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Privacy, Security and bookmarkers

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Dormouse:
I was reading a post on Obsidian Forum and picked up a casual reference to the Raindrop bookmarker/webclipper, and I started to wonder about privacy and security.

(Raindrop is based in Russia - I'm not sure how it's managing to take payments, given the sanctions, or make payments of its own. Apparently there are 3 servers across the world, presumably synchronised, but I don't know exaclty where.)

And I reflected how much our bookmarks and web history say about us as individuals and as a social collective. And wondered how exploitable that was.

We know that some states have laws requiring data surrender (China, Vietnam) and others have their own ways of doing the equivalent (Russia, Iran, North Korea), and most countries have a degree of capability (USA, UK; EU doesn't admit it). And that VPNs are of limited use (we can be identified with cookies, other programs present etc).

But also that some of these countries achieve significant influence on virtually everything by manipulating social media (Russia the biggest player here), hacking corporates (China) and ransomware (Russia, North Korea). The information available publicly suggests that western governments have a very poor handle on what is going on (viz the investigations into Russian manipulation of last US presidential election) and the companies themselves seeming little better (viz the uncertainty about the extent of bots in the Twitterverse).

I wondered how concerned people here were about these issues. It's a whole different league of concerns to the closed/open source obsession in some of the Obsidian crowd. It's certainly ramped up for me since I realised that an invasion of Taiwan was at quite a high level of probability, and further since the invasion of Ukraine. Food shortages this winter because of that invasion as well as fuel prices will only increase international instability. The totalitarian regimes will surely manipulate for crypto as a way of escaping the US' banking controls.

And for any who are concerned, what do you do about it? I'm careful about what info I put where, and keeping very personal data local. And having never having had accounts with any Meta service, let alone Tiktok. I'm not sure about the rest. I think I'm less individually vulnerable than most, but there's no way of avoiding societal vulnerability.

rjbull:
I'm careful about what info I put where, and keeping very personal data local. And having never having had accounts with any Meta service, let alone Tiktok. I'm not sure about the rest. I think I'm less individually vulnerable than most, but there's no way of avoiding societal vulnerability.
-Dormouse (August 02, 2022, 05:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

As satirical magazine Private Eye put it, "Beelzeberg has re-branded as Metaphistopheles."  I'm fuming and frustrated by the way Facebook and Instagram have become all-pervasive, yet hardly anyone thinks about privacy.  The more so, as I try to follow some of our local artists, and they put most of their messages on Instagram.  Instagram will sometimes let me see a few posts with a browser, but most of the time it duns me to have an account and use the Instagram app.  Which I have so far resisted, but what do you do when people you want to follow only post on such sinister platforms?

Dormouse:
what do you do when people you want to follow only post on such sinister platforms?
-rjbull (August 18, 2022, 05:46 PM)
--- End quote ---
If I can't follow them, then I don't.
But I agree that it's virtually impossible to avoid them all without entirely isolating yourself.

I can't realistically avoid being exposed to Microsoft and Google, but I try to avoid the others as much as I can. And I have some browsers set up to clear all info daily. Quite hard to determine degree of risk too; location helps sometimes but it's easy to set up a HQ in the USA or Europe, as TikTok have done (it was apparently the most popular website of 2021!). At least that means that meta has lost the youngest generation; but still - worse and worser, who can tell?

Target:
If I can't follow them, then I don't.
--- End quote ---

+1 - And I'd go further and say that unless a platform generates some benefit to me then I won't subscribe regardless of what they might be offering.  Its unfortunate but most are little more than honeypots for the collection and monetisation of personal data.  That said, I've sucumbed to facebook (meh...) simply because so much info is distributed via that platform only , and not having access means being unaware of happenings in local sporting or social groups, or relevant businesses. 

Risk can only be judged by the individual, but I've pretty much come to the conclusion that there is already so much of my (our?) personal info out there in various places (banks, government, medical, insurance, telco's, businesses, forums, apps, etc) that regardless of what I (or you) might do the horse has pretty much bolted on any chance of guaranteeing security of our personal info and/or anonymity. 

wraith808:
I was reading a post on Obsidian Forum and picked up a casual reference to the Raindrop bookmarker/webclipper, and I started to wonder about privacy and security.
-Dormouse (August 02, 2022, 05:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

So... what was the post about? I use raindrop and it's not indispensible (it backs up my bookmarks to dropbox regularly) but it is pretty handy and I miss it when I don't have it.

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