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Should I give into the botnet? It is impossible to maintain complete privacy against the government, if you choose to be online. My government already knows plenty of information about me that is not acquired though the internet. The information my government knows of me that is not acquired online includes: my address, my phone number and other similar information. And while it is not a nice feeling that Big Brother is always watching—I'm okay with that. My threat model was never to hide from the government, because I have no reason to hide from my government. My current threat model is against data-harvesting corporations like Google, Amazon and others. While (I think) it is possible to maintain privacy against advertisers and marketing companies, it is difficult. Maintaining good online privacy is painful a chore. I'm so sick and tried of using privacy-focused alternatives to mainstream services. I suspect by using some of these privacy-focused services I am put on watch lists. I reckon by not using any social media I trigger red flags to current and future employers. Your privacy is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Because of what I do on my computer everyday, I can not use a fully-free computer. This is why I believe my privacy endeavor is worthless. I was happier being clueless about my privacy. I miss the convince of using mainstream services. Should I switch my threat model from maintaining privacy against advertisers and marketing companies to maintaining privacy against family members snooping at private files on my computer, a crazy girlfriend, thieves stealing my devices, and being doxxed. I will this privacy threat model by: - Using full-disk encryption. - Putting a password on my BIOS. - Backing up all of my important data, encrypting it and then hiding it. - Ensuring my OS is up-to-date with updates. - Not running entrusted software. - Using a restrictive firewall. - Using a password manager. - Never sharing my passwords. - Using two-factor authentication. - Keeping my fully-encrypted phone with me at all times. - Being aware of phishing attacks. - Being cautious to who I am friends with on social media. - Not giving applications to my access to the phone's GPS. - Having only 1 social media account with all the privacy settings set to the most-strict mode. - Having only 2 presences on the entire internet (my social media account and my personal website). What do you think of my thoughts?

The idea should be not to avoid creating any data but to create the data necessary to give the image you want to show. The concept of "face" is useful in the digital too. Secondary i find it more useful to have disposable personas firmly separated from your public face than relying on trusted high-security because that trust can be misplaced. For example there where phones where gps settings did nothing and in one instance it was even recorded that the gps module worked regularly even when the phone was turned off. Therefore I'm more inclined to work with the assumption of compromised systems where you control the input than trying to harden and assume it's save to use. You could of course go hardcore and do hardware mods but it's not something practical that you could recommend to most people.

It's okay to lose to the Evil Future AGI Government Lain Cthulhu. The values you are protecting by protecting your privacy are probably pointless. All the cool protagonists are genitals deep in surveillance, they are usually part of the system and optionally have government-made bodies or brains hooked up to the network. The off-grid people usually just train the protagonist once it is exiled, and die in the later part of the revolution while the protagonist gets to change the world.

I don't think to endeavor for privacy is worthless at all. I do think that one needs to have a sense of perspective and pragmatism. Nobody's going to be able to completely disconnect from global botnet so to speak. A better idea is to implement good threat modelling - focus on what pertains to you specifically instead of trying to be 110% secure which, again, is a fools errand.

>>7278 >It's okay to lose ... once you feel like transcending the me/them dichotomy. Otherwise, stay put for your privacy lain, it's a valuable tool (check out the transparantism thread somewhere around here for whys). 'Your' computer is indespensable device here. Learn to do your soykaf with it, rather than using it as a terminal to the corp soykaf.

>>7276 >Should I give into the botnet? The botnet isn't incredibly sophisticated yet. It's going to get worse. You should be working harder on your privacy now as if your life depends on it.

My philosophy regarding privacy has been to indeed start from the assumption that there is no privacy, it takes a while to get used to that but in the end it offers one peace of mind. Now, once you're comfortable with the whole world watching you masturbate and listening to your stupid thoughts, you can start thinking about the practical strategy side of it mainly the question: What is it gonna take for some party to actually make use of some bit of information about you? It doesn't really matter if someone knows/might know something about you as long as they're prevented to do anything practical with that information. You shouldn't worry about there possibly being spying happening around you, you should rather mostly focus on worrying about how is your jurisdictions prosecutor going to bring that up in any court as evidence against you. This from someone who lives a daily criminal life. Pretty much all legal trouble one encounters in their life is caused by unfortunate accidents where through some stupidity you manage to force LEO to have to do some work, as a rule they don't do it too willingly nor with good resources. Of course you're thinking that what about threats from the private sector!? And yea other criminals are the biggest threat any criminal faces, no real solution to the issue of other people, cept maybe guns.

>>7276 Last week I download around 3GB of personal data from Google. Good luck

>>7276 >I have no reason to hide from my government. Data often outlives governments. A person living in Germany in 1926 might not have cared if the government knew that one of his grandparents was Jewish. "I have no reason to hide from my government." He would probably care very much if the government had that information in 1936. Ten years made a big difference there. Perhaps you don't see some radical change in your government occurring in the next ten years. But are you at the end of your lifespan? Or do you plan to live more than ten years? More than twenty? Perhaps even forty or fifty more years? It may be impossible to maintain complete privacy against the government; absent a definition or operationalization of what that means, we can't really say, though I think you're probably being too pessimistic. Either way, I can think of no real-world situation in which it's better for an individual for his government to have more information about him rather than less, so I think apathy with regard to the glowdark piece of one's threat model is not the answer.