place to protect privacy. Really useful and user-friendly for those of us with intermediate tech skills.

 

[Joannf]

Forget everything

 

[eve2004]

I totally can relate to what you wrote. People that snoop on others are responsible for the consequences of damaging another person when acting ill from that gathering information; which wouldn't normally be obtained and used if it wasn't or snooping. I have no problem with no privacy if people don't use the information gathered to fuck with a person that hasn't done anything morally or ethnically wrong. People are so controlling and they will never apologize or remedy the victim.

I think it's unavoidable. So long as it does not interfere with my financial shit, I don't care who knows how often I order shoes or chips or bathroom tissue from Amazon or ebay... I get no personal emails nor phone calls so nothing interesting to stalk there. My retail therapy tendancies are rather boring, even more so are the things I buy...
Let them sift through the thousands of unread spam emails I get/got from retail companies informing me of special « one day only!!!! » sales...

 

[mnjkl]

The reason that this is important isn't because the government cares that you're suicidal, it's because anonymity is the only thing that guarantees free speech. And it's going away very soon.

 

[Kikoo Loool]

Does anybody have any feedback about Ccleaner Brower?
https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/browser

 

[purplemoon]

I've studied IT some and would like to share ways in which your privacy could be compromised on this site or any site. I share the concerns of many that I could say the wrong thing and then get a knock on my door. And as much as I think a tinfoil hat would be fashionable, I assure you that this is all current reality.

There's a misconception among many that as long as you don't use your real name on the internet then everything will be anonymous, but this is far from the truth. I saw a lot of deleted pictures in the introductory thread in response to talk about metadata, and so I'll expand on that here.

1. An IP, or Internet Protocol, address is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. That includes the device you're on now.
2. Additionally, a MAC address is hardcoded to all physical devices meant to connect to a network. It's a unique identifier. Sometimes this can be spoofed, but most often it's not.
3. A VPN can obscure your network details by making you appear somewhere you're not, but a) they have to be trustworthy and many operate on little more than a promise, and b) they have to actually be doing what they say they're doing, and some don't or may cave easily at requests for information. VPN networks are also rife with affiliate sales promising the world and doing little. Some are speculated to be honeypots. Even if your VPN does everything it says it does, all it takes is one slip up on your part to give your personal information away.
4. In investigations, you can also get identified by any number of factors combined in a profile about you. For example, when you visit a web page you reveal a lot of information about your computer setup, such as your operating system, browser, hardware, location, etc. Combined with this, your habits also come into play. When put together, a profile can be built of you that tracks the things you uniquely do.
5. Your efforts toward privacy can be suspicious in itself. There was a guy who used the TOR network at his college to make a bomb threat. How'd he get caught? He was the only one who downloaded the TOR browser.
6. Your username. If you've used your username before, all it takes is a Google search to find you. I think it was a guy who helped create the Silk Road who got busted by something like this. Authorities did a Google search and found one of his screen names posting stuff like "Hey have you guys heard of the Silk Road? I heard you can buy drugs and stuff anonymously." An obvious promotion tactic.
7. The collected bits of everything you post. Perhaps one time you reveal you're 28 and from Antarctica. Another time you show your tattoo on your arm. And so on.
8. The email you made your account with and all the information you gave away when you made that account.
9. Metadata. This includes but is not limited to details such as camera settings, manufacturer, user settings, and even GPS. For example, several years ago, one of the hosts of the show Mythbusters had fans coming to his door because he posted a photo with metadata. Another example, police were able to bust a guy who produced child pornography by matching the metadata in one of the criminal photos to one of his social media family photos several years later that used the same camera.
10. Reverse image search. If you reuse a photo, it can be found. Just like you how you type in "how to make apple pie", anyone can paste your photo into an image search engine and see the results.
11. Facial recognition. What once seemed like it was sci-fi is now in use everywhere. Casinos are the best example of this – as soon as you walk through the doors they match your face up with a profile of you so they know how to get the most money from your wallet. But online, a site like Facebook is most obvious when it knows who's in a photo before you even tag them. I always wonder when this is going to occur to all the people on Pornhub.
12. Facial recognition advanced. In England, for example, their CCTV system matches up criminals to personal details and they can arrest people years after the crime was committed - or they already have the details when the crime is committed. Guess what people's most uniquely identifying facial feature is. Did you guess people's ears?
13. A program of everything. There's an interesting Defcon Talk, which is a conference held every year about computer technology and security, about a program authorities use to put every bit of data they can find into a program and narrow it down into a specific circumstance. It's far beyond what a human mind can piece together, and quite amazing. They've used it so far to catch everything from killers to rogue FBI agents. But you never know when technology such as that is in use and it has a way of trickling down to common use.
14. And, what hasn't been invented yet. Your data is being collected (and stolen) constantly. Even if you do everything to cover your identity now, that doesn't mean your identity will be safe in the future.

I'm not an expert on computer technology (and that's sort of the point – no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone better at it), and so this isn't an exhaustive list. It's meant to give you an idea about your privacy not only on this site but all across the web. Feel free to correct me or add to the list.

thank you for your thoughtful summary and points that I was not aware of as an average non-IT person. Some of those scared me, although I never do anything illegal, it's just creepy to think of some gargantuan Echelon database that has a file on me that is likely very inaccurate.

However, the only potential positive outcome if the worst were to happen, is that if they try threaten to kill me, I would genuinely start laughing and say "good luck to you with that", I've tried many times, now you go ahead and try, God just refuses to let me die yet (again). If it somehow illegal for me to be talking about killing myself, maybe I can get a good dinner date out of one of the police knocking on my door, LOL.

 

[LegaliseIt!]

Because my brain is turning into cabbage soup some of your post was a little over my head.
Is it actually breaking any law being on this group and talking like we do? I honestly have no clue. Without wishing to sound very naive, what is it that we should be concerned with?

