OT: Internet Privacy

[AngryScientist]

Would anyone who is knowledgeable on the topic say that one credit card is better than others for protection against "cyber crimes"?

I try and limit my online purchasing through paypal, which is linked to one credit card (not my bank account at all) and use that same credit card for online merchants that do not take paypal.

is one choice of card any better than the others for the large bulk of my internet spending with regard to protecting myself if things go south?

[MattTuck]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

Would anyone who is knowledgeable on the topic say that one credit card is better than others for protection against "cyber crimes"?

I try and limit my online purchasing through paypal, which is linked to one credit card (not my bank account at all) and use that same credit card for online merchants that do not take paypal.

is one choice of card any better than the others for the large bulk of my internet spending with regard to protecting myself if things go south?

There are several credit cards that allow you to create temporary one time numbers for online purchases. That seems more secure if you're worried about one of the sites you buy from being compromised. On NYC's point above, I don't know if that info still gets sent to other data harvesters in your name.

I just got a capital one venture card recently, and they offer the temporary number thing. But, they also just got hacked... so, can't really give them a thumbs up or thumbs down.

[NYCfixie]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

Would anyone who is knowledgeable on the topic say that one credit card is better than others for protection against "cyber crimes"?

I try and limit my online purchasing through paypal, which is linked to one credit card (not my bank account at all) and use that same credit card for online merchants that do not take paypal.

is one choice of card any better than the others for the large bulk of my internet spending with regard to protecting myself if things go south?

I do not think any one credit card is necessarily going to be better than another but limiting the amount of active credit cards one has might help because one of the tenants of cybersecurity is to "limit your attack surface".


I have a similar strategy to you but break it down even further:

* eBay Sell account, PayPal Sell account, email Sell account, bank account with no more than $500 dollar in it linked to PayPal to because that is all I am willing to put at risk. No credit card.

* eBay Buy account, PayPal Buy account, email Buy account, credit card (this card is the same one used for online purchases if merchant does not take PayPal but I do not use it for anything else and we check once a year to make sure the credit card issuer keeps the credit/spending limit very very low which is the opposite of what the card issuer wants). No bank account.

While Apple Pay is mostly secure, I do not trust NFC systems because they can be easily hacked and are used by ApplePay when you pay with your iPhone as well as when one might use a contact-less credit cards. I only use chip credit cards and insert them into the reader.

I am happy to go into more details offline but needless to say my wife and I do not use store issued credit cards, gas credit cards, and will most probably never get an Apple Card.

[Drmojo]

Originally Posted by NYCfixie

I do not think any one credit card is necessarily going to be better than another but limiting the amount of active credit cards one has might help because one of the tenants of cybersecurity is to "limit your attack surface".


I have a similar strategy to you but break it down even further:

* eBay Sell account, PayPal Sell account, email Sell account, bank account with no more than $500 dollar in it linked to PayPal to because that is all I am willing to put at risk. No credit card.

* eBay Buy account, PayPal Buy account, email Buy account, credit card (this card is the same one used for online purchases if merchant does not take PayPal but I do not use it for anything else and we check once a year to make sure the credit card issuer keeps the credit/spending limit very very low which is the opposite of what the card issuer wants). No bank account.

While Apple Pay is mostly secure, I do not trust NFC systems because they can be easily hacked and are used by ApplePay when you pay with your iPhone as well as when one might use a contact-less credit cards. I only use chip credit cards and insert them into the reader.

I am happy to go into more details offline but needless to say my wife and I do not use store issued credit cards, gas credit cards, and will most probably never get an Apple Card.

I hope cash does not die in my lifetime
See the Snowden film for great overview of the death of privacy and how to survive in the era of Big Tech/Big Brother.
no “anti-social” media for me thank you
no Goog
no Spitter
no FishHook
off the Instagrid

[simonov]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

Would anyone who is knowledgeable on the topic say that one credit card is better than others for protection against "cyber crimes"?

I try and limit my online purchasing through paypal, which is linked to one credit card (not my bank account at all) and use that same credit card for online merchants that do not take paypal.

is one choice of card any better than the others for the large bulk of my internet spending with regard to protecting myself if things go south?

NYCFixie hit on the important points both on this page and the previous about security in general. My experience with credit cards is that you're going to get compromised. It will happen. It's just a matter of how often and how well your CC company responds. I pretty much only use AMEX for this reason. They make it so replacing your card and removing fraudulent charges is almost easy. They can also roll forward any recurring payments so you don't have to run around updating numbers for your Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc., etc., etc. accounts. I've also found that their monitoring systems are pretty accurate and whenever my card has been compromised, they actually alert me before I figure it out myself.

[ultraman6970]

Nothing is free, you have to be really naive to think that facebook and all of the other free platforms are not going to use any of the data posted by you.

They say they will protect you and stuff but the problem is that they need to get money somehow, so they sell all they can from you, and no matter if they swear to you that they wont... yes they will and they do...

Anybody remember the winter soldier when the computer scientist explained how they read your data in the internet? Pretty much that's what they are doing... there is a project already running that is trying to predict the future.

So, if you arent able to take care of your own privacy creating alter egos in those free plataforms, why you should believe they will do it for you? Social network is nice, but is totally out of wack lately, better just fly under the radar and pretty much go analog, and off the digital world but the paceline forums

[9tubes]

Originally Posted by BobbyJones

I was just reading an article about Calibra, Facebook's cryptocurrency.

Within the article, it brought up the privacy issues that Facebook regularly faces, ie Cambridge Analytica gaining access of up to 87 million FB users without their consent.

The big question I have is how many people really care about stuff like that? Is it just a small segment of watchdogs that raise the flag?

