prudent privacy preview

7/31/2019 Prudent Privacy Preview

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Neo CortX


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1 Contents

1 Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 2

2 Copyright ......................................................................................................................................... 5

3 Terms and conditions ...................................................................................................................... 6

4 The Experiment an introduction .................................................................................................. 7

5 What does prudent privacy mean?............................................................................................... 11

5.1 Prudent ................................................................................................................................. 11

5.2 Privacy ................................................................................................................................... 12

5.3 Combining the two words ..................................................................................................... 12

6 Learning from the past .................................................................................................................. 14

6.1 Baby steps towards privacy .................................................................................................. 14

6.2 The four seasons ................................................................................................................... 19

6.3 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 22

7 Scams ............................................................................................................................................ 23

7.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 28

8 Conversation with Paul ................................................................................................................. 29

8.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 31

9 Passwords ..................................................................................................................................... 32

9.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 37

10 VPN ............................................................................................................................................ 37

10.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 39

11 The Onion Router - Tor ............................................................................................................. 40

11.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 41

12 Freenet and Darknet ................................................................................................................. 41

12.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 41

13 E-Mail - Updated ....................................................................................................................... 42

13.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 43

14 IRC and IM ................................................................................................................................. 43

15 Privacy in phone calls and text messaging (SMS) ..................................................................... 44


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16 Big corporations ........................................................................................................................ 44

16.1 Microsoft ............................................................................................................................... 46

16.2 Yahoo .................................................................................................................................... 47

16.3 Baidu ..................................................................................................................................... 48

16.4 Google ................................................................................................................................... 50

16.5 Amazon ................................................................................................................................. 52

16.6 Facebook ............................................................................................................................... 53

16.6.1 The Like button ............................................................................................................. 54

16.7 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 55

17 Cookies ...................................................................................................................................... 56

17.1 Firefox ................................................................................................................................... 56

17.2 Opera .................................................................................................................................... 56

17.3 Chrome .................................................................................................................................. 56

17.4 Internet Explorer ................................................................................................................... 56

17.5 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 56

18 Big Governments ....................................................................................................................... 57

18.1 Why governments is a big problem ...................................................................................... 57

18.1.1 The implications for your privacy .................................................................................. 61

18.2 Example story of lack of privacy ........................................................................................... 62

18.3 GPS tracking story ................................................................................................................. 63

18.4 Trends ................................................................................................................................... 64

18.5 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 66

19 Encryption software and PGP ................................................................................................... 67

19.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 70

20 USB sticks .................................................................................................................................. 70

21 Why take the risk ...................................................................................................................... 7121.1 Why I do it ............................................................................................................................. 71

21.2 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 73

22 Paul and James .......................................................................................................................... 73

23 The Five Laws of Privacy ........................................................................................................... 75

23.1 The first law of privacy .......................................................................................................... 75

23.2 The second law of privacy ..................................................................................................... 76

23.3 The third law of privacy ........................................................................................................ 77

23.3.1 Being fearful .................................................................................................................. 78


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23.3.2 Create passion for privacy ............................................................................................. 79

23.4 The fourth law of privacy ...................................................................................................... 82

23.5 The fifth law of privacy ......................................................................................................... 83

23.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 84

24 The future of privacy ................................................................................................................. 85

24.1 Intelligent machines .............................................................................................................. 87

24.2 Profiling ................................................................................................................................. 89

24.2.1 Its already happening ................................................................................................... 91

24.2.2 Imagine .......................................................................................................................... 92

24.3 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 96

25 The risks .................................................................................................................................... 97

25.1 What you need to hide ......................................................................................................... 97

25.2 Why you need to hide these things ...................................................................................... 99

25.3 Self-censorship .................................................................................................................... 101

25.4 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 103

26 Paul and James ........................................................................................................................ 104

27 About the author .................................................................................................................... 105

28 Summary of summaries .......................................................................................................... 106

29 References .............................................................................................................................. 113


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2 Copyright

Copyright is a very interesting subject from a philosophical perspective. Though I do not think its an

optimal way for us humans to use ideas and function in society, Ive nevertheless chosen to include a

copyright section here.

