Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes | Hacker News Reader

Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

fastcompany.com

86 pointstrendspotter94 comments

Moral of the story: to really disappear, you're going to need to go live in a forest somewhere or move to the high plains of Tibet.

Potentially useful information, if there's mobsters after you.

The RFID tags in tires is a perfect illustration of why it's going to be practically impossible to live in the modern world and cover all your tracks. I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires (which, BTW, is a nifty idea), and there are doubtless hundreds of other tracks I leave. Who could possibly cover them all? It would be like trying to make a sieve water-tight, except you don't even know where half the holes are!

Now, if we're talking about the NSA and not mobsters, and you are less concerned with being un-findable than you are with hiding your activities- there are different games you can play, and I'd bet you could be more successful. Behave in an ordinary fashion 99.9% of the time. Just look at the intelligence operations sixty years ago. Spies didn't hide in holes so no-one could find them, they blended in.

I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires

That's the first I've heard of it myself, although it seems inevitable since one of the biggest selling points of RFID tags is for inventory management. We are likely to see RFID tags everywhere we currently see barcodes.

http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10492011/why-...

But... to get back to the RFID in tires thing there is more to it than just that. Current vehicle safety codes require in-cabin monitoring of tire pressure. One way to do it is for the car to pay attention to changes in wheel rotation speeds (lower pressure means smaller effective radius). Another is to put a pressure guage in each wheel that talks to the car's computer wirelessly and gives more exact numbers so is more common. So even without RFID in the tires, most cars still transmit a unique ID number everywhere they go.

http://news.rutgers.edu/news-releases/2010/08/wireless-tire-...

Reading about direct TPMS, it's a shame that the sensors have to be battery powered. I was excited for a minute, thinking maybe they manage to power the device with radio waves, the same way a passive RFID chip replies using power harvested from the query.

Or some other creative solution for supplying power. I mean, it's a shame these devices don't regularly experience some kind of predictable motion that could be used to generate electricity.

TPMS sensors already have enough problems, adding moving parts would be the proverbial straw...

I agree, it's not all your activity you want to keep secret (in which case move to the forest), it's the secret activity. It's not secret when you walk to the store, and it's not secret when you post a photo online or check into a location. However, there must always be a method for secret communication, and of course there is now, it's just not as convenient as the non-secure methods.

When has secret communication ever been as convenient as the non-secure methods? Dead-drops, circling letters in the newspaper, putting a flower pot on your balcony...

I don't know. I have a tendency to get noticd merely for being different. I have genuine concerns about ordinary, nonsecret activities of mine taking notice. But that concern is mostly not relevant to the kind of intelligence being discussed here.

/pedant

I worked for a big company where security was a big thing. I had to have an ID badge to enter the building. My boss once admitted to requesting the logs to determine if people on the team were really showing up on time to work. So I was aware the information could be used in let's say a predatory fashion for things not immediately obvious.

However, I once had an ugly run in with another employee I did not know while in the parking lot. I went to security to look at film and try to ID them. We were not able to ID the employee. We checked film from the stairwell I exited through and caught a glimpse of the person, but you only had to swipe your ID to get in, not to leave. So, no, there was no timed ID badge record to match the picture against.

I was surprised by the outcome. Given the ID badges and security cameras, etc, I had expected a Star Trek style set up. No, not remotely.

I am well aware info can be used against people. That mostly scares me in cases of hostile intent. And where you have hostile intent, it almost does not matter what info they have. They can spin it as something bad anyway.

At this point, I think being innocent is mostly not a defense either. I hope things change. Currently, there is a lot of assumption of guilt and, to me, that is the real problem.

The big issue with using access control and security cameras for tracking people is that they are some of the worst possible ways to track someone. As you discovered, it really comes down to a bunch of tedious scrubbing through video trying to find the few seconds of interesting video. Access control makes it somewhat easier, but then you have issues when people just follow another person in instead of using their fob. Tracking people via cellphones and other similar methods is far easier and effective right now.

You could make a lot of money in security if you were able to come up with a reliable way of tracking people via surveillance cameras, particularly in mapping persons movements and identifying when they aren't behaving as expected. Unfortunately this is exactly where it gets too easy to invade people's privacy. It is just a matter of time before we are able to do this, and we really need to have some way of limiting the invasion of privacy while still allowing for these systems to be used in positive ways.

