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Comment by JAA1337 | Hacker News Reader

I fundamentally disagree with the premise.

I believe a hacker, or bad actor in general, will gain access to my data if they really really wanted it. I believe stealing data is just a function of time and resources (money). Based on this premise, I don't keep anything truly valuable available digitally. Sure, I have my bank accounts secured, but nothing past start practices.

I do not believe my feelings on this mean I do not care about free speech, nor do I not care about privacy. I believe our reality is that no one should be surprised if their data is stolen. People should plan on this happening and be prepared. Just as corporations have Incident Response and Business Continuity plans.

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Hacker will not gain access to your data if there is no data, that's what article is really advocating.

With regards to not caring about free speech, I am trying to picture myself being in this hypothetical situation: lets imagine I was ran by a car and was denied the right to do or say anything about it because the driver was some prominent person, I'm picturing myself in such situation and I'm glad we still have free speech...

When we talk about privacy, we are not only talking about what you can control. Your bank info is secure until it's not, meaning that without privacy regulations the bank sells your info and habits to anyone who's willing to pay, the same thing goes for your phone company and many other essential services.

Whether we accept it or not, the cloud is our "home" now. We have little to no control on who keeps our information on their servers. (i.e. employer, government, school, bank, phone company...)

And I'll use the home as an analogy here. A bad actor can access your house anyway, why have a door? Why have laws that criminalize burglary? Using your example, you could say not to keep anything valuable at home.

I agree with your point that we shouldn't be surprised if our information is hacked, but the point about privacy isn't to necessarily protect you against hackers, but to regulate those that keep your information. Prohibit them from selling your info, store it when not needed and as an extra benefit make it more difficult for hackers to access your info.

Good response. I believe the right counter is "diminishing returns".

Yes, the bad actor can break in my door, but they actually have to do it. Walking through without a door is sooooo much easier.

But then when they get inside, what will they find? Will I have silver and gold bars? Or will it be random HN posts?

My advice is to take reasonable precautions. However, if you have your entire life savings in an offshore back account with Venmo access which doesn't require 2FA ... then yea, I would worry.

I believe things that are valuable, like truly valuable, should be hard to change. Like liquidating a 401k life savings shouldn't be a couple mouse clicks. It should be a long and hard process because you are prolly only going to once or twice in your life. There is nothing wrong IMO with requiring being present at a bank to perform significant value transfers. Sure, wouldn't it be nice to only have to click a button? Sure ... but requiring physical (think MFA) slows the process down for the sake of security.

I agree, and I think your examples of Venmo, and liquidating your 401k are examples of where regulation is needed. Same goes for storing data, while many people hate the GDPR, I think forcing companies to delete personal data is an important piece of legislation. The same thing goes for the right to be forgotten even if it's by manual request.

Completely agree on GDPR. Unfortunately there is so much money to be made in selling to people. I hope legislation wins out.

I'm honestly having trouble imagining anything valuable in my life that isn't digital at the point. My pets I guess?

Do you have physical notebooks full of information that you don't like to keep in digital format?

Yup. For serious people like military, etc they do keep important info in NON-digital form. When Snowden revelations came out, Russians switched to type writer for their internal memos.

For personal use, just have to say offline USB drive is a good investment if you can make the physical switch.

Until we can have something like the quantum entanglement communication.

Im not a conspiracy theorist or eternal cynic, but yes to the above stuff. I simply dont trust anyone. In the software world its the same concept as never trusting anything client side.

I don't think it has anything to to conspiracy theory or anything like that, it just a matter of fact, that nation state actors just simply DO NOT trust anything digital for important stuff ATM.

I guess the biggest thing is passwords. I use passphrases, but yea - I don't use any single point of failure with respect to access.

As far as physical, while a lot of your footprint exists on line, still having the physical matters. A property deed is a good example of this. Another example is my will. I might be aging myself out of this conversation, but it's a point of view for consideration. And yes, these are in a fireproof safe along with birth certificates, passports, etc. So yes, if someone steals my identity, I still have physical proof. Standard MFA stuff (from wikipedia) "knowledge (something only the user knows), possession (something only the user has), and inherence (something only the user is)"

I'll end with another opinion ... digital wallets which are not backed by the FDIC are super scary. Im sure this is another conversation, but just because I choose not to have a digital wallet doesn't mean I don't care about free speech :)

The same argument could be made about your home. A dedicated burglar will get your possessions (including data drives) given time and resources so you should not be surprised to have everything you own taken and your identity stolen.

Again, the same argument could be used about your physical person. Given time and resources someone could kidnap and torture you so you shouldn't be surprised if that happens.

Great response. But the purpose of the article was about digital footprint IMO and not what is maintained in IRL.

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