prudent privacy preview
TRANSCRIPT
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Neo CortX
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1 Contents
1 Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 2
2 Copyright ......................................................................................................................................... 5
3 Terms and conditions ...................................................................................................................... 6
4 The Experiment an introduction .................................................................................................. 7
5 What does prudent privacy mean?............................................................................................... 11
5.1 Prudent ................................................................................................................................. 11
5.2 Privacy ................................................................................................................................... 12
5.3 Combining the two words ..................................................................................................... 12
6 Learning from the past .................................................................................................................. 14
6.1 Baby steps towards privacy .................................................................................................. 14
6.2 The four seasons ................................................................................................................... 19
6.3 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 22
7 Scams ............................................................................................................................................ 23
7.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 28
8 Conversation with Paul ................................................................................................................. 29
8.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 31
9 Passwords ..................................................................................................................................... 32
9.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 37
10 VPN ............................................................................................................................................ 37
10.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 39
11 The Onion Router - Tor ............................................................................................................. 40
11.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 41
12 Freenet and Darknet ................................................................................................................. 41
12.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 41
13 E-Mail - Updated ....................................................................................................................... 42
13.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 43
14 IRC and IM ................................................................................................................................. 43
15 Privacy in phone calls and text messaging (SMS) ..................................................................... 44
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16 Big corporations ........................................................................................................................ 44
16.1 Microsoft ............................................................................................................................... 46
16.2 Yahoo .................................................................................................................................... 47
16.3 Baidu ..................................................................................................................................... 48
16.4 Google ................................................................................................................................... 50
16.5 Amazon ................................................................................................................................. 52
16.6 Facebook ............................................................................................................................... 53
16.6.1 The Like button ............................................................................................................. 54
16.7 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 55
17 Cookies ...................................................................................................................................... 56
17.1 Firefox ................................................................................................................................... 56
17.2 Opera .................................................................................................................................... 56
17.3 Chrome .................................................................................................................................. 56
17.4 Internet Explorer ................................................................................................................... 56
17.5 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 56
18 Big Governments ....................................................................................................................... 57
18.1 Why governments is a big problem ...................................................................................... 57
18.1.1 The implications for your privacy .................................................................................. 61
18.2 Example story of lack of privacy ........................................................................................... 62
18.3 GPS tracking story ................................................................................................................. 63
18.4 Trends ................................................................................................................................... 64
18.5 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 66
19 Encryption software and PGP ................................................................................................... 67
19.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 70
20 USB sticks .................................................................................................................................. 70
21 Why take the risk ...................................................................................................................... 7121.1 Why I do it ............................................................................................................................. 71
21.2 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 73
22 Paul and James .......................................................................................................................... 73
23 The Five Laws of Privacy ........................................................................................................... 75
23.1 The first law of privacy .......................................................................................................... 75
23.2 The second law of privacy ..................................................................................................... 76
23.3 The third law of privacy ........................................................................................................ 77
23.3.1 Being fearful .................................................................................................................. 78
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23.3.2 Create passion for privacy ............................................................................................. 79
23.4 The fourth law of privacy ...................................................................................................... 82
23.5 The fifth law of privacy ......................................................................................................... 83
23.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 84
24 The future of privacy ................................................................................................................. 85
24.1 Intelligent machines .............................................................................................................. 87
24.2 Profiling ................................................................................................................................. 89
24.2.1 Its already happening ................................................................................................... 91
24.2.2 Imagine .......................................................................................................................... 92
24.3 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 96
25 The risks .................................................................................................................................... 97
25.1 What you need to hide ......................................................................................................... 97
25.2 Why you need to hide these things ...................................................................................... 99
25.3 Self-censorship .................................................................................................................... 101
25.4 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 103
26 Paul and James ........................................................................................................................ 104
27 About the author .................................................................................................................... 105
28 Summary of summaries .......................................................................................................... 106
29 References .............................................................................................................................. 113
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2 Copyright
Copyright is a very interesting subject from a philosophical perspective. Though I do not think its an
optimal way for us humans to use ideas and function in society, Ive nevertheless chosen to include a
copyright section here.