Sure, read an article, talk about it for a day or two. But how many people actually DO something about it... cancel accounts, unplug from services, etc.

Thoughts?

Do they care? Maybe, but what I see is that they really don't understand the technical side so it's difficult for them to make an assessment.

The press isn't going to explain it because the press is one of the biggest offenders at tracking people and building detailed profiles. Tell me what you read and I will tell you all about you.

Businesses aren't going to explain it because tracking and building detailed profiles of users is the predominant business model of the last 15 years.

Congresspeople aren't going to explain it because campaigns are one of the biggest offenders at tracking people and building detailed profiles of voters.

Law enforcement (state, local, and especially the federal spy agencies) love all of this because they know a panopticon will make it easier to solve crimes and they have this fantasy that they will predict who can commit crimes.

We have a sad formula in this country: the citizens are in the dark and every source of real power has a vested interest in keeping them in the dark. So...do the people care? Maybe.

[fiamme red]

[jkbrwn]

Bit of a thread dredge but I just signed up to Mozilla's VPN and thus far have been very impressed. This is not a VPN to use to allow you to access UK Netflix or BBC iPlayer. But if your main requirement for a VPN is privacy and maintaining your internet connection's native speed, it seems great so far.

I am using this in combination with the in-Firefox uBlock extension and an on-network PiHole and I feel pretty safe. I haven't been getting targeted ads for a while due to the PiHole but I am glad that a VPN from a company I have trusted for over a decade, rightly or wrongly, exists.

It uses the WireGuard protocol rather than IKEv2, IPSec or OpenVPN and to me, it's noticeably faster than any other VPN I've used. Latency is the same to Google.com, regardless of whether the VPN is enabled. Impressive.

I usually get 290Mbps down using Fast.com and with the VPN enabled and connected to a server in Los Angeles, I'm getting 280Mbps. Also very impressive. I usually get around 50Mbps when using a VPN.

It's worth noting that it relies on Mullvad's VPN offering in a Mozilla branded package, which I'm happy with as I already have a Mozilla account. In fact, if I go to Mullvad's website, it tells me that it thinks I am using a Mullvad VPN.

[foregroundmusic]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

Bit of a thread dredge but I just signed up to Mozilla's VPN and thus far have been very impressed. This is not a VPN to use to allow you to access UK Netflix or BBC iPlayer. But if your main requirement for a VPN is privacy and maintaining your internet connection's native speed, it seems great so far.

I am using this in combination with the in-Firefox uBlock extension and an on-network PiHole and I feel pretty safe. I haven't been getting targeted ads for a while due to the PiHole but I am glad that a VPN from a company I have trusted for over a decade, rightly or wrongly, exists.

It uses the WireGuard protocol rather than IKEv2, IPSec or OpenVPN and to me, it's noticeably faster than any other VPN I've used. Latency is the same to Google.com, regardless of whether the VPN is enabled. Impressive.

I usually get 290Mbps down using Fast.com and with the VPN enabled and connected to a server in Los Angeles, I'm getting 280Mbps. Also very impressive. I usually get around 50Mbps when using a VPN.

It's worth noting that it relies on Mullvad's VPN offering in a Mozilla branded package, which I'm happy with as I already have a Mozilla account. In fact, if I go to Mullvad's website, it tells me that it thinks I am using a Mullvad VPN.

Thanks for this, I’ve been waiting for them to roll it out for OSX before signing up. I’ve become a big Mozilla fanboy over the past year or so, just because it seems they’re really trying to help bring a better internet to users.

[unterhausen]

I'm convinced that Facebook is actually going to go into the identity theft business at some point. It's not that difficult to de-anonymize a supposedly anonymous database, Facebook was trying to buy anonymous versions of health records and match them up to people. The website itself is only used for data mining, the data sales are their actual business. And they are really bad about who they will sell to. It could actually make problems for people. Although, tbh, they are collecting data about everyone, even if they don't have a fb account.

[kppolich]

surprisingly, theradavist.com has a ton of tracking on it. Download any free web sniffer extension for chrome and you'll see how many scripts each site you visit is running in the background.
Google Analytics and Google Tag manager are EVERYWHERE.

[HenryA]

You are going to get used if you use the internet. Mostly you won't know who is using you, but they will know you.

De-anonymizing is kind of a red herring because when the data is in separate containers it might be anonymous, but stir the containers together and its pretty straightforward to establish patterns, and those patterns can lead to identifying users.

Between your internet use and cell phone use, you are not anonymous to someone with access to the data and time to stir it up. Cell phones are the most virulent data collectors around. What do you think Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile do with your data? Marketers buy it all the time. But mostly they just want to sell something and don't care who you are other than a likely buyer.

The data that can be readily bought by anyone who can pay for it is perhaps more indicative of your patterns and life activities than a law enforcement subpoena. The subpoena is limited in scope. The commercial data market is vast beyond belief. And government agencies buy the data too. However, they are not looking to sell you anything.

None of this means you should start wearing a tinfoil hat. But you should think about it.

[verticaldoug]

In your email account, you often provide a mobile number for two-factor and a back-up email. Once these items are linked, you can create a very nice picture of your activity. Throw in geo-location, and photos you post, and your click stream, and you are basically cooked.

With GDPR in Europe, you at least get queried by sites about cookies and can toggle some off, but it takes up a lot of time and more people just accept all.

Counterintuitively, the easiest way to detect a scammer is their email and other contact details on the internet don't link up if they are any good. Everything is a segregated box leading to a dead end.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by dave thompson

I feel that if you're now becoming concerned about your privacy and are thinking of doing something about it, it's too late.

Agree...do a google search of your name..