Lately there has been a lot of news and talk about the erosion of privacy on the Internet. The Patriot act and EC logging directive are old news, but with initiatives like
Phorm it seems like the ISPs are also getting into the act of tracking us online. And then there's all the criminals who would like to get their hands on our sensitive data as well. I've taken a look at Torpark and probably decided that it was too much of a hassle anyway. We also had an interesting discussion about
VPN here at AN a while ago.
Now I was wondering if any of you guys had any ideas or opinion on online privacy. Personally, it does irk me that everything I'm doing online gets logged these days. Not so much because of what the government would do, but more because all these logs could potentially end up in the wrong hands. Hackers must see all these government databases as veritable treasure troves. Look no further than the UK
for a fine example. So what can one do to minimise the exposure to all this?
The main threats as far as I see it are:
- Logging
- Traffic analysis
- Untrustworthy internet access nodes like public hotspots
- Spyware - not really a Mac problem
- Commercial surveillance and profiling
I suggest we could categorise any suggestions in the following categories, depending on the degree of paranoia. Kinda like an Ars System Guide:
1. The ordinary user: Just want's his personal info to stay out of the hands of the wrong people.
2. The security minded user: Has confidential information and internet traffic that he/she want's to keep secret. This could for example be someone running a small business with confidential customer information or a journalist who had annoyed of the wrong people.
3. The paranoid: Basically want's to be totally invisible and considers himself to be a potential victim of the black helicopters.