Digital privacy.
It was very recently revealed in unsealed court documents from I believe 2013 that the Facebook app pushed a certificate to mobile devices that funneled all of everyone's decrypted traffic through their servers. That means every webpage visited, every file sent and received, every word typed passed through and was stored on a computer at Facebook HQ. One engineer was quoted as saying that Zuckerberg had a particular interest in looking at people's Snapchats. It was also revealed that Facebook had a data exchange partnership with Netflix where Netflix had open ended access to user's private messages.
Now you don't have to be a Snapchat or Facebook user to see how wrong and downright creepy that is, but if you bring it up with the average person you can see their eyes immediately glaze over. It's hard to blame them, it feels like a hopeless situation and it's much more convenient to pretend it's not happening. People have been completely indoctrinated into abandoning their right to privacy. It's a real shame because if we were paid as individuals what our data is apparently worth I'm sure that perspective would quickly change.
*Formatting
My eyes don't glaze over. I'm FURIOUS that they even exist, and have been since they killed myspace.
I knew back in 2008 something wasn't right about facebook. I had no idea what, but I knew they were sketchy.
By 2010, I knew they were invading peoples privacy. I've never had a facebook. And yet, they have my phone number. My mom has facebook, and she stores my phone number in her contacts list.
Thing is, what can I do?
You mean Mark "They trust me. Dumb fucks" Zuckerberg didn't seem like a stand up guy to you?
I LOVED MySpace. It was a major part of my most formative years. But when it was sold to Rupert Murdoch it lost its soul and its Tom. If Facebook didn't come along something else would have. We were beginning to get the internet in our pockets, do you remember how eager we all were for something else? Sadly one never knows they're in the good old days until they're gone.
Sigh I wish I could visit my page, listen to my embedded playlist, scroll through my comments, fudge with the CSS, rearrange my top 8, post a bulletin, all just one last time.
Couldn’t agree more. I was having this conversation with friends back in 08/09. No one took me seriously, but the red flags were all there for everyone to see. Facebook was caught using their platform to run sociological experiments on their users without consent, for example. That alone would get an academic or real researcher in serious trouble. But for an evil-corp like Facebook? Nothing but skepticism or disbelief from most people. It happened, people were harmed. Oh, and remember Myanmar?
The general publics’ overall sense of helplessness, apathy, and/or disbelief that the tech industry is doing anything untoward is their biggest victory. People are happily falling for it all over again with LLMs.
Permanently Deleted
I’m curious what steps we can take as individuals to further protect our privacy online.
Also, what do you think we can do as a society to change the status quo? How do we get more people to see that this is a significant problem?
I’m curious what steps we can take as individuals to further protect our privacy online.
A few to consider:
- Ditch Facebook and Whatsapp.
- Invest in a VPN
- Switch to Firefox for web browsing
- Install GrapheneOS on your phone
- Pay with cash where possible
- Switch to XMPP with OMEMO encryption for messaging with your favorite people
You've gotten some good answers for your first question. VPNs have their pros and cons, but there's plenty of threads on that topic for you to do your research.
To address your second point, and let me tell you I am beating myself for losing my original response, regulatory bodies would need to step in. In the US I am not optimistic about this as legislation is written by "special interest groups" and that special interest is money and selling our data. Thankfully for Europe the EU is a bit better, and hopefully some of that will trickle down to the US. If the EU granted rights of ownership over your data and the rest of the world saw how much money Europeans were making selling their own data themselves rather than having it siphoned off of them then there's a chance the apathy could be breached, but that hasn't proven true with any other facet of a civilized society that the rest of the world gets to enjoy.
Personally I'm a big fan of federation. As it stands now the Internet is smaller than ever. There's a small handful of platforms owned by an even smaller handful of billionaires. You don't own the media you upload to this platform or best case the platform only has unlimited licensing rights. The ideal platform in my opinion is one of many, where a user can upload their content and then distribute it across other platforms concurrently with limited use licenses. The user retains all rights and ownership and content doesn't get locked onto a specific platform. It's not a simple issue and it's not a simple solution, and I'm certainly not the one who is going to solve it, but I certainly notice it.