The reason its not optimal in society, is because technically there is no need to economize ideas and
information, since it can be shared without loss of existing resources. If I have an idea of writing a
book, and it gives you an idea of writing a book, then its not like you extract material from my brain
and put it into yours. You only need to economize resources that are limited in quantity; hence there
is no need to economize ideas, as these can be reproduced at no material cost to the origin. Imagine
if houses were copyrighted, and anyone who built a roof over their head had to pay royalty to the
inventor of the roof. It would perhaps make the inventor rich in the short term, but the rest of the
people would be freezing and sick. So in the long term they would not be able to produce computers
that the inventor could use. Hence; everyone loses. How about hyperlinks (the links you click that
takes you to a new site) on the web? It would stop the whole progress of the internet if those were
patented. Google wouldnt exist, as the whole company originally was built on the properties of
hyperlinks. What if the usage of electricity were patented? And how about jeans? What about
colors? I will say I find strong evidence that suggest that all this intellectual property is not a
benefit for society at all. Perhaps this subject should have a separate book, perhaps Ill write
something on it later.
So why do I still include some words on copyright?
The reason I do is because our whole society is organized around
this idea of copyright. That means that our society has constructed
strong incentives for having this copyright, no matter the logical and
rational errors, i.e. reduced life quality, that this imposes on all
citizens of the globe, including the copyright holders.
My primary hope is that many readers will enjoy this book and
safeguard themselves against the dangers that are lurking in the
future, and that one day we might live in a society based upon
rational and logical thinking, and with the wonderful principle of
scientific falsification being as important and self-evidently
beneficial as the understanding of radio waves and the fact that the
earth is round. If I get this long term reward; that you are able to
Did you torrent this book or get it
without paying for it? Im furious. Pay
what you think prudent privacy is worth
to the following address:
17cXfGxkY9qfLYM8TcycE5BRqZuVrK4E4x
Every transaction will inspire me to
create more products, and by using
Bitcoin you dont need to worry about
me finding out who you are.
New to Bitcoin? Check out:
www.weusecoins.com
PayPal might be supported later, check
out my webpage for updates:
PrudentPrivacy.com
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take action to save your smart brain from the many lurking dangers, and you use your brain in an
ethical and moral way now and in the future, then that is a great reward for me.
Since we dont have this rational and logical society at all today, and since we live in a world where
we pretend there is a free lunch for everyone, I am unable to implement some other good ideas
that I have, and must instead try to derive some income from not the best, but still reasonable ideas,
like this book. My hope is that I will get an income from this book, and this income I will use to keep
me going in my quest to make this world a better place. A better place, that is, for a specific class of
life; the humans, and also a specific kind of humans; others that are like me; people who dont
expect a free lunch, but who contribute to making the world better.
Hence, this book is copyrighted to Neo CortX for the time being.
Copyright 2012 by Neo CortX
All rights reserved.
3 TermsandconditionsThis book is fictional and for entertainment and humorous purposes only. Though there might at
times be some similarity to the real world, this is quite unintentional, should not be taken seriously
and is not meant to hurt any person, group of people, institution, corporation, government or other
ideas or physical entities. The views expressed are held by a fictional character called Neo CourtX,
and not by any real life person or group of persons. The real life author(s) does not hold the views
expressed in this book. At all times you should consult with your legal advisor before taking any
action that might be suggested in this book.
The author(s) cannot be held responsible for any of the text, pictures or ideas expressed in this book.
All responsibility for this book belongs to the fictional character Neo CourtX, and any legal action has
to be addressed to this fictional character. No physical person(s) is responsible for any of the content
in this book.
If these terms and conditions are not accepted, then you, any computer system or any virtual or
physical entity cannot read or use this book or any content in it.
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4 TheExperimentanintroduction
To test how well a random person was protecting his privacy, I did an experiment. I tried to figure
out just how much I could find out about a pretty random person. All I knew was his brothers
surname and what country he lived in. I had no personal relationship whatever to this person, but Ihad met his brother on some occasions. I had never seen this person in real life, and probably never
will. This person is not a public person in any way, just a little bit different from an average person;
hes got above average wealth.
