Ask HN: Is online privacy possible without legislation? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is online privacy possible without legislation?

9 pointslukeschwartz7 comments

Assuming you meet the fundamentals of online privacy [0], and you are unwilling to go the "degen" route (second-hand-wiped-paid-cash laptop < bare-bones OS < VPN routing < VM < VPN routing < Tor [1]).

Is there any[2] future in which true online privacy is achieved without legislation, through sheer innovation?

Is this future just for power-users (like now) or also for the average internet enjoyer?

Today it seems like you can't truly hide, you are just blocking ads.

[0] https://github.com/Lissy93/personal-security-checklist

[1] Leaving plenty of steps for your imagination (or experience)

[2] I genuinely mean any

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It's not a static world. Things are always changing. It's not the Data Wild West anymore.

As corporate robots get more and more entangled with the unintended and unpredictable consequences and costs of handling too much personal data, they start changing their behavior. It effects them as much as it effects everyone else. It effects their families, employees, customers, communities, countries etc etc. No one is immune

We scaled up systems so fast thanks to Moores law, cheap storage/network etc that issues scaled up faster than fixes. But past 5-6 years a lot more energy and resources are going into hardening, securing systems, quickly recognizing and reacting to issues, reducing the amount of unnecessary data being collected etc.

Learning takes time. That doesn't mean learning is not happening

Isn't it an issue of the entire model though. The Web is free, as in you pay with your data. The Web can be completely free for you and a number of others as long as enough people are actually paying with their data (to offset you et al.,).

Can your online identity (data) be completely decoupled from your physical identity?

Meaning you will be willing to sell some of your data as long as it didn't tie you to the "real" world. But isn't the entire world being turned into a computer anyways? Comes to mind "as software eats the world" [0].

If computers "eat" the physical world, there can't be no you online and you offline.

[0] https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world...

Similar things were said about globalization too. That borders and boundaries would evaporate. But we can see many boundaries and divisions getting reinforced. These are huge dynamical systems. Like hurricanes beyond a point they are hard to predict. Quite possible there will be many different networks and they won't all have the same properties.

laptop < bare-bones OS[3] < neighbors wifi[1] < (pfSense VM[0] + VPN) < (pfSense VM + multiple per-connection load-balanced anon VPNs + pfBlocker NG) < (Tails | Whonix Gateway) < (Whonix Workstation Live mode | Windows IE VM[2])

[0] With DNS trimming, forced DoH(TTPS), forced over VPN, no VPN no internet

[1] While inter-railing, tickets paid in cash

[2] https://www.amiunique.org/

[3] installed on an SD card or USB-C attached NVMe, with a dummy OS install on the built-in storage

And even then, the best anonymity is to just pretend to be somebody else, proxy through their home internet with stolen cookies and same browser version, using the same laptop model as them. Many 2nd-hand laptop and phone shops forget to wipe the previous owners data, or will 'forget' for a few extra dollars.

Some legislation is hurting privacy. For example it’s the legislation that makes it a crime to “extort ads” using bots.

We need a way to make the entire privacy invasion business not profitable.

> We need a way to make the entire privacy invasion business not profitable.

i.e., How to pay for the Web (and all other related privacy-invasive platforms) without ads?

Good old money?

The problem isn't that people don't want to pay, it's that a lot of content out there isn't valuable enough to pay for and only survives currently because ads are a form of non-refundable payment that just takes a click.

If ads were no longer sustainable, the market will find a way around that. Some trash will go out of business but it won't be missed anyway.

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