I pay attention to credit card readers.
I have gotten to know their makes and some models. I have developed preferences. When I go to a run down establishment and they have a nice reader, I am pleasantly surprised. I know that walmart uses ingenico isc250s, and they do not support tap. I know that dunkin has high quality readers, and sometimes tim hortons does too, but less frequently.
When leaving a place, I might say something like “damn, you don’t see that model of verifone very often”, and my friends will look at me funny.
Semi-related, did you know that most receipt printers have embedded telnet servers in them?
When some but not all bullets end with a period in a PPT. Drives me nuts! Either have none ending with a period, or all need to have a period, but please don't mix.
Oh fuck you.
Not because you suddenly made me aware of this, but because I catch myself doing this with slides sometimes and figured I was getting away with it!
What if one bullet is two sentences... Then should ask bullets end with a period?
Yes.
The way I do it is if a list only has single sentences or sentence fragments, I omit the period.
If there is at least one point with two sentences, everyone gets a period.
If a list has sentence fragments and double sentences, I cry. Then I rewrite the fragments into complete sentences, complaining about it the whole time.
Civil asset forfeiture in the U.S.
We're supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty" but they get around this by saying that they're essentially accusing the money (or car/home or whatever) of being used for crime. Then they confiscate it and the only way to get it back is to go to court and prove that your money is innocent.
The fact that cash/possessions can be taken away from you at anytime by federal agents (or by police in almost every State) without having to follow it up with any sort of case to prove that a crime occurred is ridiculous. And on top of that you can't get the money back that you spent on attorney fees, so it's pointless to spend money on an attorney if what was taken was less than a few thousand dollars.
Most people don't know that this can happen or don't seem to care enough because, "it would never happen to me, right?"
I was into Geocaching for a while and was always amazed at the things out in plain sight that people casually walked by and never noticed every day
Very true! And once you've done it for a while, you start to notice other cachers by the way they are awkwardly standing in unusual places trying to look inconspicuous.
Heh, that's why we refer to other people who don't geocache as "muggles".
Birds. Even in urban areas you wouldn’t believe how many birds there are. Not just pigeons and sparrows, but hawks and falcons will readily live in many urban areas too. Herons and egrets are particularly adaptable to urban areas and easy to find along rivers and ponds. In the spring and fall warblers will pass through as well, and I even see them on busy urban streets sometimes if there’s a few bushes or trees along the path. I’ve even had a few lucky owl sightings while walking in the suburbs at night.
Delightfully since I live in the southwest and grew up on the east coast, where they’re incredibly shy of people, we also have tons of bold urban ravens. In the late spring and early summer sometimes I see big flocks (recently independent juveniles?) just soaring and diving for the fun of it.
Permanently Deleted
I put up a bird feeder and few months ago and now we constantly have at least 20 birds all around our yard. My son likes to throw bird seed all around now so its really cool to see them just walking around and pecking.
I absolutely fell in love with morning doves
Hell yeah, birds. When you get to know the songs of birds it opens up a deeper way of hearing too. And you get a lot better at spotting them. Birds are amazing.
The count of cars with single occupant on the highway. It's crazy how inefficient our car transportation is.
Agree in general, the problem is it's the only method those folks have to complete whatever their daily mission is.
So really, cars are great, they comfortably take you where you need to go, many miles away, pretty fast, relatively comfortably. But a robust public transit network is even better.
Fucking time zones and daylight saving/summertime. I live in a place that doesn’t change my clocks twice a year, but constantly deal with people that do. The number of times I have people say EST when they mean EDT is too damn high. Worse when they say MST, cause then I have to ask “are you in Arizona?” to which they look at me confused and say no. Then I about blow a gasket cause “then you’re not in MST!” If you’re going to live in a place that always changes your clocks, get your own terminology right dammit.