I had fantasies there would be videotape with legible audio of the first encounter in the parking lot and pics of the second encounter at the access road next to the parking lot. There were no cameras trained on either the parking lot or the access road. The camera in the stairwell had no audio and I kind of want to say it took stills every couple of seconds or something, not video, but I do not really recall. Regardless, I was shocked. The cameras everywhere and ID bagdes, etc, turned out to be far less Big Brother Is Watching You than I had believed prio to that incident.

As far as privacy in the future, I think one thing that will happen will be cultural adaptation. I think that is already occurring. I often discuss "personal" things online with acquaintances and strangers that I rarely discuss in person with acquaintances or strangers. This has nothing to do with being shy and everything to do with opportunity to have a meatier discussion online. If I need to give a lot of background info, I can do that online in ways I cannot do in person. For example, I can give links that give additional info for those that need it.

So I think new technology is already redefining what kinds of info are socially acceptable to divulge and changing how people react to knowledge about things that were previously much more deeply secret. As technology continues to evolve, we will face new questions about situations that never existed before. These days, people routinely wrestle with questions about handling social media, online privacy, etc. Those were questions that did not exist when I was growing up. No one has outlawed FaceBook even though, for example, people have been fired for things they said there.

Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t."

Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like that because insurance companies have calculated precisely how likely one alcoholic drink will cause them problems down the road in terms of them administering costs related to alcoholism or something. Very scary stuff.

Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%?

I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're designed to aid in tracking, what's the surprise that they're being used to do exactly that?

Perhaps you're buying alcohol for a party. Or all that fatty food you purchased on your credit card was because you get shopping for a friend. But the anonymous algorithms won't know this, and you will pay for their assumptions. How is that fair? It's little relief to me if these systems are only mostly correct.

You're focusing on the specific example, rather than the general idea that your purchase history indicates your riskiness, and an insurance company who has that data available to them will adjust your policy based on your behavior.

And why shouldn't they? It's the same concept as you indicating whether or not you smoke, how much you drive to/from work daily, how many driving tickets you have, etc. Questions you willfully answer today. We are already accepting of their interest.

The only significant difference here is you wouldn't as easily be able to lie, and people who do lead more conservative lives pay less, again a tried and true concept in the car insurance industry.

Maybe soon we'll see health insurance companies offering individual breaks to people who grant the company access to their purchase history.

Aaaand that is why single payer means more freedom and not less, as the tinfoil/tebag axis would have it.

I couldn't imagine the government collecting that data on us and using it to change behaviors.

Until you start getting denied treatment for "risky behavior." Oh, and the ad hominem makes you look like an idiot.

Is there a single payer program anywhere that denies treatment for risky behavior, or that even has tighter restrictions on transplant candidates?

The big concrete example of how a national health insurance system operates differently from a "free market" in insurance is that pre-existing conditions are covered. That's a pretty big step away from restrictive conditions. How do you make the argument that a single payer would reverse that?

Because it's easy to see how the nanny state would love to restrict you from buying large sodas (NYC) or other "risky" behavior.

The flip side of that is that people who don't provide that information are going to be grouped into a pool of relatively high risk people and be forced to pay higher bills. And the incentives line up such that, if you're better than the average non-sharer of personal information, you'll be significantly better off switching to being a sharer, which in turn increases the risk profile of the remaining non-sharers. And the cycle repeats until no one can afford not to share all their information.

And the same cycle will push insurance companies further and further into your personal life. Oh, you play video games a couple hours a week? That's $15 extra/month. Oh, you prefer watching football to watching the Wire? We'll ring you up for $5 extra/month. You're gay, that's $10/month. You married a person with an above average BMI? Well, that puts you into a higher risk profile, you'll see the charge on your next bill. Look, Aetna's new monthly offer: a purely voluntary opportunity for you to lower your insurance bill by up to 30%, just by installing a chip into the base of your skull and video cameras throughout your home, all paid for by the Company!

And the insurance companies that don't do this will face higher costs and lower profitability, eventually pushing them out of the market.

Is this what happens today with car insurance? I don't think that's the case. Insurance companies offer "good driver discounts" all the time. What's the difference?

Yes, in theory it's just an extension of existing principles, and it will be a fast but gradual process grounded in practices that existed throughout the 20th century or even longer.

Technology changes things, though. A bullet might be considered just a better arrow, and a car a more efficient horse. But that doesn't mean they didn't radically uproot tradition and shared moral convention.

