
Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes - trendspotter
http://www.fastcompany.com/3019847/think-you-can-live-offline-without-being-tracked-heres-what-it-takes
======
sliverstorm
Moral of the story: to really disappear, you're going to need to go live in a
forest somewhere or move to the high plains of Tibet.

Potentially useful information, if there's mobsters after you.

The RFID tags in tires is a perfect illustration of why it's going to be
practically impossible to live in the modern world and cover all your tracks.
I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires (which, BTW, is a nifty idea),
and there are doubtless hundreds of other tracks I leave. Who could possibly
cover them all? It would be like trying to make a sieve water-tight, except
you don't even know where half the holes are!

Now, if we're talking about the NSA and not mobsters, and you are less
concerned with being un-findable than you are with hiding your activities-
there are different games you can play, and I'd bet you could be more
successful. Behave in an ordinary fashion 99.9% of the time. Just look at the
intelligence operations sixty years ago. Spies didn't hide in holes so no-one
could find them, they blended in.

~~~
devindotcom
I agree, it's not all your activity you want to keep secret (in which case
move to the forest), it's the secret activity. It's not secret when you walk
to the store, and it's not secret when you post a photo online or check into a
location. However, there must always be a method for secret communication, and
of course there is now, it's just not as convenient as the non-secure methods.

~~~
NovemberWest
I don't know. I have a tendency to get noticd merely for being different. I
have genuine concerns about ordinary, nonsecret activities of mine taking
notice. But that concern is mostly not relevant to the kind of intelligence
being discussed here.

/pedant

------
NovemberWest
I worked for a big company where security was a big thing. I had to have an ID
badge to enter the building. My boss once admitted to requesting the logs to
determine if people on the team were really showing up on time to work. So I
was aware the information could be used in let's say a predatory fashion for
things not immediately obvious.

However, I once had an ugly run in with another employee I did not know while
in the parking lot. I went to security to look at film and try to ID them. We
were not able to ID the employee. We checked film from the stairwell I exited
through and caught a glimpse of the person, but you only had to swipe your ID
to get in, not to leave. So, no, there was no timed ID badge record to match
the picture against.

I was surprised by the outcome. Given the ID badges and security cameras, etc,
I had expected a Star Trek style set up. No, not remotely.

I am well aware info can be used against people. That mostly scares me in
cases of hostile intent. And where you have hostile intent, it almost does not
matter what info they have. They can spin it as something bad anyway.

At this point, I think being innocent is mostly not a defense either. I hope
things change. Currently, there is a lot of assumption of guilt and, to me,
that is the real problem.

~~~
starky
The big issue with using access control and security cameras for tracking
people is that they are some of the worst possible ways to track someone. As
you discovered, it really comes down to a bunch of tedious scrubbing through
video trying to find the few seconds of interesting video. Access control
makes it somewhat easier, but then you have issues when people just follow
another person in instead of using their fob. Tracking people via cellphones
and other similar methods is far easier and effective right now.

You could make a lot of money in security if you were able to come up with a
reliable way of tracking people via surveillance cameras, particularly in
mapping persons movements and identifying when they aren't behaving as
expected. Unfortunately this is exactly where it gets too easy to invade
people's privacy. It is just a matter of time before we are able to do this,
and we really need to have some way of limiting the invasion of privacy while
still allowing for these systems to be used in positive ways.

~~~
NovemberWest
I had fantasies there would be videotape with legible audio of the first
encounter in the parking lot and pics of the second encounter at the access
road next to the parking lot. There were no cameras trained on either the
parking lot or the access road. The camera in the stairwell had no audio and I
kind of want to say it took stills every couple of seconds or something, not
video, but I do not really recall. Regardless, I was shocked. The cameras
everywhere and ID bagdes, etc, turned out to be far less Big Brother Is
Watching You than I had believed prio to that incident.