Having access to the web I used a set of different tools. I used one search engine for looking through
companies, and I was able to find the correct surname. Since the brother I had met had bragged a bit
about the other brother; he was doing ok financially, I was able to pick him out based on location of
the company and the revenue and balance sheet of the company. This way I was able to figure out
what his full name was, because he was on the board of directors of several companies. When that
was done, the rest was quite easy. I used a separate search engine that specializes in finding stuff
about persons, and within a few minutes I had a set of articles with pictures about this person.
Within about 30 minutes, I had figured out quite a bit, all from public legal sources of information.
Actually I found a lot more, but I dont want to give too much away. I found the following things:
Where he lived
That there were many rich people in that area
Where his primary business was located
How many businesses he owned
How much revenue his businesses had
Business phone number
Cell phone number
Email address
Some biking-events he had participated in
Using Google Street view (since I had already located the address) I was able to see his
house. It was quite nice; a big white house. I was not able to see the car outside the house;
he was probably at work when the Google Street View Car drove by.
His approximate net worth, which was high
His patterns of spending; anyone who are able to read financial statements can understand
whats going on inside the mind of the leaders of a business.
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Being an accountant, I am able to look at numbers from any business and understand how it
operates. Understanding the numbers gives a person like me an X-Ray vision; I was able to
understand how this person was thinking, how they like to spend their money, what things are
important and whats not important. For example, if a lot of money is spent on office equipment,
its quite easy to understand that the furniture is nice inside the building, and perhaps theres
valuable art on the walls.
If I had spent a few hours, I would easily figure out how many relatives he had and when they were
using the home. Im just very glad that there are few criminals who are particularly smart, because
all that information would make a burglary quite easy if anyone intended to do something like that.
Oh, and by the way, I didnt even check out his Facebook page, I didnt check if he had any blogs, or
if he had some kids or a wife that wrote blogs. Adding that to the mix, and I would be able to get
triple the amount of information about him.
To me, this was a strong wake-up call, and it gave me a really creepy feeling that I was able to figure
this much out so easily. If it was this easy for me to figure all this information out within a very short
time about a random person, how much easier would it be for some people that actually set up
systems to do bad things? I just used a few search engines, but any C-grade computer student wouldbe able to write some software that could extract this information in seconds based on something as
simple as a phone number.
When I saw what I could do in 30 minutes, I knew that I had to make some changes to my life.
I needed to get prudent privacy.
I often look at how privacy is treated today, and I become frightened. Do the people around me
know nothing about history? Dont they understand how badly they can be hurt when they expose
so much information about themselves? Dont they think about the fact that information they put
on the web will be there forever?
The conclusion that Ive come to over and over is very simple: No. They dont. They dont
understand, they dont think about the future, and absolutely no, they dont understand history.
They think that because everyone else does what they do, its safe.
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The same goes for privacy. Some time ago I decided that I wanted privacy in my life. I was inspired
by reading history, and I started to educate myself on the subject. Today I am well ahead of most
people, and because I continue to pick up information on the subject, I will probably stay well ahead
for as long as I live.
Ive been talking a lot with James about privacy, and also a bit with Paul. James actually implements
ideas that we discuss. Paul on the other hand, he doesnt usually want my advice, and in the rare
occasions where he listens and I come with a suggestion, he usually says he will do something about
it later.
James now lives in a foreign country. Paul lives partly with his parents, but is sometimes renting a
house an hours drive away from home.
James uses foreign companies to protect his assets. Paul has no corporations, and no assets, and the
only money hes got is invested in online poker and his car. Hes got a nice car thats falling in value
every day.
James uses virtual private network to hide what content hes reading online. Paul doesnt care much
what the internet service provider knows about him. Paul got nothing to hide as he says.
James uses different email accounts for different purposes, so that its harder for people to connect
the dots. Paul receives all kinds of spam, dating mails, friends mails and occasionally business mailsinto the same inbox.
