Besides taking the usual precautions (strong passwords, not running
error prone software or operating systems, encryption, etc.) I have
philosophical thoughts around security.
Security is an illusion. There will always be people who want what
others have. There is very little, or maybe absolutely nothing that can
be done to prevent them from getting what they want, if they want it bad
enough. The only thing that can really be done is to make it
appropriately inconvenient to get to the protected items for those who
are not authorized, or not especially determined to get past the safe
guards.
Think physical for a moment. You may think that locking your doors and
windows will keep people out of your house. But if someone were
suitably motivated to get into your house, windows can be smashed and
doors can be picked or kicked in. So you escalate and go with
good/expensive locks that are less prone to being picked, you install
steel reinforced doors and you put bars on your windows. Again this does
not stop anyone who is suitably motivated - they can take a chain saw to
the wall and make their own entrance, take a blow torch to the bars
and/or door, or just drive a truck through the front entrance.
The point is that in a physical sense there is NOTHING you can do to
absolutely keep people out. All you can do is take reasonable
precautions to protect what you deem valuable. The more valuable the
items, the more in depth a "reasonable" precaution would be.
This all applies to digital as well. There is ZERO ways to absolutely
protect your data from those who are suitably motivated. All the
precautions that are routinely discussed are reasonable steps to prevent
casual unauthorized access. But if an unauthorized person were suitably
motivated, there is plenty they can do to get to your data. Bot nets to
perform decryption analysis, viruses/trojans to access the data before
it is encrypted, monitoring traffic patterns, or just stealing the
physical device.
The lessons I have learned are this:
1. If you pass data into a medium you do not control, you no longer
control your data. (transmitting radio waves, talking in a busy
restaurant, passing data through an ISP's networks, etc.) (I do not take
credit for this - it was taught to me in electronic warfare training
sessions in the late 80's with regards to radio communications, and
still holds true today.)
2. If you do not want anyone to know something, then don't talk about
it. The only sure secrets are the ones where only a single person knows
em and knows OF them.
3. Context matters. There will always be those who will take data out
of context - accidentally or intentionally. All we can do in this area
is to try to provide the context with the data, or shortly after a
"leak" takes place.
4. While we can be as paranoid (or not) with our own data as we choose,
how others treat our data, or how we treat other's data, is often
different. Not much we can do about this other than be vigilant with
our data, respect other's data, and correct problems when they come up.
Unfortunately those with different ethical/moral values may not be
playing by the same rules.
5. xkcd sums up the problems nicely: http://xkcd.com/538/ and
http://xkcd.com/936/
My thoughts.
Shawn
On 15-02-12 09:07 AM, Gustin Johnson wrote:
A VPN just changes your exit point. This means that your ISP loses
visibility into your traffic but the VPN provider now gets this
insight. All you have done is move your exit point, and if this
endpoint exists in North America the people can get access to your
data via the ISP can just as easily get it from the VPN provider. At
best you can complicate this procedure, but that is only if you trust
the VPN provider.
A VPN also does nothing to ensure privacy since those problems are in
the operating systems and browsers that we use.
A VPN is useful when connecting to open wifi access points or other
untrusted networks.
The short short answer is that there is no easy shortcuts. There are
also no single solutions to the collection of problems John outlined.
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 7:37 PM, Joe S <joes...@shaw.ca
<mailto:joes...@shaw.ca>> wrote:
how would using vpn compare to using these services? I have
heard that is good for privacy.
On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 21:46:39 -0700
John Jardine <john.e.jard...@gmail.com
<mailto:john.e.jard...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> There is a lot of info to cover here.
>
> The two fundamental blocks are anonymity and privacy ... they
> are different and require some different tools.
>
> Tor can protect your anonymity if you respect the limits of
> its use.
>
> Privacy can be accomplished in part by using a browser or OS
> that has no persistent data about you. During your browsing
> you must not disclose any personally identifying data, or any
> knowledge than can reasonably be traced back to you.
>
> E.g. If you use tor to sign on to Gmail you're done ... Google
> has enough info available to associate that session back to
> your real identity (assuming you have either an android phone
> or have used Google from home/work with your real name.
>
> This is a well researched topic and the tor website is a great
> resource to teach you exactly what you're trying to do.
>
> Cheers
> John J
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