As far as privacy in the future, I think one thing that will happen will be
cultural adaptation. I think that is already occurring. I often discuss
"personal" things online with acquaintances and strangers that I rarely
discuss in person with acquaintances or strangers. This has nothing to do with
being shy and everything to do with opportunity to have a meatier discussion
online. If I need to give a lot of background info, I can do that online in
ways I cannot do in person. For example, I can give links that give additional
info for those that need it.

So I think new technology is already redefining what kinds of info are
socially acceptable to divulge and changing how people react to knowledge
about things that were previously much more deeply secret. As technology
continues to evolve, we will face new questions about situations that never
existed before. These days, people routinely wrestle with questions about
handling social media, online privacy, etc. Those were questions that did not
exist when I was growing up. No one has outlawed FaceBook even though, for
example, people have been fired for things they said there.

------
Dirlewanger
_Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for
meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his
coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says.
“but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t. "_

Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your
healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like that because
insurance companies have calculated precisely how likely one alcoholic drink
will cause them problems down the road in terms of them administering costs
related to alcoholism or something. Very scary stuff.

~~~
diminoten
Are they wrong? Did you _not_ just increase their liability by 0.001%?

I guess I'm still having a hard time squaring personal responsibility with
this idea of complete anonymity. It's not that we shouldn't be able to hide
anything, but like the article said, it's just not possible (or even
reasonable to expect) to hide everything. Existing in society leaves a
footprint, especially in cases like license plates - they're _designed_ to aid
in tracking, what's the surprise that they're being used to do exactly that?

~~~
6d0debc071
> Are they wrong? Did you not just increase their liability by 0.001%?

If people with lower risks didn't pay for people with higher risks, there'd be
no insurance market.

If you can perfectly predict what's going to happen to someone - and you
charge them all exactly what it's going to cost, + your overheads, then
there's no reason they should buy insurance rather than putting the money into
an investment plan. Actually they'd probably be better off with the investment
plan.

Insurance is like gambling, what does the insurance company know that you
don't? What do you know that they don't? If they get really good at predicting
your health, then being accepted for an insurance scheme would be a really
strong argument to do something else with your money.

~~~
enoch_r
This is simply not true. People are risk averse, and buy insurance to protect
them from unlikely negative outcomes, not because they believe that the
insurance company will, on average, pay out more than they pay in premiums.

I can invest $200 a month for the next 10 years, or I can buy health
insurance. On average, I will have more money after 10 years of investing. But
the additional $24,000 of savings will increase my happiness very little
relative to getting the healthcare I need in the case of a catastrophic injury
or illness. So I'll gladly lose a little bit of money every month
(statistically) to avoid the possibility of that outcome.

Edited to add: one way to think of this is to pose the following thought
experiment. Imagine that tomorrow you have a 50% chance of doubling your
wealth and income, and a 50% chance of losing everything. What would you be
willing to pay to _guarantee_ that you keep your current wealth and income? If
you're like most people, the answer is nonzero and positive. That's how
insurance companies make money.

~~~
6d0debc071
This is a good point, and I have to admit I hadn't thought of it from quite
that angle. I guess I'd have to reiterate my point to diminoten; that being in
the same risk pool as people with a higher risk is a questionable decision.
Certainly my risk might not be perfectly predictable, but to the extent that
it is predictable, I don't see why I should pay for you as well.

If I set up a company that just took enough from you to cover your predicted
risk - and the risks of people like you - plus some small charge for me, I
could charge you less for it than a company that tried to cover everyone.

------
theboss
A horrible article.

Offline? The lady has a tech-startup in SanFrancisco.

Untracked? Still possible to track her. There is nothing you can do to prevent
it. If you want to buy a house, you're going to need credit, if you want
credit then you're going to be tracked. That's just the way it works in
developed nations.

It is one thing to be mindful of security. Protecting your data, understanding
the limits of cryptography, not giving away important information via social
media or to people who don't need it, is all important things to know.