I never remember whether we're currently in daylight savings or not since it's so stupid. I just started saying 'eastern time' instead of the abbreviation to avoid getting it wrong
Fall back, spring ahead is how i was taught to remember.
But now that my phone updates time automatically i occasionally notice a couple clocks arent correct and dont know how long they have been wrong for lol
I didn't even know there's another name for timezones in daylight savings time. Good to know I guess
I base everything on GMT + X. When I’m inviting people to meetings. You work out your own Timezone. Also tell me when you want to meet in terms of GMT. It helps stop the summer / winter crap for both northern and southern hemisphere.
License plates.
I memorised most of my friends' and coworkers' plates, and sometimes recognise plates of random people if I see them often enough.
I do this too! Love seeing plates from other countries all over Europe and trying to guess what info they have. Places like France and Switzerland you can tell the area the person is from, UK plates you can tell the age of the car to within six months etc etc
Looking for things on the ground or the side of the road. Some notable items I have found:
- Unmarked envelope with ~$400 in it.
- Change purse filled with random international coins
- Pair of knipex channel lock pliers that have dog bite marks on the handles
- Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket i727
- Ticket for a festival which I then attended
- Many sunglasses
- Many cool rocks and sticks
I take the time to find the original owner whenever I find something but it's pretty rare. These are only the things that I have kept because the original owner couldn't be found.
Original owner of the envelope probably can't be found because you jacked the money he left for his drug guy! Man's at the bottom of a river!
They need to upgrade their dead drop locations then. 🤣
The fact that "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire has someone playing the bongos in the background. Once you hear it, you cannot unhear it.
So you're just sending me a link to the song?
Thanks. This will be pretty useful for those who don't feel like having to deal with YouTube's terrible search function. But please, indicate what the link links to next time.
I have to listen to the song now
Fun fact, I learned this from DankPods.
Camerawork in film and tv. I have been volunteering doing camerawork for a small broadcast tv station, so whenever I watch stuff I'm always teeing to see how all of the shots are taken, and also the color grading and stuff like that.
I notice lefties. Im right-handed and when I was little and much dumber I wanted to be left-handed. So I did a bunch of weird shit to force it. Stuff like wrapping my right hand up for whole day, trying reverse controls for video games, wearing my watch on my right hand, etc. Some stuff did take, like the watch on my right hand, which ironically made my right hand more dominant. Being a lefty is the club that I was never able to join but think about subconsciously all the time I guess.
I used to write with my left hand for many things thinking that I would make the right side of my brain be more active and have more creative thoughts. It was an experiment that went on for several years when i was a messenger and I had a manifest that I had to fill out, it was real messy.
Yeah when I'd "disable" my right hand I'd have to wait for the weekends or homework that involved writing wouldn't be able to get done. You did this as an adult? That's dedication. I think in time anyone could adapt if they had to or could afford to be low-functioning for a while but I always wonder if there's shortcut steps to start rewiring your brain to not automatically assign tasks to your dominant hand.
It's funny you reversed your game controls since, as a lefty, I have adapted to default controls pretty easily. Never even crossed my mind to change them. Definitely lateral thinking on your part.
You know when people are in a group and they are all chattering all joyously and stuff and you see a person of the group trying to say something and raise a bit their voice and then they recoil and then don't say anything?
Or when you are walking around in a Group and everyone is talking about stuff and one of them just sort of swaddles a bit out and little by little tries as if running away from the group?
Yeah I witnessed you
Can you stop witnessing me, please. It's embarrassing.
No way, I am the Noticer, not the Ignorer haha
Any movie that is acting out one of my hobbys. I always appreciate it if the writers/producers actually took the time to research it. Stuff like:
-boardgame setups
-videogame gameplay
-musical instruments/singing being performed
I also always look in a carscene wether they are actually driving or if it's a video/screen playing Basically I look a lot for clues behind the scenes with movies instead of enjoying the movie as is.
