@regehr

You do realize that all of these companies fingerprint your computer in every way imaginable and use it to track you everywhere and we have no laws to prevent this.

It is totally insidious and these ad companies likely could write a biography of each of in such detail that you would be surprised by the conclusions they could make but likely be forced to admit they are correct.

@regehr

Yeah, I think back to the days when TCP/IP fingerprinting was state of the art and gosh past me thought it was so cool but we should have realized it was such a dangerous tool back then.

@regehr

Like we so need a Ralph Nader for privacy , where are you? Like "Unsafe at any Speed" but for all the spy tech we are dealing with today.

@shafik @regehr I have been telling people just how bad this is for a long time, specifically my family members and close friends and, well, no one seems to care. Because they are addicted to convenience.

They will get ads directly targeted at them in ways that really creeps them out. I tell them how it works and... they don't change at all. They complain about how creepy it is but change nothing in their behaviour and say nothing to those taking and selling their info like this.

I'm at the point where I'm ready to become a real asshole about it because frankly, nothing else seems to work. (Being an asshole won't either, but maybe I'll get somebody riled up.) It's either they don't care or they just think that having a computer do cool stuff they saw in science fiction as a kid makes everything worthwhile.

It's very frustrating and may be why no one really contacts me anymore.

@gwozniak @regehr

Yeah, there are many levels to the apathy here.

I was once deeply involved in infosec and that kind of knowledge really makes you, I think, deeply wary of systems of control. Because you see how things break and can be abused. Most folks don't ever go that deep and so feel like the concerns border on conspiracy talk.

I think there is a degree of, I am so busy and so tired, I can't deal with this crap. Which I deeply respect, most folks just want to live their life.

I think there is a lack of imagination, reading sci-fi and imaging it happening in real life seems too much for most folks. I think if you have not thought about how the whole system works very deeply this makes sense. I am reading through the rest of Vernor Vinge's work and he had a lot of interesting ideas about how things could break that I think deserve more thoughtful examination, in a more abstract sense.

Infosec folks also tend to be more clued into the intelligence side of things and how dark that side really is. I think that bring a degree or practicality. How many decades did most folks just not want to believe Tempest was real.

In many ways the OpSec mindset is really hard, it requires continual vigilance which is not something folks want to do. Once you got kids, who got time for that stuff?

@gwozniak @regehr

I wish, I was more connected to the infosec/maker community around me but I just have not had the time to figure out where it is.

@gwozniak @regehr

If you want to be more depressed:

https://infosec.exchange/@katrinakatrinka/116338791597938565

Easy workaround only use LinkedIn from non Chrome browsers, which I have been doing for a while.