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Information Security: Have we gone down the wrong rabbit hole?

Steve Sherrick

Steve Sherrick

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For the most part, I enjoy a lot of the conveniences that modern technology brings to us. I can shop online for gear, I can use a debit/credit card at just about any store, pay bills with the click of a button, check bank account information, even do bank transactions online if I so desire. I can interact with people across the world who I have never met. I can download music on my phone while I'm waiting for my car to get an oil change. I can invest in cool projects through sites like Kickstarter. There's very little I can't do these days. It's all good. Or so it seems. But I am beginning to wonder what is the price we are paying for all of these "conveniences"?

I ponder this question as I received notice from Kickstarter that their systems have been hacked and personal information may have been retrieved by hackers. No need to worry because they are pretty sure no credit card info was taken. Seems by today's standards, that as long as only your personal information is stolen (or sold for that matter) and there's no financial information in jeopardy, then we just accept that and move on.

This is now the fourth breach that has affected me over the past several months (that I know of). And I'm sure my information has been sold to the highest bidder through other means as well. So, does it matter? Should we care that we have basically gone down this rabbit hole where our personal information is more valuable to other people than it is to ourselves? I certainly don't consider myself a paranoid person, but I can't help but wonder about where we are going with all of this. Do we just ride it out, change our passwords hundreds of times, deal with security breaches, fraud, etc? I'm sure I'm not going to step off the grid just yet, but can't say I was filled with joy when that Kickstarter email dropped today. Seems like it's only going to get worse, potentially far worse. Does anyone have a more positive outlook on all of this? Anyone that knows me well knows I'm generally an optimistic person and will always look for the good in people or situations. So I am open to hearing thoughts on this.
 
It's one of those 'out of sight, out of mind' type things… And to be fair, if you actually stop and think about it, it'd likely cause an anxiety attack.

Honestly, I'm not sure what else you can do.
 
I've often though about setting up essentially shell corporations of myself just for the purpose of online commerce and personal information protection. Unfortunately it is quite hard to do this and still enjoy the convinces of account history and shipping to ones own address (Vs. a PO Box) but it may become necessary if this continues.
 
compared to the information people hand over voluntarily every day to the facebooks and instagrams of the day and the long term effects that will have, a couple of passwords and stolen credit cards really aren't that much....
add in legally recorded phone calls and texts....sprinkle it with some google search history....
that card can be cancelled, the password changed, your addr. really isn't worth that much anymore anyway....
i feel my privacy is violated much more when i see the "personalized" ads popping up wherever i browse....
i can highly recommend a little something called "little snitch"...monitors all incoming and outgoing network activity...
 
Evin Grant said:
I've often though about setting up essentially shell corporations of myself just for the purpose of online commerce and personal information protection. Unfortunately it is quite hard to do this and still enjoy the convinces of account history and shipping to ones own address (Vs. a PO Box) but it may become necessary if this continues.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... Interesting idea, though. :-)
 
100% agree with your concerns, Steve and I am equally unsure of what to do, or even what can be done. Even trying to live "off the grid" is not really feasible, IMO; not because of the inconvenience but it just may not be possible while still participating in commerce at all. (and who doesn't need to buy food and pay rent?)

I am enough of an optimist to think their is more power with the "good" (commercially motivated, to be sure) people who will come up with safeguard systems than there are bad guys who are trolling for random dollars. A reasonable example might be the finger print sensor on the new iPhone 5s. Seems pretty foolproof - or at least a measure better - as long as they don't cut off your thumbs like the guys do in movies. LOL

Let's hope things improve.
 
Steve Sherrick said:
But I am beginning to wonder what is the price we are paying for all of these "conveniences"?
Click to expand...

Decrease of Independence.



Steve Sherrick said:
Should we care that we have basically gone down this rabbit hole where our personal information is more valuable to other people than it is to ourselves?
Click to expand...

The answer to that depends on responsibility towards oneself and future generations.



Steve Sherrick said:
Do we just ride it out, change our passwords hundreds of times, deal with security breaches, fraud, etc?
Click to expand...

That would be trimming the tips of constantly growing weeds.



Steve Sherrick said:
Does anyone have a more positive outlook on all of this? Anyone that knows me well knows I'm generally an optimistic person and will always look for the good in people or situations. So I am open to hearing thoughts on this.
Click to expand...

Positive outcome is pre-conditioned with a critical mass of those who are beginning to wonder.




:)
 
I think it is a huge issue that our kids grow up more or less outside privacy, and that most of what we do is monitored.
I am not paranoid in the sense that I think it is used against me, even though I am less privat online than it might seem.

But I think that it is a human right to disappear and relocate and start over, given that one has not done any serious criminal offense.

In the current day and time, that becomes less and less likely as an option.

We conciously rob ourself for our own freedom, and I think that is a bit scary, even without going down the Snowden, the 1984 or the hacker-path this discussion quickly can take.

Now... As a mod, I must see to that this thread does not evolve into a political debate I am interested in...


hahahaha
 
We definitely have gone down the wrong rabbit hole. Governments actively allowing our every move on the Internet to be Stalked in away that may well get us arrested in real life. If every business we walked into followed us around and rang each other up to spy on us, share our personal information and movements buying habits and location, this would be definitely regarded as conspiratorial and collusion, and any advanced civilization would have laws against it, so why can the hidden conspirators be allowed to go on with it. Any thing you do that is not wrong, is potentially part of a wrong, suspect, not involving others,, out of the sight/hearing/communications of other people is not the business of other people at all. Even records of people it does involve or are in communications sight hearing etc of need to be reasonable, not to take advantage of the person, and not to the disadvantage of the person unless it is in the case of wrong conduct. Simple effective fair and just legislation solutions.