The reason its not optimal in society, is because technically there is no need to economize ideas and

information, since it can be shared without loss of existing resources. If I have an idea of writing a

book, and it gives you an idea of writing a book, then its not like you extract material from my brain

and put it into yours. You only need to economize resources that are limited in quantity; hence there

is no need to economize ideas, as these can be reproduced at no material cost to the origin. Imagine

if houses were copyrighted, and anyone who built a roof over their head had to pay royalty to the

inventor of the roof. It would perhaps make the inventor rich in the short term, but the rest of the

people would be freezing and sick. So in the long term they would not be able to produce computers

that the inventor could use. Hence; everyone loses. How about hyperlinks (the links you click that

takes you to a new site) on the web? It would stop the whole progress of the internet if those were

patented. Google wouldnt exist, as the whole company originally was built on the properties of

hyperlinks. What if the usage of electricity were patented? And how about jeans? What about

colors? I will say I find strong evidence that suggest that all this intellectual property is not a

benefit for society at all. Perhaps this subject should have a separate book, perhaps Ill write

something on it later.

So why do I still include some words on copyright?

The reason I do is because our whole society is organized around

this idea of copyright. That means that our society has constructed

strong incentives for having this copyright, no matter the logical and

rational errors, i.e. reduced life quality, that this imposes on all

citizens of the globe, including the copyright holders.

My primary hope is that many readers will enjoy this book and

safeguard themselves against the dangers that are lurking in the

future, and that one day we might live in a society based upon

rational and logical thinking, and with the wonderful principle of

scientific falsification being as important and self-evidently

beneficial as the understanding of radio waves and the fact that the

earth is round. If I get this long term reward; that you are able to

Did you torrent this book or get it

without paying for it? Im furious. Pay

what you think prudent privacy is worth

to the following address:

17cXfGxkY9qfLYM8TcycE5BRqZuVrK4E4x

Every transaction will inspire me to

create more products, and by using

Bitcoin you dont need to worry about

me finding out who you are.

New to Bitcoin? Check out:

www.weusecoins.com

PayPal might be supported later, check

out my webpage for updates:

PrudentPrivacy.com


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take action to save your smart brain from the many lurking dangers, and you use your brain in an

ethical and moral way now and in the future, then that is a great reward for me.

Since we dont have this rational and logical society at all today, and since we live in a world where

we pretend there is a free lunch for everyone, I am unable to implement some other good ideas

that I have, and must instead try to derive some income from not the best, but still reasonable ideas,

like this book. My hope is that I will get an income from this book, and this income I will use to keep

me going in my quest to make this world a better place. A better place, that is, for a specific class of

life; the humans, and also a specific kind of humans; others that are like me; people who dont

expect a free lunch, but who contribute to making the world better.

Hence, this book is copyrighted to Neo CortX for the time being.

Copyright 2012 by Neo CortX

All rights reserved.

3 TermsandconditionsThis book is fictional and for entertainment and humorous purposes only. Though there might at

times be some similarity to the real world, this is quite unintentional, should not be taken seriously

and is not meant to hurt any person, group of people, institution, corporation, government or other

ideas or physical entities. The views expressed are held by a fictional character called Neo CourtX,

and not by any real life person or group of persons. The real life author(s) does not hold the views

expressed in this book. At all times you should consult with your legal advisor before taking any

action that might be suggested in this book.

The author(s) cannot be held responsible for any of the text, pictures or ideas expressed in this book.

All responsibility for this book belongs to the fictional character Neo CourtX, and any legal action has

to be addressed to this fictional character. No physical person(s) is responsible for any of the content

in this book.

If these terms and conditions are not accepted, then you, any computer system or any virtual or

physical entity cannot read or use this book or any content in it.


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4 TheExperimentanintroduction

To test how well a random person was protecting his privacy, I did an experiment. I tried to figure

out just how much I could find out about a pretty random person. All I knew was his brothers

surname and what country he lived in. I had no personal relationship whatever to this person, but Ihad met his brother on some occasions. I had never seen this person in real life, and probably never

will. This person is not a public person in any way, just a little bit different from an average person;

hes got above average wealth.