James is skeptical about Google and the US government and what will happen when the economic
problems keep increasing. Paul doesnt care much about politics or economics, and he uses the
personalized Google searches, G+, Gmail and lots of other Google products. Its all for free is his
favorite comment on the subject.
James sees the dangers lurking in the CDS and bonds markets, and understands how these markets
can have a huge indirect impact on his privacy and well-being. Paul has no clue what a credit default
swap is, and doesnt understand the function of the bond market.
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5 Whatdoesprudentprivacymean?When talking about prudent privacy, its important to understand what it means. I find it quite
interesting to look at words, and the two most important words we will deal with in this book is
prudent and privacy.
5.1 Prudent
I take a definition from Wiktionary (2012b):
Another definition (Answers.com, 2012d):
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What these definitions gives us, is basically that if you are prudent, youre able to foresee whats
coming, you are wise, frugal and economical, you judge well.
5.2 Privacy
If we again go to Wiktionary (Wiktionary, 2012a), we find:
And going to Answers.com (Answers.com, 2012b):
Privacy is basically that you are free from unsanctioned intrusion, that you have certain things that
you and only you have the view of. For example, most people prefer to be able to use their
bathrooms and bedrooms without having surveillance cameras there. Its just very creepy if one of
your Nabors points a camera at your bathroom window and has it recording when you use the
bathroom.
5.3 Combiningthetwowords
When we combine the two words, we get to one of the main points of this book. There is a certain
level of privacy that is prudent for you. What is prudent depends upon some factors like:
What your job is
What expectations you have about the future
What you think is creepy and not
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For example, if your job is to be a public person, you are in the news or TV; then the prudent level of
privacy will be completely different than for a person like me, Neo CortX. If your job is to be a
policeman, then you will want privacy about your home address, so that the criminals you arrest
cant come after you. If your job is to fire people when the company you work for is about to go
broke, then you might also want to hide your address so that the people who have lost their jobs
dont go after you when you did your job.
If you are a news reporter who covers a story about some corruption in a government, then if you
are prudent, you will want to avoid allowing them access to your email account. This is unlike what
happened to Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years after having his email compromised (BBC_News,
2005).
What expectations you have about the future is also very important. Say that you think that World
War 3 is coming, and you dont like the idea of dying, you prefer to live. If you are young and in the
age group that could be drafted, then you might want to take actions to protect your future from
this danger while its still politically accepted to take action. If such a time comes that the drafts
starts, it might be too late to take action. If you are expecting peace and prosperity for the coming
50 years, then you will not have to take these actions at all.
The third point is what you think is creepy and not. There are quite a few people in the world who
seemingly dont mind having their pictures taken in swimsuit and posted on the web. Others find
that even having a picture taken from 100 meters away and posted on the web is quite intrusive to
the privacy.
Prudent privacy is the level of privacy that protects your future. Some of you will have to implement
all the tips given in this book and more. Others will only have to implement some of the basics, like
proper usage of passwords. No matter what level of privacy you feel is prudent, I advise you to start
learning about this subject. Its a big subject, but the rewards are well worth the effort. It might just
save your life down the road or at the very least, give you a feeling or personal responsibility and
that you are in control of your own life. This journey has for me become an adventure; my life has
become exciting and meaningful. I hope you will join me so that you too can start the journey
towards prudent privacy.
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Of course Neo CortX, I feel the same way when talking to others about subjects they dont know
much about. James was calm and relaxed.
6.2 Thefourseasons
Ok, Ill try to explain, and Ill try not to stray too far from the subject. If you read about the
mentioned subjects and more stuff from history, you will find that they have much in common. The
actors are different, the places are different, and the colors are
different. But many components are repeating with high
precision. Basically there are different stages in a society; each is
lasting usually about 50-75 years.
First we have the early spring time, things are growing, life is
getting better, people are working and working hard. If they dont
find a job, they start their own
business. Almost nobody expects
something for nothing; everyone
pays his way through life by
providing services or products to his fellow men. Since people pay
for themselves and dont expect the government or their Nabors
to pay, taxes are limited or non-existing. Gold is used for money,
or perhaps even there is such level of freedom that people can
decide for themselves what kind of money they want to use.
