patrick.net

Patrick says

stereotomy says

I'm a lurker there (job protection), not a contributor

Is there anything I can do to make people feel more secure in their anonymity here?

The one bit of info I need to register someone is an email, because a) it's globally unique and b) it allows me to communicate with the person outside the site.

But I don't really care if someone uses a throwaway email to register.

I think increasingly "they" are matching IP addresses. Each version of Android (yes, I know, but I need it for work) more efficiently scrapes your info. Beyond user ID's and randomized passwords, is there a way to completely anonymize IP's from FIB, etc.? I'm ignorant of this aspect - all I know is vague stuff about TOR.

That's what a VPN is for. Your traffic then comes from some IP address belonging to the VPN network, so is no longer traceable to you.

It does slow down surfing though, since the traffic has at least one more hop.

Brave has a VPN option built in to its browser, which uses the Tor network, essentially a free VPN: "New Private Window With Tor"

stereotomy says

There is the potential danger of groupthink, like anywhere else.

@stereotomy - I used to worry about groupthink but it's kind of unavoidable. The individual has to be aware of it and actively avoid it although I have some ideas on how to maybe mix that up - allow people to engage in groupthink and rise to a natural level of favorability. and then allow top tier favorable posts to be made suggested as a counter argument.

I think a lot of stuff is propaganda. I see stuff on the left and the right with "ideas and beliefs" that have LONG ago been discredited constantly being promoted as "mainstream thinking" when it isn't. For example, that "the right wing" are white nationalists/supremacists and that "the left wing" are anti-war. These ideas are FORCED upon groups. If you actually talk to many individuals within the group you'll find out that "well, I don't agree with idea X in my group of Y, but at least people in Y and not like people in group Z who are much worse who believe (insert fringe idea being promoted by propaganda)".

Most democrats/liberals (common people) do NOT think it's a good idea to have abortion up until the second of birth for example.

stereotomy says

Beyond user ID's and randomized passwords, is there a way to completely anonymize IP's from FIB, etc.?

Not really. You can use a VPN, or TOR - but you can't hide meta information from a "global adversary" - meaning government.

"meta information" is knowing you connected to a site and that you sent X amount of bytes to the site at time Y. From that, it can be figured out that you are who you are.

For example, if I was working for the intelligence agencies (don't worry, I'm not human feces - so I don't), and I wanted to determine who you were, I would follow a packet from your computer, to the VPN, from the VPN to this site - and by timing and size of the packet, I can determine who you are on this site based on the size of the packet, and how much was sent. I'd have to have access to the routers and all information going to and from them, but that's doable.

This would require all the major routers to be compromised, or a significant number of them to be compromised.

Hiding meta information, it's basically impossible in my opinion, so pointless.

There's a good side to this, they can't expose they can do this (and I'm not POSITIVE) that they can do this, but it's in theory (and practice) certainly possible and not that difficult, so I would be surprised it cannot be done. It would just take some cooperation with some large corporations, and you can see companies fall all over themselves to cooperate for $$$.