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Comment by scottalpert | Hacker News Reader

First rule of security: There is no perfect security. You need a multilayered strategy. Tor is a start. Anonymized OSs like Tails are another aspect. Not releasing personal info on the web -- to the extent you can do that -- is another.

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Ironically only one of my friends has gone that far on the last count. He is an attorney and very persistent, and many of these companies do claim to clean up all his data when he writes letters with the proper legal wording to signal they need to take it seriously. It is time consuming, but these letters paid off. Only one of the scummy German screenscraper sights did not comply, and ignored him. I cannot find him anywhere if not for the email address he sent me years later, and no other mention of life exists.

> I cannot find him anywhere if not for the email address he sent me years later, and no other mention of life exists.

I guess his job does not involve participating in projects that have git repositories or public mailing lists.

That is just not true. The email address in git does not need to exist. It just has to look like one, you can use for example `anon@example.com`.

Moreover, I know more important and intelligent people than I are interested in such things, but if you want a C++ SCM system that has strong signing and allows for pseudo-anonymous development, check out Monotone. I had trouble using it and building it with Lua 5.2 after core Lua API changes. Nonetheless, it is what the I2P project uses, and i assume they take such things seriously for a reason.

"but these letters paid off"

What was the benefit to having no electronic record? Was he a lawyer for the mob?

He just wanted his privacy. On HN, I am kind of surprised that had to be explained. Is that not the norm we are fighting for when discussing such things?

There is an anti-privacy demographic on HN, ex - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8111288

It makes sense though, so many people run companies that sell, exploit, mismanage, abuse user data, or outright ignore privacy issues that it's bound to leak into HN as well. It's unfortunate.

Would your friend be kind enough as to open source his letter wording so others may benefit from this approach as well?

I am curious if I ask I can publish a howto following his steps.

I will ask.

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