I’m getting the sense that, in this day and age, even with tools like Tor and DecentralEyes, it’s near-impossible to be anonymous. There are so many different trackers across the internet, and now we have facial recognition, plus surveillance everywhere.
Should we still try to preserve our privacy as much as possible? It’s something that I’ve been working to improve, especially after the identity theft thing, but at the same time, it feels too late!
This is a tricky question because my goal inst to be anonymous but to be able to choose myself when, to whom and where I reveal myself.
For me it is not just about privacy, it is about basic human rights that are the foundation of a free society.
What I mean by that is, that when I go voting for instance. I don’t mind that I can’t vote without showing my ID so technically I am not anonymous at this place, but when I vote, I want my privacy, and not someone watching over my shoulder.
I see the battle where this line is drawn.
And I believe that we have to be aware and fight for our rights with our votes and our money.
Yes, we should!
Using encryption and bitcoin is not just about being anonymous, but about freedom and self-sovereignty. Needless to say, the government will always be an obstacle to innovation and all they want is power/control (surveillance). No matter how secure and innovative a technology is, if it doesn’t favor them, it’s not welcome. This is why bitcoin and encryption are essential: to give people more control, privacy, freedom and responsibility.
And as for Tor, VPN, etc., it only means that it is possible to improve our privacy, so we must do so.
Read A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto
Watch Worse than Useless: Financial Surveillance
You can definitely get the “low hanging fruit” of privacy/anonymity with a few relatively simple tools and OpSec practices. If you go beyond the low hanging fruit, things get more complex on an exponential scale.
How for you go depends on your own needs, but I see no reason not to cover the basics (e.g. use Firefox + UBO/DE, avoid installing corporate apps - use mobile web pages, use a VPN etc.). Anyone can do this, even non-technical users.
The simple answer: No.
The more complex answer: It depends as always.
You can try to hide your (online) activity from your neighbors, from your spouse, from your friends, from your employeer, from your ISP, from law enforcement, from intelligence agencies, or from ad companies etc. Every case requires slightly other actions to hide your activities.
However, since you always have to rely on third parties (for instance, you need an ISP to access the internet), you always produce metadata and custom (online) activity. So, you can make it harder for some parties to identify and track you, but in some cases it is nearly impossible to be truely “anonymous”.
That’s what I figured, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still preserve our privacy as much as possible, right? I’m aware the my ISP and my employer have access to my browsing history (should they choose to look at it). And I’m even more acutely aware about the ad companies, especially recently.
Speaking of which, @Mr_Book mentioned the VPN angle; believe it or not, I started using one for my clearnet browsing, despite the fact that I also use Tor. I was finding it difficult to use Tor as an “everyday” browser. I suppose I can still attempt this again, but a lot of the websites I use regularly require JavaScript and other scripts in order to function properly, so they would have to be “whitelisted” on Tor.
Internet has never really being design to be private its inherently works and identification and sharing information: the more important question: is who your sharing this information with:
for excemple if a website is requires to know my IP adress and put cookies on my computer in order to function i don’t minds temporarily allowing it.
what i do care about is third party of eavesdropping and data mining.
and im not sure this can be completely blocked. but i will definitely gonna make it as hard as i can for them