Security & Privacy with technology in (2016-2019, depreciated and needs updating)

[garyb]

extermin...oh, dialectics, not daleks...

[garyb]

actually, i meant "oh, bother".

[valis]

[David]

Offers a swiss based free service protonvpn
bumph looks good enough(?)

[valis]

Protonmail / VPN etc aren't bad. They're swiss, so depends on what you think about that country in relation to global politics.

[Sounddesigner]

Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey just banned all Political Advertisement on Twitter. I suspect this is payback attack on Congress for their attempts to grow support for an all out assault on Big-Tech with over-regulation, over-taxation, and break-ups with Anti-trust claims. Congress is using every flimsey excuse they can think of to try to do these things so it's good to see Twiteer fighting back. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg was just up on Capitol Hill meeting with Congress and they harrassed and tried to bully him to Police Political Speech on Facebook they deem as falsehoods laced or misleading wich simply means don't let those of the opposing Political Party use your platform. Jack Dorsey sees what's going on and i'm sure angered both parties by banning all Political Ads wich shows Washington they can be hurt to and i applaud this and wish more businesses would do things like this. More companies need to get fed up with Washington's bulltying and hit back like this. If Politicians can't Advertise they can't easily get Elected and Re-Elected.

[valis]

Dorsey has a bit of a problem on his hands still, as the main antagonist of progressive "disruptor" tech companies is using his platform for the megaphone that it is.

[Sounddesigner]

Dorsey has a bit of a problem on his hands still, as the main antagonist of progressive "disruptor" tech companies is using his platform for the megaphone that it is.

Sure, but i'm not sure he (Dorsey) wants to solve that problem despite it being a problem that angers many on the left. It's hard to go after high-profile non-commercial use of his platform without seriously harming his platform's popularity and financially. President Trump has been great for Twitter with his millions of followers and quirky tweets and he keeps twitter's name in the media, he is its problem but also he is its solution.Twitter does not generate the revenue on the scale of Facebook or Google and thus can't afford to shoot itself in the foot. Commercial political advertisement only brought in a small amount of twitters profits so it's easy to end this and Trump alone spent about 3x as much as all democrats on twitter from what i hear. Some on the left are happy with this political ads ban cause Trump uses twitter more and has been a master at using social media platforms in general better than any other president or politician both commercially and non-commercially. But since the ban applies to both parties i'm happy with it and i believe it's short-sighted to think just cause the opposing party uses twitter/etc the most the ban is great for your party but when are'nt Politicians short-sighted ? Both Parties are getting hostile twards Big-Tech so i'm glad both parties are banned from commercial ads. As long as Dorsey keeps the ban for both parties even when we have a charismatic Democrat President who's good at using sociol-media-platforms as well. When politicians in both parties start having less and less AD's Platforms they may stop the hostility twards Big-Tech wich ultimately hurts us the people when put into legislation.

Our Government is the biggest threat to us when it comes to privacy , security and civil liberties not Big-Tech and i don't want Government growing bigger, more powerfull and more tyrannical from over-regulation, over-taxation, break-ups, etc of Big-Tech and ultimately others. I'm not saying Big-Tech are angels cause they are not, they have problems thatt should be addressed i just never like Governments approach. The Government has been too big, bloated and corrupt for a long time now thus i fear it more than Big-Tech.

[valis]

The issue isn't the impersonal side of any of these entities, imho. It's the people who can get into positions to utilize the power that this information gives them. This isn't to say I disagree with you about largesse in government (even if benign this can create waste and support an ever-growing beurocracy). However...

Whether in government, in tech, some guy in his mom's basement who manages to scrape your login details for your bank (and your 'late night' entertainment sites) and so on. It seems to me that is why limiting the ability of the government to have power over the people it governs, limiting the ability of a corporation to control its market (and thus the people who are supposed to be served by the market) and limiting our attack surface exposed to malicious actors and software are all things in play in our conversation.

And the funny thing is, when they came looking to strong arm me, the only things they could find were the very situations they were creating. So it's not as if I'm concerned about my dastardly deeds coming to light. I have 2 amazing children and a wife, and my own interests, and I fully intend to continue enjoying them as long as I shall live. And I'll do as much as I can to ensure the same for those around me.

[David]

What parts of this forum are written by ai bots?

[valis]

AI bots? GaryB removes all bots.

[garyb]

dead.

[valis]

Facebook says 100 software developers may have improperly accessed user data

Facebook's blog post about this called "Changes to Groups API Access" (talk about downplaying)..

And...

Mark Zuckerberg leveraged Facebook user data to fight rivals and help friends, leaked documents show

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018 and rising awareness of the Six4Three case, Facebook has attempted to frame changes it made to its platform in 2014 and 2015 as being driven by concerns over user privacy. In statements to media organizations, Facebook has said it locked down its platform to protect users from companies that mishandled user data, such as Cambridge Analytica, as well as apps that spammed users’ news feeds or were creepy, such as Six4Three’s bikini-spotting app Pikinis.

However, among the documents leaked, there’s very little evidence that privacy was a major concern of Facebook’s, and the issue was rarely discussed in the thousands of pages of emails and meeting summaries. Where privacy is mentioned, it is often in the context of how Facebook can use it as a public relations strategy to soften the blow of the sweeping changes to developers’ access to user data. The documents include several examples suggesting that these changes were designed to cement Facebook’s power in the marketplace, not to protect users.
...,

[valis]

Former Twitter employees charged with spying for Saudi Arabia
subheading: "They reportedly used inside access to help the Saudis track dissent."

The Washington Post reports that this marks "the first time federal prosecutors have publicly accused the kingdom of running agents in the United States."

[valis]

Facebook bug shows camera activated in background during app use

[valis]

Adding to parent post: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/year-surveillance-self-defense which is just a description of their repository of information at https://ssd.eff.org/en

[valis]

Disable Chrome's "Software Reporter Tool"

Using Chrome Policies
Google introduced support for policies that administrators may use to configure certain Chrome features; one of the available policies manages the Software Reporter Tool of the browser.

Open the Registry Editor on Windows, e.g. by opening the Start Menu, typing regedit.exe, and selecting the item from the list of results.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome.
Note: if one of the keys does not exist create it with a right-click on the previous key and the selection of New > Key.
Right-click on the Chrome key and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
Name the new Dword ChromeCleanupEnabled.
Make sure its value is 0.
Right-click on the Chrome key again and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value.
Name it ChromeCleanupReportingEnabled.
Make sure its value is 0.
ChromeCleanupEnabled's value determines whether the Software Reporter Tool may run on the system.

A value of 0 means the tool is disabled and won't be run.
A value of 1 means the Software Reporter is enabled and will be run by Chrome.
ChromeCleanupReportingEnabled's value determines whether the results are reported to Google.

A value of 0 means the reporting is disabled.
A value of 1 means the reporting is enabled.

[valis]

Added a great article from ProtonMail on creating strong passwords and using password managers.

[valis]

Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data

AVAST's Maties caught!

[valis]

I know for a fact that most of the web analytics products including Google analytics include this functionality, but it seems there’s a lot of third party platforms for tracking this as well now:

Almost Every Website You Visit Records Exactly How Your Mouse Moves