"Is this so-called news credible?"
Permanently Deleted
It goes deeper than that. EVERY news agency has a bias/agenda. They may accurately report the facts of an event that happened, but slant the context as to why.
By reading multiple, even oppositional news sources, you can get an idea of what is happening.
Nobody has a news cast that goes:
Good evening and welcome to the news. 3 teenagers are dead after a drive-by shooting on Rainer Street at 3pm. No suspect has been charged or identified. NEXT STORY. A man attemped to rob the Alvins Jewelers on Swanson Rd late last night after hours. The would-be-theif then became trapped in the stores security system, and arrested when police arrived. NEXT STORY.
Nobody does that. It's 20% facts 80% filler.
The types of shoes a person is wearing, and if they're polished or not. Forest Gump's mamma was right, you can tell a lot about someone by their shoes.
Whether or not people say “yes,” or “no” when responding to others or if they say “yeah,” or “nah”. And whether or not they say please or thank you.
I'm a little slow to respond sometimes, so you'll usually get a combination of all of those. Something like, "ohhuhyeah, yes please, thank you"
I have a friend who does not say please, thank you, or your welcome. It bothers me so much.
The total stairs a staircase has. I cannot walk up or down a staircase without counting, and it makes me satisfied when the number ends in an even number.
Be careful of the bottom-step error!
How my actions affect other people.
I'm an artist, and I'll gaze at seemingly trivial things like reflections of a cup on a semi glossy surface, and then do an analysis of it in my head along the lines of "hmm...the reflection is at maybe 30-40% opacity, and the reflection falls off at more of an oblique angle, falling off completely by the time the reflection gets to half the cup's height...the glossier the surface the less falloff there is and the sharper the reflection is!"
Dude sometimes I feel like I'm the only one that pays attention to anything, bruh. Like how can certain things pass people by.
The amount of space cars take up. I’m not alone in this but as an adult, I’ve only lived in cities/neighborhoods built out before cars and I’m always looking at a street with cars parked on it and imagining the street without them there.
In newer cities/neighborhoods/suburbs, I notice the car infrastructure but cars in a neighborhood built before 1910 or so really makes them stand out.
I read the terms of service everywhere I go.
Hey me too...banks fucking hate me because of it too. 10 minute meeting in their eyes turns into 2 hours with me constaly telling them I'm reading the ways they are going to fuck me so be patient.
Can 100% relate.
I had a great uncle who ALWAYS read them. He said he's won rewards for them some times. I guess they had a contest in the fine print. He also told me he's found direct copy and paste stuff in them that he always wondered if it were legal.
I came across a few of them before. I recently had to turn down one because I didn't live in the source nation of the prize. Most of the prizes come in the form of secret features though, for example there was a secret part of the one for a DC project that told you how to access hidden levels.
Same. But I've never made it through Google's TOS. It felt like thousands of pages, and it felt like most of them invoke all the others.
Typos in published books. Though it's involuntary. It's a bit of an (undiagnosed) OCD kinda thing.
But also, consciously, how much my presence affects others. I hold doors for strangers, I make space on sidewalks, I try not to talk loudly in public, etc. It's the people who don't notice these things at all about themselves that really drive me nuts. Like people speaking loudly on a phone that's on speaker. I hate that type of behavior.
The lab equipment in television "science labs", no your fid detector didn't get the mass spectrum of that "unknown sample", past the question of how much information you'd hope to get from that test, why are you using a gc on organic samples? you want to be using an LC you maroon.
I can't watch murder porn for many reasons, this is the least of them, but I like to poke holes in my in-laws immersion when they watch it and I'm around.
Armor and clothing in movies and shows with historical settings. I really appreciate when they get the details right and it can be really jarring when it's bad. The Northman is a good example of what vikings probably dressed like, which is basically the same as how all medieval people dressed. Simple wool and linen tunics and big cloaks fastened with broaches. No fur capes or leather armbands or cornrows, looking at you Vikings on the "history" channel.