I have serious reservations about our changing cultural attitudes towards privacy too. But let's be honest here--this would make insurance cheaper for a lot of people, and more expensive for the subset of people who are currently getting subsidized by their peers. I mean, say that playing a couple hours of video games per week really does increase mortality significantly--why should people who don't play video games be forced to subsidize your habits (this is unlikely, anyway--I don't think one's choices of which leisure products to consume are significantly correlated with either positive or negative health outcomes)?

So why not use examples like these? "Oh, you bike to work? Great--your bill is going down! Oh, you have a good credit score? Okay, your premiums just went down again. Oh, you eat salad once in a while? Great, it doesn't take much to eat more healthily than the average American, so--you guessed it--your bill just went down again!"

Less information asymmetry between customers and insurance companies would lead to better prices for safer people, and fairer prices for riskier people (by "fairer" I mean "closer to their average lifetime insurance payout).

Whether it's worth it in terms of the loss of privacy is another question, but we shouldn't stack the deck by pretending everyone's premiums will go up unfairly.

Because it can then be used for deception -- I can buy healthy food with my credit cards and buy shitty food with cash. Net outcome is my insurance rates go down but my actual risk goes up.

You can also lie about how many tickets you've gotten, accidents you've been in, existing conditions, etc.

These kinds of things are traditionally called insurance fraud, and even if it's not illegal (buying food with cash won't ever be illegal, let's be honest with ourselves), it'll be accounted for by the insurance companies.

And if your technique for "sticking it to the man" is to eat yourself into unhealthiness, then... I guess you win. Congratulations.

> Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%?

Not if you bought the 6 pack for the contractors working on your fitness room.

Like the other guy did, you're focusing on the specific example, when the question and debate revolves around the general concept.

But if you really must play this game, then perhaps the fact that you believe a 6 pack to even be a worthy gift is telling of your lifestyle enough to determine risk. Maybe it doesn't matter if you give it to someone else or not, just the fact that you purchase beer a certain amount of times in a given time interval has shown to increase your likelihood of injury.

Or not, I don't know. The point is, they would figure that out. We don't need to hash out a full implementation of this technology to understand it'd be possible.

But the specific example points out the flaw. The data can be misleading, for some people and in some scenarios substantially (buying a round of drinks for clients looks the same as buying yourself 8 drinks at the bar to your credit card).

Plus, with government-run healthcare, the definitions of healthy will be subject to lobbying. Look at the arguments now about what is healthy food... are carbs bad? is fat? what about organic? GMO? Meat? Grains? Eggs are healthy again after being bad for you after being good for you. I have coworkers who swear by paleo diets and somehow everyone doing crossfit is convinced they're in the 2% of humans with a gluten sensitivity.

Now imagine that confusion with lobbyists from every direction trying to prevent their products from being put on the 'bad foods' list.

This isn't about government run healthcare, and the specific example is an implementation detail so no it does not point out the flaw, it points out nothing more than the fact that no system is 100% perfect.

Actually, I think you might need proof by implementation, I don't think it is obvious that purchase patterns have actuarial value, never mind single purchases (for instance, deferred refills and discarded food don't show up at the register, both are strategies for coping with fast food).

OP did increase their liability. But do we want to track right and wrong down to that level? Do we want to be that uptight and excruciating? When society's systems get too efficient the potential for tyranny gets get ever higher. Compare efficient colonizers like the English vs sloppy ones like the Spanish. Indigenous groups are far more of a presence in the countries where the latter ruled vs the former. That's not an accident. The weak administrative skills of the Spanish authorities gave enough space for the natives to not be completely boxed in, even though in general they could be more unjust than English colonial governments. Inefficiency is a safety valve, it gives hope when real justice can't be found. The injustice here being not being part of a proper health care risk pool the way the citizens in every other civilized country are.

This isn't tracking right and wrong, it's tracking liability.

There is no assertion of moral position here.

> Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%?

If people with lower risks didn't pay for people with higher risks, there'd be no insurance market.

If you can perfectly predict what's going to happen to someone - and you charge them all exactly what it's going to cost, + your overheads, then there's no reason they should buy insurance rather than putting the money into an investment plan. Actually they'd probably be better off with the investment plan.

Insurance is like gambling, what does the insurance company know that you don't? What do you know that they don't? If they get really good at predicting your health, then being accepted for an insurance scheme would be a really strong argument to do something else with your money.

