
Digital identity has three layers, and you can only protect one of them - longdefeat
https://qz.com/1525661/your-digital-identity-has-three-layers-and-you-can-only-protect-one-of-them/
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judge2020
The main issue I see is how they plan to fix this issue:

> Instead of guessing our location, relationships, or hidden desires behind
> our backs, they could ask questions and respect our answers.

You __really__ cannot respect what someone tells you about themselves.
Machines can rely on the information people feed into social media because
that's things the person is personally OK with sharing to anyone and everyone
(or, at least, their friend group), but once they start asking specifically
about relationships, (bad) habits, and embarrassing situations ("were you at
<a bar> yesterday at 2 AM?"), people often lie to the machine to make them
seem like a better person or boost their own morale.

~~~
vaylian
Yes, but that's okay. Why should humans not be able to lie to machines? We
value privacy because there are some things that are not other people's (or
other machine's) buisiness.

In the end it matters why you share the data. If you share the data with a
service because you have an addiction problem and the service will help you to
overcome it, then it is reasonable to be more open and personal. But if the
same data is also given out to others to judge your credit-worthyness, then we
have a breach of trust and that is rightfully not acceptable.

If you share your data on facebook (or any more trustworthy plattform) then
your objectives are of a different kind: You want to share aspects of your
social life. This is a lot less private than the addiction service and also a
lot less critical when it comes to the correctness of the information.

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
It’s not really lying to machines, though; the machines don’t care. It’s lying
to the people on the other end of the machine.

Suppose somebody working on Hacker News wants to redesign it, and wants to
know if they should optimize for long visits or short visits. If they call me
on the phone and ask me how often I open HN and what my mean usage duration
is, I’m just going to make up numbers. Their website analytics, on the other
hand, can tell them something closer to reality.

I’m not saying that’s good or bad; I’m just saying that our devices are often
more reliable records of ourselves than our own memories and thoughts.

~~~
pjc50
This gets into very deep water about what the "real" self it. And using this
in the machine feedback loop produces weird side effects, like the tendency of
Youtube to recommend far-right, conspiracy, anti-vax etc videos because those
have high engagement. It's almost a dissociative effect, where people keep
watching or clicking but understand less and less why they're doing it.

People who wire a machine directly into the _id_ have obviously never seen or
understood _Forbidden Planet_.

~~~
yyyymmddhhmmss
It gets into the value of the humanities. Not the departments at universities
but the course of study, which must be concerned with the functional sum of
sensory systems.

Since Plato, the humanities has served critical purposes beyond the production
of immersive experience. But the two are no more separable than science is
from logic.

The value of the humanities, in my view, is in beginning with the sum of the
effects and critiquing the mechanics from there. I am afraid this necessitstes
something like the opposite of a technocracy, with no lack of sincerity and
brevity. Hence it’s historical conguencce with enlightenment, whatever that is
...

~~~
ambicapter
> Not the departments at universities but the course of study

Why are you making this distinction? I think most people undertaking that
course of study will be doing at the department in the university.

~~~
rosser
>> _Not the departments at universities but the course of study_

> _Why are you making this distinction?_

Probably because there's a pretty deeply held belief among a lot of
technologists that non-STEM degrees and departments are at best wastes of
time, and at worst utterly corrupt.

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throw6584105
Just wait until they have gaze tracking... they'll have real time
interest/boredom (image order, time spent, ignored) detection along with an
almost unmaskable biometric probability match (sequential novelty boredom
detection on e.g cat pictures).

You don't have to click for them to know you like dark long haired angora
goats... in compromising positions.

Hmmm are you jealous of that perfectly cabled rack next to him? Maybe we could
interest you in... or we could just let your your mom know, if you don't pay
for protection... she's not always so understanding these days.

~~~
fcarraldo
Gaze tracking isn’t necessary for this. You can track how long a user stopped
scrolling through a feed on items classified as X, then build confidence by
comparing the frequency of stops on X classified stories over time.

Also, for really weird stuff, it’s probably enough to blackmail a person just
by showing that Weird Thing appears in their social feed in the first place.

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mark_l_watson
I pay a lot of attention to what goes in my profile. My wife and I are older
so several of our friends have serious health issues. We are careful to use
Tor or private browsing with DuckDuckGo when doing medical related web
searches. I also switched over to G Suite for $10/month in the hope that I am
not being ‘harvested’ as much as when I used to use Google’s services for
free. I cringe when I see the private data young relatives leak on FB.

EDIT: and, of course, keep location tracking turned off.

~~~
wil421
If you’re really that paranoid why wouldn’t work just go to a library and
research the old fashioned way, books.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
It's not paranoia when someone's actually out to get you;) And the web is
convenient even taking reasonable precautions.

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bo1024
I strongly disagree about the middle layer. We have a lot of possible control
about what's observed about our digital behavior.

Location tracking (turn off)

IP address (use VPN)

Cookies (don't allow cookies, don't browse the web while logged in to
facebook, google, etc)

Javascript, browser fingerprinting (disable unnecessary javascript)

Installing sketchy apps (which is most of them - don't)

Credit card purchases (use cash instead)

~~~
meruru
Not enough people recommend the Tor Browser at times like this. It's really
good!

>Cookies (don't allow cookies, don't browse the web while logged in to
facebook, google, etc)

Even better, try not to have account on those sites at all.

>Javascript, browser fingerprinting (disable unnecessary javascript)

Firefox has a good about:config option privacy.resistFingerprinting

>Installing sketchy apps (which is most of them - don't)

F-Droid is a good repository of trustworthy apps:
[https://f-droid.org](https://f-droid.org)

~~~
bo1024
Thanks for the additions!

I think Tor browser is great. However, it may not help much unless you also
follow the above practices -- don't log in to things, don't allow cookies, run
minimal javascript.

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At1C
I think instead of using screensavers when computer is idle, everyone should
be running Page Rankster Apps random ad clicking with alternating porn
surfing, Just to keep Surveillance Capitalism and A.I. dumbed down like a
mushroom feed it shit!

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crawfordcomeaux
If we make the world a safe space where the goal is to meet everyone's needs,
then maybe we can live our lives openly and not have to worry about
information being weaponized like this?

~~~
ben_w
I like the principal; I have not yet figured out what to think about laws that
concern “immoral” private behaviour such as “extreme” porn (any jurisdiction,
the point isn’t any particular law — Japanese, USA, UK, Saudi — but the
principle).

Even if all such laws were repealed, there would still be social consequences
for violating taboos.

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cortic
Admittedly i didn't read all the article, the flashing gifs were giving me a
headache. However;

I wonder if this could be manipulated by a bot? Wouldn't be too hard to set up
one that posted moral fiber and BS in a timely fashion, actually if you had
access to the end data, and could create identities to test, this would be an
interesting (maybe deep learning) project.

~~~
elliotec
There are countless bots doing this exact thing, in countless different ways,
for countless purposes.

