You don’t have to be on Facebook for Facebook to abuse your privacy and endanger your security, and for others to do the same using Facebook, and Google, and Microsoft, and Apple, and Infogroup, and the ISPs, and the TelCos, and the thousands upon thousands of other companies in the mostly self-regulated IT industry…But if you want to pretend you can somehow opt out of that industry’s invasions of your privacy, autonomy and security, then be my guest. The rest of us have to live in the real world.
You’d be better off moving to a country that regulates the IT industry’s behavior with regards to its citizens and networks. Somalia is literally the opposite of the way to go politically to improve your digital rights (or just about any rights for that matter).
I have a dumb phone.
I have no social media accounts.
I have two different VPN’s that fire up when I boot any of my PC’s.
I have two credit cards, one of which is used for online purchases and one for brick and mortar stores. No debit cards, no PINs.
I do no online banking. I pay my bills by check.
And I own no IoS devices, not even the ones that are pimped here on BB.
True. I’m not on Facebook but I have friends who are and that opens me up to Facebook’s privacy-violating tendencies whether I like it or not. I try to minimise the effects (e.g. asking them never to tag photos they post with my real name) but it’s nearly impossible to escape even for someone as privacy-conscious as I am.
The best we can do is be aware of all the privacy holes that can be patched (many of these companies are lazy and assume consumers are the same) and promote privacy rights regulation. But to think one can evade all the tendrils only creates a false sense of security, and anyone who’s studied security best practise knows where that leads.
I’ve done this for many years and it’s a damn good idea.
Another idea is to have a separate “online” bank account where you transfer money from a primary account as needed so if the card number gets compromised you’re not dealing with having to get thousands of dollars in charges reversed.
The main downside is that every time my “online” card gets compromised (which happens to me all the fucking time - despite using it at reputable sites) it’s a major PITA to fix it everywhere.
I don’t think I “have an account here”. I sign in here via a Google username, which was generated using a one time scratch email, which I created using a public terminal at the library. And I log in with a VPN’d connection.
So if anyone at BoingBoing knows who I am, it will have been through sussing out clues in my posts.
I sign into this account (sorry to dash people’s dreams, but “gracchus” is not my real name) via a separate e-mail and use a proxy, but I still refer to it as my BoingBoing account. And if I’m going to consider Reddit or other on-line communities (including dial-up BBS’s and Usenet) to be social networks then while I’m logged in and commenting on BoingBoing I’m not going to pretend I don’t have an account on a social network.
One downside of not pretending: my arms aren’t as muscular as the ones of those who spend a lot of time frantically shifting goalposts (as Libertarians tend to find themselves doing).
Well then I am at fault for not coming up with a new term for apps and companies that vacuum up our personal data and sell it or leave it where it can get stolen.
I don’t knowingly share my info with any of those, except my two credit cards, which if they get leaked by a store is the only risk I’m agreeing to run.