It's a spectrum, not a boolean value. Insurance companies will never get to 100% omniscience, that's silly. Nor will lower-risk people pay so little as to not offer an incentive for insurance to exist. Lower risk is not no risk.

Today the concept I'm talking about already exists in the form of good driver incentives, so the outcome you're predicting is already not how this plays out.

A lower risk insurer can afford to offer lower prices. Similar things happen in the credit market, where risk is more easily predicted. High risk credit is very expensive, often pricing people clean out of the market - door to door credit is declining in popularity as credit agencies find their margins getting slimmer.

Even today, some people are to all intents and purposes uninsurable. Perfection isn't required. Just knowledge of a significant disparity.

This is simply not true. People are risk averse, and buy insurance to protect them from unlikely negative outcomes, not because they believe that the insurance company will, on average, pay out more than they pay in premiums.

I can invest $200 a month for the next 10 years, or I can buy health insurance. On average, I will have more money after 10 years of investing. But the additional $24,000 of savings will increase my happiness very little relative to getting the healthcare I need in the case of a catastrophic injury or illness. So I'll gladly lose a little bit of money every month (statistically) to avoid the possibility of that outcome.

Edited to add: one way to think of this is to pose the following thought experiment. Imagine that tomorrow you have a 50% chance of doubling your wealth and income, and a 50% chance of losing everything. What would you be willing to pay to guarantee that you keep your current wealth and income? If you're like most people, the answer is nonzero and positive. That's how insurance companies make money.

This is a good point, and I have to admit I hadn't thought of it from quite that angle. I guess I'd have to reiterate my point to diminoten; that being in the same risk pool as people with a higher risk is a questionable decision. Certainly my risk might not be perfectly predictable, but to the extent that it is predictable, I don't see why I should pay for you as well.

If I set up a company that just took enough from you to cover your predicted risk - and the risks of people like you - plus some small charge for me, I could charge you less for it than a company that tried to cover everyone.

You are conflating risk and outcome. All drivers are at some risk, some bad and lucky drivers will never have a bad outcome, some good drivers will have multiple bad outcomes.

Risk of injury is similar. I would expect the understanding necessary to accurately predict cancer to be very useful in treating it (it should also have much potential to reduce costs...).

That is ridiculous. What we are doing is perfectly legal. Do these people think it's fair that a health-conscious individual should pay the same premium as a crack-addict? Remember that we are not going after your average Joe, the ones most affected by this are outliers with dangerous alcohol consumption patterns. Studies have shown that increased premiums for undesired excessive alcohol consumption actually decreases risk for excessive alcohol consumption. In fact, it'd be more shocking if we didn't use these purchases to set premiums.

I just made that up, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that in an interview 10 years hence.

I cannot think of the name of it but this reminds me of a scene in a movie. Vaguely it was set in the future and insurance owned the world (something like that). At one point the main character was in the bathroom and the toilet did an analysis right there (he was drinking and swapped it for clean stuff or something like that). I just can't think of the name of it.

Personally I find the idea disgusting.

Idea: services that intentionally fuzz up your data. You pay them a certain fee and they make purchases for goods, entertainment, etc. in subtle ways (credit card purchases). You are aware at all times what was purchased by "you." These purchases would not show up in a way to the general public (i.e., people you know), but is the type of thing that credit agencies, insurance companies, etc., might datamine for. Mess with their data that way by creating a cloak of obfuscation.

Interesting.

One issue I can see is that the service would likely provide tell-tale signs of it being used, either because of implementation flaws or just having a totally fuzzy purchasing pattern is itself a very distinct indicator. Insurance companies could then run risk profiles on people who use that kind of service, and it's possible/likely that users of that service would be unhealthier than average, resulting in higher premiums. Then the most healthy users of the service would face strong incentives to not use it, which further drives up its associated risk.

How terrifying will it be when the government is the sole provider of said insurance with IRS enforcement of its rules? It will be like the NYC BigGulp ban on a ridiculous scale.

What does "recently" mean? I've been reading exactly this anecdote for years now. Always with the same unnamed insurance executive.

This is exactly the problem I have with any "federal sales tax" program: the airgap between what I'm buying and automated governmental analysis thereof shrinks to sparking distance, thanks to instant rendering of tax coupled with inevitable "requirement" to adjust that tax based on arbitrary legislated factors. Buy a six pack? healthcare premium increases. Buy health products? get a tax credit. Buy fertilizer? auto-crosscheck your recent contacts against known terrorists. Made your purchase sooner than speed limits make possible from your last known freeway location? pay your fine first.