In a digital world you leave behind a digital footprint. Having one isn't the
problem. Controlling it is.

edit: Being untraceable is impossible and a thing of the movies. The moment
you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has
started.

The thing to remember is that isn't a bad thing...

~~~
Zikes
Even if you paid cash for that house, the tax records can be public.

~~~
aegirth
If you can afford it, you pay to found a private company, and have that
purchase the house. Preferably with cash, and have the company registered in
an offshore tax haven.

~~~
dublinben
Even the 'onshore' tax haven of Delaware allows anonymous corporations.

------
pearjuice
I find it very odd how they do not include "proprietary software" in that
list. Because that is where true freedom ends. Anything offline can actually
be online. And you wouldn't know. Because it are proprietary closed circuit
systems which you do not know the intent of.

------
lelandbatey
Basically, if you can be observed by a person, then you can definitely be
"tracked" by a computer.

The thing is, I've never been that upset about this. Technology has only made
something that was _possible_ into something that's now _feasible_ , namely
observing the public actions of many people to determine what they're doing.

I've always known, even as a kid, that if we scattered many small detecting
devices (cameras, microphones, RFID tags) throughout the world, something that
is not illegal or bad in and of itself, that we'd pretty much all be track-
able.

Did no one think that putting RFID chips all over the place might make a rough
point cloud out of nearly everything in the world? Or that simply by
interacting with any computerized system it's possible it can be tracking
literally ever _bit_ of your interaction with it? Or that it's possible to
make cameras so ubiquitous as to make most of the world monitor-able?

Seriously, did the world not see this coming? I know one of the first things I
thought of when I saw lots of security cameras somewhere like the airport as a
kid was _" I bet you could design something to track all the people in this
airport using those cameras. That would be sooo cool."_

~~~
moens
Yeah, most people did not. I know, I have been saying this for years... ever
since I studied ipv6 in the olden days (the 90's). All but one or two people I
ever discussed the "trackability of everything" with was like, "What the hell
are you tripping on?"

The point is that everyone is a target. For a mugger, an ex lover, a political
opponent, a boss, an employee... everyone is a target. That should (IMO) make
everyone at least a little wary.

------
digitalengineer
> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a
> Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match
> known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to
> Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out
> anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for
> them,"

This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on every photo?

~~~
HPLovecraft
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-
ph...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/22/twitter-photodna-
child-abuse)

~~~
tedunangst
How do we get from "hash of the image" to "unique face identification of
everyone in the image"?

------
junto
One interviewee had a credit card in a fake name. How legal is that exactly?

~~~
toufka
It is illegal to defraud and impersonate. There's nothing illegal about using
multiple names (again, so long as there is no intent to defraud or
impersonate).

~~~
rsync
I'd be very careful there ... the notion of "structured transactions"[1] is
about as wide-reaching as a RICO indictment, and can be used for just about
anything.

Even a sniff of a notion that you did that to avoid any kind of tax[2]
categorizes it as a "structuring" which "may be punished by a fine or up to
five years in prison, or both."

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring)

[2] Regardless of whether that's true or not ...

------
DougWebb
Ironic: I use Ghostery to block website trackers, and it identified thirteen
of them on that article.

~~~
Steko
Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren't aware it
tracks them and sells their data.

~~~
Amadou
_Alanis level irony: millions of people use Ghostery and most aren 't aware it
tracks them and sells their data._