It depends on what country you live in.
Research the laws of your country.

Because my brain is turning into cabbage soup some of your post was a little over my head.
Is it actually breaking any law being on this group and talking like we do? I honestly have no clue. Without wishing to sound very naive, what is it that we should be concerned with?

Research the suicide prevention laws in your country. It depends on where you live.

 

[Anathema]

Even if we were to take all the precautions, there's likely thousands of back doors on hardware and operating systems. I'm almost certain of this, because if I had the power to accomplish mass surveillance, I certainly would.

In short, the battle for privacy is lost as soon as you're of enough interest to the powers that be.

 

[epic]

Thank you for taking out time to write this.

How'd he get caught? He was the only one who downloaded the TOR browser.

I use TOR. I only use it to access SS and news. Will this be considered suspicious activity ? Is the government spying on me ?

 

[Edward1]

This is a very useful thread. Thank you for creating it.

 

[ManWithNoName]

The thing is, Snowden knew what he was doing. He was 100% caught. Get my drift there?

Indeed. I think the key question everyone has to ask his or herself is: to what extent am I going to be an individual of interest to the system? Some of you may be a higher person-of-interest than others.

Speaking out against government policies in places like the UK or Germany could easily result in getting a visit from the authorities, whereas discussions about self deliverance probably will not. If anyone does get a visit from the police, or any kind of 'agency' because they have been monitoring your intentions to ctb, do not think for one second that they are there to help you—the expression 'MK Ultra' should be passing through your mind should you ever end up on the radar of those in charge.

 

[LivingToLong]

VPN networks are also rife with affiliate sales promising the world and doing little.

Indeed. I've even read the term 'snake oil' be used in relation to VPN.

A VPN does have its uses but not as people tend to think. They are certainly no guarantee of privacy, and arguably nothing more than a proxy server and possibly even slowing down your network traffic (an extra hop on an overloaded server). VPN providers may say they don't keep logs but what certainty do you have of that? Besides, IP addresses are not the be-all and end-all of tracking (despite what you might see in these CSI programs)

Where they are of use is when you are using public wifi hotspots, it makes sense to use one there. Equally, if you want to bypass geolocation then they can be of use there (but that's not guaranteed to work these days)

 

[Dystopic_Momento]

Imagine that guy listening to you and watching you like the freaking KGB is someone's psychopathic ex. They don't listen actively to every person, but the AI do. They filter through every word you've ever said and look for words or phrases that are key.

If you watch the Snowden movie (there's 2 and I can't remember which one), did you see the part about the girl who was supposed to be forced into wanting to commit suicide so her dad would do what he wanted? But instead she went to her dad for help, so in the end he did what they wanted?

How can anyone watch that and think these guys are good and all you have to do is be lawful? Also laws always change and there are so many that even police will tell you if they follow you long enough you'll accidentally break a law.

All you have to do is make the wrong sadistic psychopath with a high security clearance and computer skills jealous, or pissed off over your opinion. Your life will be ruined and you'll never know why.

Thanks for the reminder we're not ever completely safe online.

 

[nw7]

Great post!

I would like to add:

• VeraCrypt: https://www.veracrypt.fr/

It is for hard drive encryption. My favorite way to use it, is to create an encrypted virtual drive as a file.​

​

For example:​

1. Use VeraCrypt to create an encrypted file of size 2GB.
2. Create a password for authentication (protection).
3. Use this file to mount (add) a new drive to your system.
4. You need the password to mount the drive.
5. Now you have an additional drive in your system.
6. Use the drive. Like in the Firefox example below.
7. Dismount the drive when you finished using it. (You can configure auto-dismount)
8. The drive disappears
9. The information saved in the encrypted file

• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

The portable Edition doesn't need installation. You can just extract (unzip) the downloaded file into the encrypted drive created above with VeraCrypt. When you dismount the encrypted drive, your activities (browser history, bookmarks, logged-in accounts) are encrypted. So, if someone accessed your device physically, they cannot access those files (browser activities).​

​

Use case:​

• VeraCrypt is configured to auto-dismount when the screen saver is launched
• You're writing a goodbye post while CTB
• You succeeded in your attempt
• Some time passed and the screen saver launched
• VeraCrypt auto-dismount your encrypted drive
• No one can access your browser activities, including your forum account

EDIT:​

Actually, this didn't work exactly as expected. When the drive was dismounted, Firefox was still up for a while. It didn't terminate until I clicked on a link. It is better to set the computer to restart/shutdown after a set amount of inactivity instead of launching the screen saver.​

​

​

• Firefox Multi-Account Containers Extension
  

  Firefox Multi-Account Containers – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US)

  Download Firefox Multi-Account Containers for Firefox. Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs that preserve your privacy. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple identities or accounts...

  addons.mozilla.org

This extension creates a container for every identity. The cookies are separated by containers. So, every container acts as a separate browser.​

​

For example:​

• You created a container named Suicide. You use this container to:
  • Browse this forum
  • Search the web for suicide-related topics/products
  • Check the email account you created specifically for this forum
  • Log-into Youtube with account specific to watch suicide-related videos
• Then, create another container named personal to browse other websites/accounts not related to suicide.
• Then, create another container for work.
• And so on ...

The websites in different containers don't know about each other.​

​

An alternative way to containers is to unzip Firefox portable edition to multiple folders. So, you have multiple Firefox browsers. Then use each one for different activities.​

I hope this information is useful.

 

[RationalGirl]

I hope no privacy is compromised on this website

 

[Responsibleresident]

Knowing my genetic and body privacy is being violated by bigots and erroneous folks who are employed as law enforcement terrifies me greatly. I fear common criminals also but many criminals simply obtained government jobs and hid.