When websites could theoretically track me.
I keep my browser on "delete all my cookies/cache/local storage/history/everything (except bookmarks and addons, basically) every time I exit" mode. And I never log into anything without closing out of my browser entirely first to get rid of anything they could use to correlate "you visited this blog" with my specific Google (or whatever) account. When I'm done with whatever I logged in for, I close my browser entirely again.
My phone browser doesn't have a "delete everything on close" feature, so I just use the "delete all data on this app" feature liberally.
I have some bad news for you, Toot :(
Eh I don't feel like giving bad news, just please see my response to this question and extrapolate.
Extra things you can do:
Firefox browser has built in protection against tracking and you can use container tabs to isolate each site you go to further.
Ublock Origin browser extension will increase that protection. Make sure it is Ublock Origin and not any of the clones and lookalikes.
DNS level protection. I use what's called a Pi Hole, a raspberry Pi on my network acting as a home DNS server.
Here are my top blocked URLS for the month of May. I utilize all the above protections and as you can see the Pi Hole is still doing the majority of the heavy lifting. And it's a constant game of whack-a-mole as they change a single digit to bypass the blocks in place.
123 THOUSAND requests from Roku, all blocked without a single detriment to our media watching experience. No one in my household even uses Netflix. It's honestly sickening. People love to talk about how much energy crypto uses, but no one questions this at all.
There's also the issue of being fingerprinted. An unfortunate truth of the internet is that most browser/device set ups are unique, and it makes it possible to track people that way. Having features like "do not track" turned on actually make you more unique, making it easier to confidently identify you when you visit sites. It probably doesn't matter though, in my experience basically every web browser/computer is recognized as a unique user now (with maybe the exception of using a popular mobile browser on a popular mobile phone model).
Anyways, visit https://www.amiunique.org/ to have your hopes of being anonymous crushed.
I feel so sad for you because your feelings come from a good place but unfortunately you just haven't paid attention enough ☹️
The sky, clouds, atmospheric optics, stars, satellites. People should look up more.
I'm the kind of person that knows exactly how many stucco stalactites are on the ceiling of my bedroom.
Which way the wind's blowing, if ya catch my drift...
What's happening in the area, I.e. a view of the overall scenery. This vast perspective is different, and it's like looking at a live painting. When I'm on the move, such a observer perspective shrinks to few tens of meters, which kind of makes sense.
I don't think this is anything most people don't do however. I do remember places quite vividly though, and I practically never get lost. People however in the scenery, I forget in about a minute.
Birds.
You know when you are walking or doing stuff be it outside or indoors and you pay attention to that ceramic tile in the floor or the wall or you pay attention to that wooden veneer door or a tree or bit of paint or rust and you start noticing a pattern and you end up seeing a face?
Yeah that too
Head shape. Nose shape. I also pay attention to whether or not people have level collarbones, or collarbones that slope downward as they near the shoulders. I often notice what eye color people have. My eyes are grey, and not really a blue color. It’s really rare when I meet someone who has the same eye color as me.
When the light changes from green to yellow most of my community somehow fail to notice the change in color or from what lights it's being emitted, it's baffling to me. If the intersection isn't passable you don't enter when the light is yellow, sorry to delay your trip 1 whole minute, but the gridlock you cause delays everyone's trip, and causes more assholes like yourself to block the intersection at a yellow light, and cause more gridlock.
Not blocking intersections when at a stop on a street.
A minute here, a minute there, before you know it I'm delayed by SEVERAL minutes. What am I supposed to do, leave several minutes earlier? Frickin communists
Where I'm from it's called "squeezing the lemon". Mash that pedal! Ha ha. The best bit is when you catch up with them stopped at the next set of lights.
The kerning between the number 1 and other numbers.
The effect of computer software on human culture, especially on cognitive development, crowd collaboration skills, methods of democracy, and economic systems. We had such a great start until ~1983: My answer to "Who invented the modern computer look and feel?" on Quora
