Online privacy tips

I loved this cartoon in the article.

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I see @Fred123 you found this in the side bar of the ABC report on the risks of returning your postal vote application to the wrong party (or address)?

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I thought it was a link in the body copy but it must have been on the side bar.

The ABC report is pointing out what to watch out for when you local MP or political party mails you a postal vote application! The return address for the postal vote application is likely the party and NOT the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission)!

The ABC suggests the unknown is what does the party then do with your application for a postal vote? Since the addressee is the party, they are legally able to open and read your request for a postal vote. This exposes your personal confidential details to the party staff and organisation directly!

Perhaps you can trust a politician and their team to not do this? :roll_eyes:

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I donā€™t like all this listening in stuff, I was considering buying an Echo (I refuse Googleā€™s stuff) but not anymore. I donā€™t have a TV which can do that (my TV is dumb), I use my AppleTV as my home hub if I need to turn my LIFX globes on or off when out, and it doesnt listen to me, I dont use Siri very much.

It makes me very nervous. Seems like everything is becoming dependent on the internet. What happens when we have a big electricity outage or someone finally finds a way to hack the internet and bring it down. We will be screwed. I love tech, but its getting out of control.

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What do you mean ā€œa big electricity outage or someone finally finds a way to hack the Internetā€? Most electricity generators are now online in some capacity, and Ukraine was the first country to receive a demonstration of the vulnerabilities this creates - in 2016.

As for bringing down the Internet in Australia, our NBN was initially designed with some fault-tolerance - but that went out the window when ā€˜weā€™ decided to go for the ā€˜cheapā€™ version. So for example, an attacker would only need to take out one node to take its entire FTTN-reliant area offline. Similarly, FTTN is entirely reliant upon grid power for the nodes - while FTTP requires only end-point power.

Back to the subject of privacy for a moment, I heard this morning about a new type of court-ordered warrant that is being used in the US (and possibly elsewhere). A geofence warrant requires Google to give law enforcement officials information about all online devices that were in a particular area when a crime occurred. Read the linked article, and think about what that might mean for personal privacy for a few minutes.

My personal view? It is terrifying! Especially when 94% of US criminal charges never go to trial because the defendant pleads guilty (knowing they cannot afford to defend themselves against the state). So much to an entitlement to trial by ā€˜a jury of your peersā€™.

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Ummmmā€¦ yes? OK, I only said nervous. I can go for terrifying if you like. This is why I dont use google products, why I donā€™t have an amazon echo after all, and why I dont have a ā€œsmartā€ TV.

That said, I am becoming more fragile as I age, Iā€™ll easily qualify for an Aged Care Package but am unlikely ever to receive one, with a waiting list not far short of 80k people, and am intent on getting as much ā€œsmartā€ stuff in my home as I can, which will help me in small ways. Thats not an internet connected refrigerator though, or any of the fancy-schmatnzy stuff some people seem to think is important (nobody in this forum, I bet). My car is old, and I like it that way. Not a scrap of internet connected in it, and when I get a mobility scooter (probably sooner rather than later) Iā€™m hoping that it wont be connected either.

Iā€™m still on facebook but only until the weekend (theres a reason for that which I wont go into). I use icloud mail and protonmail. Ivacy isnt a bad VPN but not as good as some (like ProtonVPN which I cant afford either). However, I bought an IVACY lifetime licence so thats what I use, unless I want to watch Netflix. Or forget to fire it up.

If the internet goes down, so does everything else. I like the internet, but I dont like that I may become more dependent on it whether I want to be or not.

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Thatā€™s why Iā€™ve tolerated Appleā€™s plenty of dodgy practices. For all their faults Iā€™m yet to see a case of them bending to requests to weaken their own devices privacy, even when threatened with legal action.

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Apple accedes to court orders just as does any other company. The question is whether it has the data thatā€™s being requested - and unless you work deep in the company I donā€™t think thatā€™s one that can be answered here. It is possible that Apple does not retain such data, but it definitely needs to collect it for iPhones to work.

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It does, and I know that those court orders exist. But Apple donā€™t collect that information unless it is needed/allowed. Google Iā€™m not so sure, especially regarding location services. Even if itā€™s turned off it seems precise location data is still passed to Google in some way.

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A potential risk with the Mobile version of Chrome has been discovered. It allows a false URL bar to appear on a web page and could allow for phishing to occur.

To read more about this issue see:

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Chrome and its wonderful world of tracking.

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Yep. I havent used Chrome in years. I use Safari or Firefox, as it happens, but I also use add-ons which also can drop cookies, or at least keep an eye on them.

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While Chrome is indeed making it harder to stay private online, the tracking issue is one that affects all browsers and is not limited to cookies.

Firstly, as briefly alluded to but not really discussed there are cookies and cookies. You generally want first party cookies, as they keep you logged into the current site and perform several other useful functions. Third party cookies are almost always trackers, though again if you use ā€˜log in with Facebook/Google/Apple/Nosy Co.ā€™ you will need to accept third party cookies and those cookies will tell the login site where you are.

Googleā€™s search also tracks you, using one of two methods (although it is trying to deprecate the first of these). It uses ā€˜redirectsā€™, so that when you click on a link from a search result you are briefly taken to a Google address before going to the page you selected. These are being replaced, depending on browser support, by a new technology that allows ā€˜ping-backā€™ - where you go directly to the chosen web page and at the same time the originator is told where you went. Firefox is going to support this, because youā€™re getting tracked either way and this way is quicker.

Then there are another multitude of ways of tracking you, such as beacons, tracker pixels and even websites checking your browser settings (browser and operating system version, screen size, time zone, installed fonts etc. - often referred to as fingerprinting).

You can get some idea of how identifiable you are using a tool published by the EFF.

As for the other trackers, use plugins such as AdBlock, Ghostery, and uBlock Origin.

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When I had issues logging into MyAccount with Telstra, guess which browser they recommended I use. Have had that same advice for several other providers including iiNet?

I donā€™t use Chrome either, however I was very surprised at how many coworkers relied on Gmail and Chrome and Google when working away. OS included, as it always seemed to provide the most reliable connections/service. That included online banking.

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Shout out to the DuckDuckGo ad on for Firefox. Firefox can already be set up to limit cookies and the DuckDuckGo ad on finishes it off by:

  • Blocking any trackers Firefox missed, and provides a summary of whoā€™s trying to track you
  • Has a privacy summary for major websites from https://tosdr.org/ highlighting websites that have bad privacy practices or fingerprint
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Brilliant.

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I still have a couple of gmail addresses, which I have finally persuaded all my friends and family to stop sending to. I dont think I have used them for at least 3 years, but I still get junk to there. I really need to start deleting the crap and forwarding emails I want to keep, to another address.

I got in on the beta years back when it was invite onlyā€¦ and wish I had not bothered. If I could have predicted the behemoth that google became ā€¦ (and really, same with facebook)

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