Privacy is not a big concern, but the desire for privacy is highly
respected. Its easy with hard and smart work for the poor to
become rich and for the rich who are lazy to slip into poverty.
Poor is getting richer, rich is getting richer.
Second phase is summer. Times are good, after a long period of
growth there is much more wealth in the society, and people can
afford to relax a bit more. The children of
the spring generation are growing up,
and these kids have higher expectations.
They are not used to working so hard.
More people start to get dependent on
the government. Welfare seems to be rising; government gives free health-care and other
services. The government can allow itself to tax the population more, since the people are not
Discovering patterns
After leaving school I figure I
could finally start learning
something useful, and one
of the subjects Ive become
very interested in is history.
In school history was
topping the high-score list
of boring subjects, but after
understanding how I could
use lessons from the past to
enhance my future, history
became very interesting.Instead of memorizing
irrelevant dates taught in
class, I was able by my
research on the web to find
abstract patterns that
repeated through history.
The patterns I found
included how societies had
a lifecycle. These cycles play
a very important part in the
history of each nation,
though most people are
completely unaware of the
patterns.
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Well, I mentioned a few; you can access sites that are illegal in certain jurisdictions, like Facebook,
Skype, certain Wikipedia articles etc. This is quite practical if you are travelling through a country
where they have different laws than what you are used to, and you need to access your Facebook
profile or check up some content on Wikipedia.
Another, and in my opinion the biggest advantage, is that you hide your traffic from the local ISP or
internet service provider. So if the local government wants to see what political views you have and
writes a new law that requires the ISP to scan all content youve accessed, they will have a much
harder time finding out what sites youve visited if you use VPN, since not even the local ISP
normally know that. Though it is possible to analyze the traffic as it comes out of the VPN tunnel,
at least youre making it much harder for them to trace you.
A third advantage is that you can access content that is only accessible to certain jurisdictions. Say
you live in the UK and want to access content that is only available for people located in the US. If
you have a VPN connection to a server in the US, then your traffic seems to be coming from the US
(and it actually does), so you can now access the content. Many news providers has restrictions like
this.
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13 E-Mail-Updated
How secure is email? James was on it again.
Well, it depends on what youre expecting and how you use it. I replied. For
some purposes, email is just fine. You just need to know about its strengths and
weaknesses.
And what are the weaknesses of email?
There are quite a few. We can begin with the fact that some email providers dont use SSL, or
encryption, when transferring your messages. This of course is dependent on the provider, and
Google is an example of someone who does a good job here. The providers who dont use
encryption will allow outsiders to tap the traffic that happens between your computer and the
server. While this hopefully doesnt happen too often, its still a risk. What this means is that you as
a user might risk that your email is watched by any random person who wants to look at your email.
Your Internet Service Provider, and any monitoring facility is just the beginning. You dont require
much hacking skills to be able to listen in to unencrypted email.
Another risk with using email is that the content is stored and transferred unencrypted. That means
that any device thats routing the traffic is able to read the content. Some nations even implement
storage of certain abstract data about the traffic that happens across the borders. This might include
who you sent email to, at what time, and from what IP address. So the basic idea with email is never
to send anything that you dont want the whole world to know, including people in a different
political environment in the future. If you know about the weaknesses, email is good for certain
limited use. Uncritical usage can come back and bite you bad, and many cases in court have been
decided by people being sloppy with their email.
A third risk is of course that any email service provider can be a
subpoena; this means that they are required by law to open the
email account and show the content to the court.
And the advantages of email are quite obvious. Anyone I dont
know about?
Most of them are all quite obvious. However, one thing that most
people dont think about is that one big risk of using email is sending
email in a state where you are highly affected by feelings or somekind of intoxication. By doing this, youre almost sure that you will regret it, and you dont want to
Stopsending
sensitiveinformation
unencryptedoveremail.Itsvery
dangeroustomostpeople.Use
facetofaceorencrypted
communication.
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