Having access to the web I used a set of different tools. I used one search engine for looking through

companies, and I was able to find the correct surname. Since the brother I had met had bragged a bit

about the other brother; he was doing ok financially, I was able to pick him out based on location of

the company and the revenue and balance sheet of the company. This way I was able to figure out

what his full name was, because he was on the board of directors of several companies. When that

was done, the rest was quite easy. I used a separate search engine that specializes in finding stuff

about persons, and within a few minutes I had a set of articles with pictures about this person.

Within about 30 minutes, I had figured out quite a bit, all from public legal sources of information.

Actually I found a lot more, but I dont want to give too much away. I found the following things:

Where he lived

That there were many rich people in that area

Where his primary business was located

How many businesses he owned

How much revenue his businesses had

Business phone number

Cell phone number

Email address

Some biking-events he had participated in

Using Google Street view (since I had already located the address) I was able to see his

house. It was quite nice; a big white house. I was not able to see the car outside the house;

he was probably at work when the Google Street View Car drove by.

His approximate net worth, which was high

His patterns of spending; anyone who are able to read financial statements can understand

whats going on inside the mind of the leaders of a business.


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Being an accountant, I am able to look at numbers from any business and understand how it

operates. Understanding the numbers gives a person like me an X-Ray vision; I was able to

understand how this person was thinking, how they like to spend their money, what things are

important and whats not important. For example, if a lot of money is spent on office equipment,

its quite easy to understand that the furniture is nice inside the building, and perhaps theres

valuable art on the walls.

If I had spent a few hours, I would easily figure out how many relatives he had and when they were

using the home. Im just very glad that there are few criminals who are particularly smart, because

all that information would make a burglary quite easy if anyone intended to do something like that.

Oh, and by the way, I didnt even check out his Facebook page, I didnt check if he had any blogs, or

if he had some kids or a wife that wrote blogs. Adding that to the mix, and I would be able to get

triple the amount of information about him.

To me, this was a strong wake-up call, and it gave me a really creepy feeling that I was able to figure

this much out so easily. If it was this easy for me to figure all this information out within a very short

time about a random person, how much easier would it be for some people that actually set up

systems to do bad things? I just used a few search engines, but any C-grade computer student wouldbe able to write some software that could extract this information in seconds based on something as

simple as a phone number.

When I saw what I could do in 30 minutes, I knew that I had to make some changes to my life.

I needed to get prudent privacy.

I often look at how privacy is treated today, and I become frightened. Do the people around me

know nothing about history? Dont they understand how badly they can be hurt when they expose

so much information about themselves? Dont they think about the fact that information they put

on the web will be there forever?

The conclusion that Ive come to over and over is very simple: No. They dont. They dont

understand, they dont think about the future, and absolutely no, they dont understand history.

They think that because everyone else does what they do, its safe.


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The same goes for privacy. Some time ago I decided that I wanted privacy in my life. I was inspired

by reading history, and I started to educate myself on the subject. Today I am well ahead of most

people, and because I continue to pick up information on the subject, I will probably stay well ahead

for as long as I live.

Ive been talking a lot with James about privacy, and also a bit with Paul. James actually implements

ideas that we discuss. Paul on the other hand, he doesnt usually want my advice, and in the rare

occasions where he listens and I come with a suggestion, he usually says he will do something about

it later.

James now lives in a foreign country. Paul lives partly with his parents, but is sometimes renting a

house an hours drive away from home.

James uses foreign companies to protect his assets. Paul has no corporations, and no assets, and the

only money hes got is invested in online poker and his car. Hes got a nice car thats falling in value

every day.

James uses virtual private network to hide what content hes reading online. Paul doesnt care much

what the internet service provider knows about him. Paul got nothing to hide as he says.

James uses different email accounts for different purposes, so that its harder for people to connect

the dots. Paul receives all kinds of spam, dating mails, friends mails and occasionally business mailsinto the same inbox.