How do you know that all that data isn't being collected by the state and and passed up to the federal government?

May be, but they can't admit it.

I'm concerned about what happens when it's legislated, normalized, and accepted.

A horrible article.

Offline? The lady has a tech-startup in SanFrancisco.

Untracked? Still possible to track her. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. If you want to buy a house, you're going to need credit, if you want credit then you're going to be tracked. That's just the way it works in developed nations.

It is one thing to be mindful of security. Protecting your data, understanding the limits of cryptography, not giving away important information via social media or to people who don't need it, is all important things to know.

In a digital world you leave behind a digital footprint. Having one isn't the problem. Controlling it is.

edit: Being untraceable is impossible and a thing of the movies. The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started.

The thing to remember is that isn't a bad thing...

A horrible comment.

These are people who are minimizing their profiles, not magical fairy creatures. Of course if you buy a house under your own name, you will be easy to find - but with a little creativity, you may be able to get around that.

Just because these people are guarded about their activities and their images does not mean that they are handing out tips about how to run for Congress anonymously, so there's really no need to argue against that straw man.

>The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started.

Not everywhere, and not until very recently.

These people? I am one of them. I understand the in's and out's of just about the best you can do when it comes to living off the map.

The article says they are living off the map, which they certainly aren't.

Like I said, minimizing your footprint is one thing, and that is good, but saying these people are "Offline" is absurd.

> The article says they are living off the map, which they certainly aren't.

No, it doesn't.

'“It’s basically impossible for you and I to decide, as of tomorrow, I’m going to remain off the radar and to survive for a month or 12 months,” says Gunter Ollmann, the CTO of security firm IOActive'

Even if you paid cash for that house, the tax records can be public.

If you can afford it, you pay to found a private company, and have that purchase the house. Preferably with cash, and have the company registered in an offshore tax haven.

Even the 'onshore' tax haven of Delaware allows anonymous corporations.

Even if you paid cash for that house, the tax records can be public.

The short version:

(1) Hire someone to create a New Mexico LLC, there are lots of companies out there that will do this for you.

(2) Transfer ownership of the NM LLC to you - there are no requirements for filing transfer of ownership with any public entity. Just make sure you don't lose the paperwork. If there is no taxable income to the LLC there are no filing requirements beyond paying the yearly registration fee.

(3) Purchase house with cash in the name of the NM LLC. Hire a nominee to sign the paperwork, fire the nominee afterwards.

You now own a house with no public records of your ownership. If you need to sell you can sell the NM LLC instead of the house and there won't even be a public record of the sale, the deed will still show the NM LLC as the owner. There may be tax implications for such a sale depending on the local state's laws (california for one).

It's not about being entirely anonymous. It's about not having individual pieces of data being trivially linked together and pointing at you.

That is, it's about avoiding a situation where a yelp review can be trivially linked to your identity from which your home address, work address, children's school, and probably a bunch of purchases or service activity from some website that got (or gets) hacked.

EDIT: And it's the future-tense "gets hacked" that ought to be particularly concerning. Considering government contractors and online services leak user data left and right, anything they know will eventually become tantamount to publicly accessible. Managing ones footprint (e.g. putting their toll device in a cage) is a mitigation against not only what is currently happening to that data, but what may happen and what it can be cross-referenced.

I find it very odd how they do not include "proprietary software" in that list. Because that is where true freedom ends. Anything offline can actually be online. And you wouldn't know. Because it are proprietary closed circuit systems which you do not know the intent of.

Basically, if you can be observed by a person, then you can definitely be "tracked" by a computer.

The thing is, I've never been that upset about this. Technology has only made something that was possible into something that's now feasible, namely observing the public actions of many people to determine what they're doing.

I've always known, even as a kid, that if we scattered many small detecting devices (cameras, microphones, RFID tags) throughout the world, something that is not illegal or bad in and of itself, that we'd pretty much all be track-able.

Did no one think that putting RFID chips all over the place might make a rough point cloud out of nearly everything in the world? Or that simply by interacting with any computerized system it's possible it can be tracking literally ever bit of your interaction with it? Or that it's possible to make cameras so ubiquitous as to make most of the world monitor-able?

