Comment by blueridge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blueridge | Hacker News Reader

Practically speaking, what can we do to avoid this?

I don't have Google accounts, I browse with a handful of privacy extensions to block ads and trackers, I use custom DNS, my iPhone is mostly a brick, my old car is also a brick, I don't have any smart home devices, I'm mindful about what I sign-up for, I make a point to cancel accounts I'm not using, I don't have an Amazon account, I don't shop with my phone in store to avoid the Bluetooth beacons, etc.

But I still use a credit card, I pay bills, I have Comcast service, I buy things online, I use GPS, I still have a handful of subscriptions, and who knows what happens to personal information when applying for jobs—I'm sure it changes hands over and over via the ATS company.

For those of us who care about maintaining a sense of privacy—what are some things people can do to meaningfully minimize their footprint? Or am I not thinking about this the right way?

It feels like a losing battle. Maybe that's the point: a "sense" of privacy is as far as one can get.

Cash is king for privacy. Pay with cash as often as possible. Walk or bicycle. Write paper letters, mail them with cash-purchased stamps. Looks tuff up at the library. Use an analog film camera, physical maps and a compass to navigate.

If you need to type, get an old mechanical typewriter, and lots of paper for when you mistype and have to redo the entire page...

Or, learn encryption and prefer open/free software solutions as much as possible.

Should be “and learn encryption” not “or”

> Use an analog film camera

Where are you getting your colour negatives developed?

If you can buy some equipments and chemicals (eg JOBO labs and kits) with cash, then developing C41 (or negative) films is trivial and you can diy.

a non connected digital camera would seem more practical.

Almost nobody lives like this. Anyone that does is giving up on modern society. It shouldn't be an exclusive or. You should be able to have privacy and be part of society

It's not a question of should or not. People just willingly give up privacy for convenience. For example merely using a phone (not to mention a smartphone with their location awareness capabilities, or a plain mobile phone with their multilateration, any one that works at all, even a landline if you use it at that very moment) is a breach of privacy. But you need it to function in a modern society. You can avoid such things by taking some extra steps but each of those steps takes progressively more effort and bites a huge chuck of the aforementioned convenience, not only for you but also for the other side of your social interaction.

The whole original topic is more about prevalent abuses of authority than privacy itself, though. And that's a different thing because protecting your privacy from authorized and/or dedicated actors is always quite difficult, if possible at all, even with a proper privacy "hygiene", and needs a totally different approach.

I know I'm in the minority, but still, I didn't give up my privacy for "convenience". I bought my first phone because my employer required a way to contact me. Not to mention all the ways pretty much every single job nowadays requires much more invasions of privacy than just a phone.

A great quote I heard recently: “Google has most of my email because they have all of yours.”

Even if you personally control where your data is stored, the people and businesses you interact with are likely to be trawled by the NSA.

There is no escape short of living in a hut in a forest, sans electricity.

Yeah, "we're not emailing each other any more".

> It feels like a losing battle.

i didn’t hear no bell.

The privacy war is already over and everybody knows the good guys lost.

If you google that line, that is the best you can do in a sense. It is a message encoded in a sea of absolute noise.

Fool the sky to cross the sea.

Until the laws that permit this are updated and the US gains a functional government willing to stop it, nothing.

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