James is skeptical about Google and the US government and what will happen when the economic

problems keep increasing. Paul doesnt care much about politics or economics, and he uses the

personalized Google searches, G+, Gmail and lots of other Google products. Its all for free is his

favorite comment on the subject.

James sees the dangers lurking in the CDS and bonds markets, and understands how these markets

can have a huge indirect impact on his privacy and well-being. Paul has no clue what a credit default

swap is, and doesnt understand the function of the bond market.


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5 Whatdoesprudentprivacymean?When talking about prudent privacy, its important to understand what it means. I find it quite

interesting to look at words, and the two most important words we will deal with in this book is

prudent and privacy.

5.1 Prudent

I take a definition from Wiktionary (2012b):

Another definition (Answers.com, 2012d):


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What these definitions gives us, is basically that if you are prudent, youre able to foresee whats

coming, you are wise, frugal and economical, you judge well.

5.2 Privacy

If we again go to Wiktionary (Wiktionary, 2012a), we find:

And going to Answers.com (Answers.com, 2012b):

Privacy is basically that you are free from unsanctioned intrusion, that you have certain things that

you and only you have the view of. For example, most people prefer to be able to use their

bathrooms and bedrooms without having surveillance cameras there. Its just very creepy if one of

your Nabors points a camera at your bathroom window and has it recording when you use the

bathroom.

5.3 Combiningthetwowords

When we combine the two words, we get to one of the main points of this book. There is a certain

level of privacy that is prudent for you. What is prudent depends upon some factors like:

What your job is

What expectations you have about the future

What you think is creepy and not


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For example, if your job is to be a public person, you are in the news or TV; then the prudent level of

privacy will be completely different than for a person like me, Neo CortX. If your job is to be a

policeman, then you will want privacy about your home address, so that the criminals you arrest

cant come after you. If your job is to fire people when the company you work for is about to go

broke, then you might also want to hide your address so that the people who have lost their jobs

dont go after you when you did your job.

If you are a news reporter who covers a story about some corruption in a government, then if you

are prudent, you will want to avoid allowing them access to your email account. This is unlike what

happened to Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years after having his email compromised (BBC_News,

2005).

What expectations you have about the future is also very important. Say that you think that World

War 3 is coming, and you dont like the idea of dying, you prefer to live. If you are young and in the

age group that could be drafted, then you might want to take actions to protect your future from

this danger while its still politically accepted to take action. If such a time comes that the drafts

starts, it might be too late to take action. If you are expecting peace and prosperity for the coming

50 years, then you will not have to take these actions at all.

The third point is what you think is creepy and not. There are quite a few people in the world who

seemingly dont mind having their pictures taken in swimsuit and posted on the web. Others find

that even having a picture taken from 100 meters away and posted on the web is quite intrusive to

the privacy.

Prudent privacy is the level of privacy that protects your future. Some of you will have to implement

all the tips given in this book and more. Others will only have to implement some of the basics, like

proper usage of passwords. No matter what level of privacy you feel is prudent, I advise you to start

learning about this subject. Its a big subject, but the rewards are well worth the effort. It might just

save your life down the road or at the very least, give you a feeling or personal responsibility and

that you are in control of your own life. This journey has for me become an adventure; my life has

become exciting and meaningful. I hope you will join me so that you too can start the journey

towards prudent privacy.


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This is a preview only. You cannot read the full version here.

Please purchase the book at PrudentPrivacy.com to get full version.


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Of course Neo CortX, I feel the same way when talking to others about subjects they dont know

much about. James was calm and relaxed.

6.2 Thefourseasons

Ok, Ill try to explain, and Ill try not to stray too far from the subject. If you read about the

mentioned subjects and more stuff from history, you will find that they have much in common. The

actors are different, the places are different, and the colors are

different. But many components are repeating with high

precision. Basically there are different stages in a society; each is

lasting usually about 50-75 years.

First we have the early spring time, things are growing, life is

getting better, people are working and working hard. If they dont

find a job, they start their own

business. Almost nobody expects

something for nothing; everyone

pays his way through life by

providing services or products to his fellow men. Since people pay

for themselves and dont expect the government or their Nabors

to pay, taxes are limited or non-existing. Gold is used for money,

or perhaps even there is such level of freedom that people can

decide for themselves what kind of money they want to use.