Seriously, did the world not see this coming? I know one of the first things I thought of when I saw lots of security cameras somewhere like the airport as a kid was "I bet you could design something to track all the people in this airport using those cameras. That would be sooo cool."

Yeah, most people did not. I know, I have been saying this for years... ever since I studied ipv6 in the olden days (the 90's). All but one or two people I ever discussed the "trackability of everything" with was like, "What the hell are you tripping on?"

The point is that everyone is a target. For a mugger, an ex lover, a political opponent, a boss, an employee... everyone is a target. That should (IMO) make everyone at least a little wary.

It's the exponential reduction in the resources required to accomplish visibility in public actions which is "new". Sure, you could pay someone to follow another person around in public. Now you don't have to, everyone's followed already. The availability of ALPR data to whoever wants to know the last location of a car was one of the more interesting things in the DEFCON presentations around this.

> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them,"

This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on every photo?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-ph...

How do we get from "hash of the image" to "unique face identification of everyone in the image"?

One interviewee had a credit card in a fake name. How legal is that exactly?

It is illegal to defraud and impersonate. There's nothing illegal about using multiple names (again, so long as there is no intent to defraud or impersonate).

I'd be very careful there ... the notion of "structured transactions"[1] is about as wide-reaching as a RICO indictment, and can be used for just about anything.

Even a sniff of a notion that you did that to avoid any kind of tax[2] categorizes it as a "structuring" which "may be punished by a fine or up to five years in prison, or both."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring

[2] Regardless of whether that's true or not ...

I don't see why it would be a problem. People use different names on credit cards all the time. They get married, or divorced (after taking their spouse's name), without changing names on their credit cards, use their middle name as their first name, use nicknames, etc. I doubt banks care as long as you use your legitimate SSN and pay your bills.

On financial accounts where you have assets, I wouldn't want to use an unofficial name. If there's a dispute they could claim that you're not the owner, and you risk losing the assets.

A lot of people get a credit card, and then just get add a fake name to that account. Which is not really a great method of anonymity.

I'm 99% sure it is illegal to get a credit card by supplying false information.

Ironic: I use Ghostery to block website trackers, and it identified thirteen of them on that article.

Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it tracks them and sells their data.

Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it tracks them and sells their data.

You have to actively turn the reporting on, it is not the default. It isn't a hidden option either, it is the very first one on the configuration page.

Off by default yes but blocking trackers is also off by default and as soon as you hit the settings they promt you to opt in. And if you're opted out you can be sure that every few weeks to a month Ghostery will update and try to get you to mess with it's "redesigned control panel". This is less annoying than YouTube's constantly trying to trick you to sign up for G+, but it's still annoying behavior that 90%+ of addons avoid.

And they downplay the sales angle [1] and fail to mention that they sent every url you visit back to their servers in the clear [2]. That's fine if it doesn't bother you but it strikes me as shady and disingenuous on Ghostery's part. Anyone who feels likewise should check out Disconnect [3] which is open source and breaks fewer sites.

[1] Although not as egregiously as in the past. Here is how they originally pitched GhostRank: Ghostery provides reports to Evidon about advertisers and data collectors, which Evidon then provides to regulatory agencies like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA)[2]. These agencies then use those reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed, refer them to the Federal Trade Commission.

[2] http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-cl...

[3] https://disconnect.me/

Source?

Is the opt-in feature noted here [1] what you're referring to?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostery#Criticism

Or go straight to the source, Evidon's FAQ page:

https://www.ghostery.com/faq#q16

"GhostRank data helps them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties, and comply with privacy standards. "

And when GhostRank is enabled it isn't perceived as being a bad thing by the advertising industry:

“When a new web tracker comes on the scene, they often want to be listed in Ghostery. It’s proof that they’ve arrived and have influence"

says the CEO, at

http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/31/ghostery-a-web-tracking-bl...

You can also use the open source disconnect.

https://disconnect.me/

Trying to remove tracks is precisely the wrong thing to do. You have to keep a trackable presence of some sort or you will look suspicious and receive extra scrutiny.

"Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar."

Top 1% of the super paranoid indeed. While I understand the reach of the government and the lengths they'll go to gain information - this article is absolutely ridiculous to me.

I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break.

Bully for you that you don't perceive an issue here.

The fact is beyond dispute that the social services in widest use actively turn your friends into informants on you. If that doesn't bother you, fine--but don't mock the people for whom that is an uncomfortable reality.

