Has anyone else noticed how our privacy has completely vanished?
I remember the good ol' days when I was running XP and the internet was not new, but not old either. I knew every single process that was running on my machine and chopped them down to 13 with all the functionality I wanted. I knew all incomming and outgoing connections, ports became familiar, everything seemed to run the way it should. While XP wasn't near what a OS built on privacy should be, at least you could bring it close to it with enough tweaking.
Now with Windows 7, processes that are mundane or useless have been intertwined with core functionality so hard that if you want to disable or stop them from running, they cripple you. We don't know what's running in processes that are so bulked up they can't be disabled and always seem to transmit bits and bytes even when the computer is inactive for any length of time.
Evercookies like flash cookies that you need to log on to a website to delete? What kind of complete bullshit is this practice? No one cares, they're de-facto. Now Microsoft is pushing the same thing with SilverLight, their very own version of flash, and they're doing it too. Source - Researchers Find Methods to Kill Persistent 'Evercookie' | threatpost
File recovery companies can restore harddrives that have been burned and hammered and then they can restore files from those damaged drives after plenty of layers of erasure with magnetic history that's left behind. The drives are probably built to encourage this either way. Just with a free recovery program I was able to list 15+ different versions of an encrypted container which I overwrote by mistake, I was able to restore the last 5 copies and get all my files again.
Then we have data empires which are amalgamating the behavior, thoughts, advertising methods, patterns, trends of billions of people. Just Google is processing 20PT/day in data, mix that with great statisticians and you know how every human is going to behave 90% of the time. Creating tremendous opportunity to exploit core human behaviors, extrapolate trends based on past ones, mountains of data on which words work, for which copy, for which demographic. I've had this in mind for a long time, XMCP wrote a great article a while back that sums up Google- Google’s User Data Empire : Slightly Shady SEO
We have browsers which are somehow still susceptible to drive-by downloads and have to resort to 3rd party programs like Sandboxie for functionality which shouldn't even require something outside of the software being exploited.
Programs with complex EULA's that somehow make us accept that we bend over and take their bullshit. Respectable game companies which have built-in programs in their games send back process names and who knows what else, over the network and back to the company (Blizzard/WoW).
Other programs which find it appropriate to write to 20 different places on your hard-drive to store all the files you accessed(photoshop), when they were created(NTFS data, can be changed but would probably be used as evidence against you that you try so hard to cover your tracks). I'd like to be mistaken but I think the 'private browsing' hype for Chrome/FF still WRITE files to HD and simply immediately deletes them, making them even more capable of being exploited through file recovery than if you let them be wrote and kept, the used proper file erasure.
Encryption, I rely on truecrypt, MEANING for basic protection of my files I have to trust some guy from Czech republic which gives me jitters when my PC even connects to these random countries.
The availability and ease of hacking/stealing/exploiting ,and saturation of people who don't know EXE's from JPG's, or .BAT from MP3's... this is a whole other story, but people should have some BASIC protection without spending 200 hours researching all the ways they're being exploited. IT should be offered at an OS level and explained simply. How many retards run under an admin account, browse porn and leave their broadband always on... then they go on to do their online banking, paypal, personal lives, facebook - leaving huge potential for blackmail, theft and complete loss of dignity in the wrong hands. Living with one of these illiterates? Cross-network exploits, infected USB's in your house, exploited routers which let the outside come in, etc... doesn't matter if YOUR smart anymore, it matters who's the lowest common denominator in your house.
Don't even get me started on cell phones, I have a Samsung Galaxy S and it's the most anti-privacy device I ever owned which comes with all the prebuilt features for maximum exposure. I truly and honestly love technology, and should be able to have this mini 'laptop' in my pocket without giving up all my personal freedoms.
Camera's everywhere, eye scanners will become the new trend, 200~ microphone devices which can hear you pop a bubble gum in a basketball stadium with a full crowd. Slashdot Hardware Story | High-Tech Microphone Picks Voices From a Crowd
Corporations now own our privacy, if you want to be anonymous it requires an almost impossible effort. The stronger the effort, the more unique your effort becomes, defeating the purpose altogether.
One slip up and there you are, unique ID nlssssl@25489333sa33dss - currently located in, talking to, belonging to, living in, wearing, thinking, browsing, aged, likes, dislikes, value, bought, donated, aspires, past, present, all owned and bought by people who will never in a million years have your best interest aligned with theirs.
tl;dr. /rant
Thoughts anyone?