You have to actively turn the reporting on, it is not the default. It isn't a
hidden option either, it is the very first one on the configuration page.

~~~
Steko
Off by default yes but blocking trackers is also off by default and as soon as
you hit the settings they promt you to opt in. And if you're opted out you can
be sure that every few weeks to a month Ghostery will update and try to get
you to mess with it's "redesigned control panel". This is less annoying than
YouTube's constantly trying to trick you to sign up for G+, but it's still
annoying behavior that 90%+ of addons avoid.

And they downplay the sales angle [1] and fail to mention that they sent every
url you visit back to their servers in the clear [2]. That's fine if it
doesn't bother you but it strikes me as shady and disingenuous on Ghostery's
part. Anyone who feels likewise should check out Disconnect [3] which is open
source and breaks fewer sites.

[1] Although not as egregiously as in the past. Here is how they originally
pitched GhostRank: _Ghostery provides reports to Evidon about advertisers and
data collectors, which Evidon then provides to regulatory agencies like the
Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Direct Marketing Association, parts of
the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA)[2]. These agencies then use those
reports to monitor how Online Behavioral Advertisers operate and, when needed,
refer them to the Federal Trade Commission._

[2] [http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-
cl...](http://wtf.cyprio.net/ghostrank-logs-every-visited-url-in-clear)

[3] [https://disconnect.me/](https://disconnect.me/)

------
Sagat
Trying to remove tracks is precisely the wrong thing to do. You have to keep a
trackable presence of some sort or you will look suspicious and receive extra
scrutiny.

------
instaheat
"Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar."

Top 1% of the super paranoid indeed. While I understand the reach of the
government and the lengths they'll go to gain information - this article is
absolutely ridiculous to me.

I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting
the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do?
Give me a fucking break.

~~~
angersock
Bully for you that you don't perceive an issue here.

The fact is beyond dispute that the social services in widest use actively
turn your friends into informants on you. If that doesn't bother you, fine--
but don't mock the people for whom that is an uncomfortable reality.

~~~
rfnslyr
Bit off topic, but I actually just disabled all my social media, and you know
what? I don't miss a single soul and I feel really good again, more energetic
and enthusiastic even. I just realized I really only do have about 5 people I
should keep in contact with. Everyone else was a relationship that was kept up
just from virtue of existing, relationships that would never make it into real
life.

I feel free.

For the first time I took a walk in the park yesterday, rolled a joint, went
for a nice breakfast and coffee at a local diner, read the newspaper, and just
sat in the park. It was amazing not feeling pressure to make everyone
immediately aware of how fucking awesome of a morning I've had. It was
actually unreal. I just sat there looking at a bird and I almost just broke
down and cried of happiness.

I felt zero pressure doing anything.

It felt as though I was obligated to post everything cool I did, so when doing
those things, I'd do them differently just to fit the specific paradigm that I
post in just to one up others.

A feeling has left me that I hadn't identified before that I mistook as
depression. I was growing more apathetic, sad, and cynical due to social media
because it felt like every little thing I did was in competition in some form
or another to others online, and when I failed, I just felt more isolated and
lonely.

I'm able to do things consistently without the need to constantly check my
phone and compare that specific frame of my life against others. Facebook on
the toilet, while cleaning, running, on the bus, at work, on the commute home,
too much.

The weeks following deleting my social media I got so much shit done so fast
with no distractions. Absolutely amazing. I think I'll write a blog post about
this. I bought a tablet, loaded my favourite books on it, and have filled in
all my pointless social media time with reading.

I'm actually discovering the city alone for the first time ever and it's
wonderful because I don't care what anyone else thinks of what I'm doing, I'm
doing it for _me_.

I'm going to grow my beard, cut my hair, buying some jeans, buying some
chucks, and then I'm going to relax in a field somewhere and just spend time
_not caring_.

~~~
pessimizer
Social media creates a ton of new needs that it then proceeds to only
partially, and unpredictably, fill.

You're just realizing again that you don't really give a shit what your mom
had for breakfast, unless you're talking about it with her to pass the time
over dinner:)

There's absolutely nothing that anybody has to say to me that can't wait a day
(except "the site's down!")

~~~
rfnslyr
I'm going to get a t-shirt saying "Don't talk to me unless the site is down"
haha. Yeah, trying to fill that void with social media is like trying to put
out fire with napalm.

------
keithpeter
OA might have unpacked 'being tracked' a little.

Is it a time line of spatial locations?

Or just what I bought for lunch today (therefore one coordinate at a specific
time)?

Or a super set of entries in multiple databases?