Bit off topic, but I actually just disabled all my social media, and you know what? I don't miss a single soul and I feel really good again, more energetic and enthusiastic even. I just realized I really only do have about 5 people I should keep in contact with. Everyone else was a relationship that was kept up just from virtue of existing, relationships that would never make it into real life.

I feel free.

For the first time I took a walk in the park yesterday, rolled a joint, went for a nice breakfast and coffee at a local diner, read the newspaper, and just sat in the park. It was amazing not feeling pressure to make everyone immediately aware of how fucking awesome of a morning I've had. It was actually unreal. I just sat there looking at a bird and I almost just broke down and cried of happiness.

I felt zero pressure doing anything.

It felt as though I was obligated to post everything cool I did, so when doing those things, I'd do them differently just to fit the specific paradigm that I post in just to one up others.

A feeling has left me that I hadn't identified before that I mistook as depression. I was growing more apathetic, sad, and cynical due to social media because it felt like every little thing I did was in competition in some form or another to others online, and when I failed, I just felt more isolated and lonely.

I'm able to do things consistently without the need to constantly check my phone and compare that specific frame of my life against others. Facebook on the toilet, while cleaning, running, on the bus, at work, on the commute home, too much.

The weeks following deleting my social media I got so much shit done so fast with no distractions. Absolutely amazing. I think I'll write a blog post about this. I bought a tablet, loaded my favourite books on it, and have filled in all my pointless social media time with reading.

I'm actually discovering the city alone for the first time ever and it's wonderful because I don't care what anyone else thinks of what I'm doing, I'm doing it for me.

I'm going to grow my beard, cut my hair, buying some jeans, buying some chucks, and then I'm going to relax in a field somewhere and just spend time not caring.

Beautiful, +1

Social media creates a ton of new needs that it then proceeds to only partially, and unpredictably, fill.

You're just realizing again that you don't really give a shit what your mom had for breakfast, unless you're talking about it with her to pass the time over dinner:)

There's absolutely nothing that anybody has to say to me that can't wait a day (except "the site's down!")

I'm going to get a t-shirt saying "Don't talk to me unless the site is down" haha. Yeah, trying to fill that void with social media is like trying to put out fire with napalm.

Problem is that even though you visually deleted all that social stuff, the data still exists. There is no escape.

You're able to "delete" your profile now, so that you have to create a new one and re-add everything if you want to go back. You have the option of deleting after two weeks of deactivation. Whether it is truly deleted on their servers is up for debate.

The irony of course being that Hackernews too is social media, and you still just "bragged" about the experience you had!

Not at all. It's "social media" in that there's a comments page that you can interact with others yes but not much more than that. It's just a link aggregation and I don't know any of you even remotely intimately.

I do perceive an issue here. I just refuse to let - yet another - uncomfortable reality dictate the way I live.

I understand what is going on out there. I'm just not going to be a martyr.

Advertisers, go ahead and try to sell me something based on what you think I like.

It won't work on me. It's a hail mary play.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is I'm not in position to change anything so I suppose I can be thankful for the likes of Edward Snowden and companies that fight back far reaching government requests (Like AirBnb did recently) but I'm going to live my life and live it fully, challenging authority every step of the way hinging on the fact that I believe in the Bill of Rights.

I think it was more proving just how far you would have to go to really be untraceable, and that it's an essentially impossible goal for a normal person.

I'm not sure exactly what needs to happen before you'd take the issue seriously, but enough already has happened for many of us to be very concerned.

I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break.

The problem is the reverse here. The "system" (i.e. our society in general) has been co-opted. It is profoundly wrong that a normal life in the modern world requires so much disclosure to unrelated 3rd parties.

It's like the argument - if you don't want to be recorded, cataloged and tracked by innumerable license plate scanners on the road by the police, DEA, etc and private data-brokers like TLO [1] then you shouldn't drive. It's completely ass-backwards, the price of driving shouldn't be a permanent record of all your movements in innumerable databases that are anonymous to you.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke...

That's the point they are trying to make. No normal person can hope to lead a normal life whilst escaping tracking.

The article had examples of what they do now. It's not a stretch that the rest can happen soon.

Things should not have been allowed to get here.

OA might have unpacked 'being tracked' a little.

Is it a time line of spatial locations?

Or just what I bought for lunch today (therefore one coordinate at a specific time)?

Or a super set of entries in multiple databases?

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