I remember the good ol' days when I was running XP and the internet was not new, but not old either. I knew every single process that was running on my machine and chopped them down to 13 with all the functionality I wanted. I knew all incomming and outgoing connections, ports became familiar, everything seemed to run the way it should. While XP wasn't near what a OS built on privacy should be, at least you could bring it close to it with enough tweaking.
Now with Windows 7, processes that are mundane or useless have been intertwined with core functionality so hard that if you want to disable or stop them from running, they cripple you. We don't know what's running in processes that are so bulked up they can't be disabled and always seem to transmit bits and bytes even when the computer is inactive for any length of time.
Evercookies like flash cookies that you need to log on to a website to delete? What kind of complete bullshit is this practice? No one cares, they're de-facto. Now Microsoft is pushing the same thing with SilverLight, their very own version of flash, and they're doing it too. Source - Researchers Find Methods to Kill Persistent 'Evercookie' | threatpost
File recovery companies can restore harddrives that have been burned and hammered and then they can restore files from those damaged drives after plenty of layers of erasure with magnetic history that's left behind. The drives are probably built to encourage this either way. Just with a free recovery program I was able to list 15+ different versions of an encrypted container which I overwrote by mistake, I was able to restore the last 5 copies and get all my files again.
Then we have data empires which are amalgamating the behavior, thoughts, advertising methods, patterns, trends of billions of people. Just Google is processing 20PT/day in data, mix that with great statisticians and you know how every human is going to behave 90% of the time. Creating tremendous opportunity to exploit core human behaviors, extrapolate trends based on past ones, mountains of data on which words work, for which copy, for which demographic. I've had this in mind for a long time, XMCP wrote a great article a while back that sums up Google- Google’s User Data Empire : Slightly Shady SEO
We have browsers which are somehow still susceptible to drive-by downloads and have to resort to 3rd party programs like Sandboxie for functionality which shouldn't even require something outside of the software being exploited.
Programs with complex EULA's that somehow make us accept that we bend over and take their bullshit. Respectable game companies which have built-in programs in their games send back process names and who knows what else, over the network and back to the company (Blizzard/WoW).
Other programs which find it appropriate to write to 20 different places on your hard-drive to store all the files you accessed(photoshop), when they were created(NTFS data, can be changed but would probably be used as evidence against you that you try so hard to cover your tracks). I'd like to be mistaken but I think the 'private browsing' hype for Chrome/FF still WRITE files to HD and simply immediately deletes them, making them even more capable of being exploited through file recovery than if you let them be wrote and kept, the used proper file erasure.
Encryption, I rely on truecrypt, MEANING for basic protection of my files I have to trust some guy from Czech republic which gives me jitters when my PC even connects to these random countries.
The availability and ease of hacking/stealing/exploiting ,and saturation of people who don't know EXE's from JPG's, or .BAT from MP3's... this is a whole other story, but people should have some BASIC protection without spending 200 hours researching all the ways they're being exploited. IT should be offered at an OS level and explained simply. How many retards run under an admin account, browse porn and leave their broadband always on... then they go on to do their online banking, paypal, personal lives, facebook - leaving huge potential for blackmail, theft and complete loss of dignity in the wrong hands. Living with one of these illiterates? Cross-network exploits, infected USB's in your house, exploited routers which let the outside come in, etc... doesn't matter if YOUR smart anymore, it matters who's the lowest common denominator in your house.
Don't even get me started on cell phones, I have a Samsung Galaxy S and it's the most anti-privacy device I ever owned which comes with all the prebuilt features for maximum exposure. I truly and honestly love technology, and should be able to have this mini 'laptop' in my pocket without giving up all my personal freedoms.
Camera's everywhere, eye scanners will become the new trend, 200~ microphone devices which can hear you pop a bubble gum in a basketball stadium with a full crowd. Slashdot Hardware Story | High-Tech Microphone Picks Voices From a Crowd
Corporations now own our privacy, if you want to be anonymous it requires an almost impossible effort. The stronger the effort, the more unique your effort becomes, defeating the purpose altogether.
One slip up and there you are, unique ID nlssssl@25489333sa33dss - currently located in, talking to, belonging to, living in, wearing, thinking, browsing, aged, likes, dislikes, value, bought, donated, aspires, past, present, all owned and bought by people who will never in a million years have your best interest aligned with theirs.
tl;dr. /rant
Thoughts anyone?
