I sometimes consider disabling my ad blocker for a week, to see just how closely my activities online are being tracked.
@thor Don't do it! Keep the adblocker on, Privacy Badger (or Ghostery?) on. I've seen enough on how sites track you even when you are not on their site (Facebook - I'm talking to YOU!) that I've no intention of validating their ad/tracker based business model.
And it reduces the clutter of the browser screen and cuts download data.
@rochelimit The thing is that I have no idea of how bad it's gotten since I've been using browser addons like that for years. I want to assess it.
@rochelimit Those filters we use put us in a bubble where we can't really see the web as it is experienced by most users. I think that's a problem, because it's a form of privilege. Let's call it geek privilege. If you don't know what ordinary people are going through on the Internet because you have the knowledge to avoid it, you have a geek privilege.
@rochelimit There's even a sort of snobbery going on, with many geeks looking down upon and making fun of ordinary users, calling them stupid and dismissing user friendly interfaces as dumbed down. IT is now among the group of professions that give you special advantages across the board. Other such professions in the group include law and politics.
@thor You are right on the police state things, and the UK has gone a long way on the legal front to make that a possible future here. Open source implementations are essential to trust in the encryption systems, and they should be largely out of reach from the state. No companies to lean on...
@rochelimit @thor
iMessage and WhatsApp aren't designed to prevent government MitM attacks. The key management is handled by the service instead of users. 😉 Threema and Signal are the only ones I would trust.
@skypage @rochelimit Nobody except geeks know about those apps.
@rochelimit @skypage As far as I can tell, the way new gadgets and apps spread to ordinary folks is that trendsetters begin using them. Facebook began to spread because Mark Zuckerberg successfully marketed it to his friends in college, and the college crowd at large. This requires having influential friends and having sway with those people, which is something technology chops can't help you with, unfortunately.
@skypage @rochelimit The geeks at the top of the hierarchy put a lot of energy into networking. Most geeks I know don't do that. Being a geek tends to also come with reduced social skills, unfortunately. This is where geek privilege is currently weak. We aren't really realizing our potential. It helps to have the software out there, but you really need to get the supernodes to use it.
@rochelimit @skypage Supernodes are people in a social network (electronic or physical) who have more friends than other people. They are typically smart, popular and successful, and they hold more sway over people than most. When a supernode adopts a new communications tool, it quickly will spread to their friends, because those friends all want an opportunity to communicate more with the supernode, because the supernode is usually a busy person.
@rochelimit @thor
Even with supernodes talking about security, we still see cases like "12345678" in lists of the most popular passwords. Most people don't care or know about computer security and its importance
@rochelimit @skypage @thor I don't think that having one's system get adopted by large amounts of people requires trendsetters, but it definitely helps. As you say later in this conversation, geeks do seem to neglect their networks and spreading the things they love or have developed, often becoming quite content with having spread it to a few people they know/respect.
@thor @skypage @rochelimit Tech people are pretty good about forming meetups, for instance, but learning about the meetups can be more difficult than you'd think it could be (if broadcast decently). For instance, there's a #datascience club on my campus that's pretty quality, and the people running it seemed to have no interest in talking with non-compsci students about it, much less promoting it outside #compsci. #marketing
@thor I spend time teaching teenagers about data security and internet hygiene (thankless task that it is - teenagers really don't care). You are right: we need to be careful not to retreat to our technological silos, but help others to learn the skills and understand the need to think about what happens online. But I'm keeping control of cookies and adverts though. When my PiHole crashes I really notice the intrusion of the advertising in web pages.
@rochelimit In a police state, IT people will be the ones who hold the tools to encrypt their data and communications. It's easy for governments to shut down services like iMessage and WhatsApp and then you have a populace where most people have no access to encryption. It's harder to prevent a skilled programmer from implementing the RSA algorithm, smuggling a copy of PGP into the country or hiding data with steganography in an image file.