Back to this case in particular The way software is mismade causes this problem, and back doors past security only encourage illegitimate exploits to use them. Companies need to be class action sued repeatedly over these things. Software can be made much tighter and much more error free rather than accepting errors and repeatedly rewriting software after it us fixed, breaking it again (prototyping style development). It requires expense to write it right the first time like in the consumer electronics firmware writing industry, but saves the public many times over the extra expense compared to commodity style programming methods. It is illegitimately used to intimidate the user into, and requires them to, upgrading to a less deficient/newer product.

So a perfect storm where misconduct us allowed and even normal laws that match the problem that are applied in the real world, are not supplied.

The web, computers, and a lit of phones are or can be constantly in Spy mode. You can hack it to appear to be totally normal too, so it is undetectable through normal means, and your phone indicates nothing is happening with a connection. They don't even require you password, so changing it does not stop it. My connect ion is constantly on even though I have sync and GPS off, and this is probably the official Google/phone manufacturer. But you might find your phone running very hot when nothing is running, even with data connection turned off, you might fund that the recorded data used and actual is a lot different, which could indicate your cameras and compression routines are running when not using the phone. I'm about the only one that could write a video codec routine efficient enough to not heat up the average phone.

High school students actively down load and use hacking tools from he under web, where everything including thousands if credit card numbers are available. The police should go through high school students with a fine tooth comb to stop and curve the creation of new generations of hackers. Wrapping them over the knuckles and blocking them from further activity is a good idea before taking away computer privileges and criminal prosecution.

The wrong rabbit hole indeed. The time of complete openness where everything is known about you, is here.
 
To Everybody.

Terry, we might not agree much, but I wonder if anybody knows of any comprehensive sites, describing how to correctly live anonymously online and on phone?
 
Wayne Morellini said:
I wonder if anybody knows of any comprehensive sites, describing how to correctly live anonymously online and on phone?
Click to expand...

No such thing exist. The major paradigm shift that have occurred with the raise of social media is that we now accept using the internet at a loss of privacy. this loss is being greatly exacerbated as technology evolves.

But to answer your question, using Tails (an anonymizing operating system that can be booted from a USB drive) along with TOR (onion router) buying stuff online with bitcoins, is one of the avenues of having an anonymous cyber life. but clearly from documents supplied by ES, taking such measures will get you noticed

Read this - http://untraceableblog.com/

Now regarding doing it on your phone..FORGET IT..:-)

Edit: Just thought I'll add this, "when you fall in love, this is what Facebook sees' - HERE
 
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Ethan Knight said:
No such thing exist. The major paradigm shift that have occurred with the raise of social media is that we now accept using the internet at a loss of privacy. this loss is being greatly exacerbated as technology evolves.

But to answer your question, using Tails (an anonymizing operating system that can be booted from a USB drive) along with TOR (onion router) buying stuff online with bitcoins, is one of the avenues of having an anonymous cyber life. but clearly from documents supplied by ES, taking such measures will get you noticed
Click to expand...

Ethan, I'm not interested in public social media or government so much, but I'm more interested in living anonymously from private enterprise and spyware. So it probably easier to refine the question in that context. The more replies the merrier.

Of interest, this is something I was telling somebody I met, that though he could use private sites for file sharing and hide what he is sharing, the mere fact he is there makes him a candidate for further investigation, and if they put a keylogger or crack something etc on his system they can see what he is doing. So all they need to do is observe isolate out find routing or log or look at his files remotely.
 
To refine the question:

Concerning business tracking you on the internet, spyware and curious individuals: I wonder if anybody knows of any comprehensive sites, describing how to correctly live anonymously online and on phone?
 
OK Ethan, read the unteachable blog, and agree with the official attack methods quoted, that is what I would do (apart from hacking in. an official capacity. But what about movements around the web as well as hiding your ip, unique cookies etc per session, per tab, and even between sites? So I could be posting on a number of sites with non of them, or the advertising seeing who I am, or that I'm on any other site, not even through the advertising link, or email embeds, with gmail and Google not even being able to know where I am or that JM anywhere else? That is a good example for illustrative purposes, you open up multiple sites through your one browser each with separate obesity, as well as other apps. So each app and site has to have its own data path to a separate renewable ip address, fake user and machine info, and local info (cookies etc). What I want to do is surf and walk around anonymously from business etc, not hide from the gov.
 
Steve Sherrick said:
Should we care that we have basically gone down this rabbit hole where our personal information is more valuable to other people than it is to ourselves? I certainly don't consider myself a paranoid person, but I can't help but wonder about where we are going with all of this.
Click to expand...



http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/19/us-whatsapp-facebook-idUSBREA1I26B20140219



http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/agriculture/production/4085/cattle_behaviour.htm




20qnko6.jpg
 
Not only is that too high a price tag (i know it's not all cash) but I don't believe them about whatsapp adding a million users a day. The whole thing seems inflated. Then again, Zuck is a billionaire and I'm not
 
Steve Sherrick said:
Not only is that too high a price tag (i know it's not all cash) but I don't believe them about whatsapp adding a million users a day. The whole thing seems inflated.
Click to expand...


Too high ?



1798Whatsapp_hussle.jpg




Seems like $42 per head is a "sweet" deal.
 
It's not so difficult.

Alias email adress, post box paid for over the web and a Panama bank account with a Visa travel money card attached to it....

With such setup you are pretty much gone. People do it for tax reasons, personally I could actually consider it just so that I know that I'm not registered in every transaction I do. It's scary all those things, like the little function in your iphone that logs your location since you bought it and when you buy the next one your log is off course transfered via cloud... :)
 
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