According to Blogger, they will put a notice on my blog informing everyone of their privacy rights vis-à-vis Blogger and Google and suchlike. The Euros apparently require it for some reason or another. I haven't seen the notice. If you have, it's nothing to do with me, it's just Google trying to mitigate the bazillion dollars worth of lawsuits they've got coming once they agreed to allow the Euros to pretend they know what they're doing.
Personally, I have long since taken control of my privacy thankyouveddymuch. I use a minimum of 12-character (and up to 32-character) passwords, mixed alpha/numeric/special-characters never reused for anything else (e.g., every single place I use passwords has its own special one) always deal with the internet using encrypted and anonymous VPNs not infrequently chained with TOR, use Sandboxie for anything network- or internet-related and a virtual machine sandboxed into another virtual machine. It pretends to allow every piece of software and cookie and whatnot to install to write to my drive like it wants to, but throws all changes away and starts from a pristine base load every single time I restart.
The base load isn't even of my actual machines.
This all means the next time the software, cookies, and the whatnot come along and install again, as far as they're concerned, they've never seen me, so I'm a Brand New First Timer. And, no, fingerprinting doesn't work on my machine, because my virtual machine makes a variety of subtle changes to my virtual registry every time it restarts which makes my registry jigger what it believes (and what it broadcasts) to be my machine configuration.
As far as the Internet's concerned, this is the first and only time that this machine has ever been seen out here. And if anyone's so freakin' desperate to figure out what I'm doing that they go to the trouble of snagging my physical machine, every single device I've got down to the smallest thumb drive is FDE (Full Disk Encrypted). Actually, they're FVE (Full Volume Encrypted), a subtle difference you have to be deep into this stuff to appreciate, but in any event they're inaccessible.
Now, much as I'm a bunker-bunny sort, I've had no real worry that the Government is busy harvesting my life. Keeping an eye on me is (for many of the reasons noted above and a variety of others I'll just be keeping to myself, thanks) a major pain in the ass, even for someone with nation-state resources. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I figure they can do it, but there's a cost/benefit calculation that goes into this sort of thing, and as one of about 350 million local annoyances, I figure I'm WAY down the minus end of that stick, combined with the fact that, from a nation-state perspective, I'm about the least interesting person on earth other than my annoying online near-invisibility.
No, as I've always said (look it up) if someone's peering in through your bedroom window, it's not the NSA. It's your fucking neighbors. Or, more accurately for this discussion, your friendly neighborhood mega-corp who is digitizing your life for profit. They're the ones I'm battling, and so far I seem to be holding my own. What I didn't need was the Euros deciding to pass a law that tells FaceBook and Google and Walmart and Amazon and God Knows Who Else to "Quit It". They won't and only a bone-deep Big Government proponent will believe for a second that this crapola will even slow them down. Thanks for nothing.
So, anyhow, here's your privacy notice: I've taken care of my shit. Take care of yours. If you don't you're on your own. Don't bother bitching at me. Oh, yeah, and there are probably cookies involved in you reading this website — it is Google, and they're kinda dicks about that. Clear your internet history and cookies database now and then, ya' lazy bassart. Lessee, anything else — no, nothing leaps to mind, except I need to get you to turn your webcam a bit to the right. I guess that would be your left, wouldn't it? Anyhow, last night just when things were getting interesting you stepped out of the shot. Thanks in advance. You're a sport. (That's a great color on you, by the way…)
In Our Next Episode: The title of this episode is the tag-line of one of my favorite movies on this exact subject. It's a so-so Detective story, but a scary as shit look at what privacy's going to look like in about five years. Check it on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80195964
This stuff is really scary. From the big corporate interests like FB who get their creepy claws into you and never let go, which is one aspect. I know that even tho I deleted my profile, they still have a "shadow" of me there and can work with that. But that, so far, is only to try to sell me things. That seems innocuous for now. After all, it's still my choice to click on ads or not. But I don't think it will remain innocuous. I think, like Stephen King's Auctioneer, they will eventually come for everything.
ReplyDeleteRight now, the scarier things are the individual or small group hackers who just grab and run, and in the process cause chaos. The assholes who break into cell phones and start buying up a storm with a stolen credit card. Yeah, you can cancel that shit, but what a hassle. You lose days of time dealing with it, resetting everything. It's such a loss of productivity. We're always trying to keep a step ahead of these dickwads by making our shit more complex, but they keep finding ways. DEATH PENALTY!