Privacy is not a big concern, but the desire for privacy is highly

respected. Its easy with hard and smart work for the poor to

become rich and for the rich who are lazy to slip into poverty.

Poor is getting richer, rich is getting richer.

Second phase is summer. Times are good, after a long period of

growth there is much more wealth in the society, and people can

afford to relax a bit more. The children of

the spring generation are growing up,

and these kids have higher expectations.

They are not used to working so hard.

More people start to get dependent on

the government. Welfare seems to be rising; government gives free health-care and other

services. The government can allow itself to tax the population more, since the people are not

Discovering patterns

After leaving school I figure I

could finally start learning

something useful, and one

of the subjects Ive become

very interested in is history.

In school history was

topping the high-score list

of boring subjects, but after

understanding how I could

use lessons from the past to

enhance my future, history

became very interesting.Instead of memorizing

irrelevant dates taught in

class, I was able by my

research on the web to find

abstract patterns that

repeated through history.

The patterns I found

included how societies had

a lifecycle. These cycles play

a very important part in the

history of each nation,

though most people are

completely unaware of the

patterns.


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Well, I mentioned a few; you can access sites that are illegal in certain jurisdictions, like Facebook,

Skype, certain Wikipedia articles etc. This is quite practical if you are travelling through a country

where they have different laws than what you are used to, and you need to access your Facebook

profile or check up some content on Wikipedia.

Another, and in my opinion the biggest advantage, is that you hide your traffic from the local ISP or

internet service provider. So if the local government wants to see what political views you have and

writes a new law that requires the ISP to scan all content youve accessed, they will have a much

harder time finding out what sites youve visited if you use VPN, since not even the local ISP

normally know that. Though it is possible to analyze the traffic as it comes out of the VPN tunnel,

at least youre making it much harder for them to trace you.

A third advantage is that you can access content that is only accessible to certain jurisdictions. Say

you live in the UK and want to access content that is only available for people located in the US. If

you have a VPN connection to a server in the US, then your traffic seems to be coming from the US

(and it actually does), so you can now access the content. Many news providers has restrictions like

this.


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13 E-Mail-Updated

How secure is email? James was on it again.

Well, it depends on what youre expecting and how you use it. I replied. For

some purposes, email is just fine. You just need to know about its strengths and

weaknesses.

And what are the weaknesses of email?

There are quite a few. We can begin with the fact that some email providers dont use SSL, or

encryption, when transferring your messages. This of course is dependent on the provider, and

Google is an example of someone who does a good job here. The providers who dont use

encryption will allow outsiders to tap the traffic that happens between your computer and the

server. While this hopefully doesnt happen too often, its still a risk. What this means is that you as

a user might risk that your email is watched by any random person who wants to look at your email.

Your Internet Service Provider, and any monitoring facility is just the beginning. You dont require

much hacking skills to be able to listen in to unencrypted email.

Another risk with using email is that the content is stored and transferred unencrypted. That means

that any device thats routing the traffic is able to read the content. Some nations even implement

storage of certain abstract data about the traffic that happens across the borders. This might include

who you sent email to, at what time, and from what IP address. So the basic idea with email is never

to send anything that you dont want the whole world to know, including people in a different

political environment in the future. If you know about the weaknesses, email is good for certain

limited use. Uncritical usage can come back and bite you bad, and many cases in court have been

decided by people being sloppy with their email.

A third risk is of course that any email service provider can be a

subpoena; this means that they are required by law to open the

email account and show the content to the court.

And the advantages of email are quite obvious. Anyone I dont

know about?

Most of them are all quite obvious. However, one thing that most

people dont think about is that one big risk of using email is sending

email in a state where you are highly affected by feelings or somekind of intoxication. By doing this, youre almost sure that you will regret it, and you dont want to

Stopsending

sensitiveinformation

unencryptedoveremail.Itsvery

dangeroustomostpeople.Use

facetofaceorencrypted

communication.


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