I have personally tracked down people online by just their phone number. OSINT is a super fun challenge. I do recommend you try it.

Also the number at the end of the account name is randomly generated. So it would take a few attempts to get the username you want.

I also did this. Just felt dirty and have no idea if they honor it.

I also read that most of the opt-out services are owned by data-brokers. But that they were using them to try to hurt their competition. So I signed up for all the opt-out services I could find.

I recommend (no affiliation other than as a customer) https://easyoptouts.com/

I do not recommend Kanary (you cannot get to your dashboard without being an active premium member) One Rep (Mozilla just broke off their partnership. Seems extra sketch now as probably a lot of people will be avoiding them and they’ll be looking for extra ways to make a buck)

The others were middle of the road, but no real complaints.

I had an idea later but Optery seems to be removing data even remotely associated to me. So, wrong middle name, or right name wrong state. Their aggressiveness makes me think they are owned by a databroker trying to hurt their competition, so I’d say if you use them, sign up with information similar to your own and hope the actual you gets caught up in their scorched earth tactics.

Thanks for letting me know, I am looking in to it…

Facebook internal documents from their current lawsuit discovery process. Facebook call this project ghostbuster:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24520332-merged-fb

https://mashable.com/article/facebook-snapchat-data-project-ghostbusters-mark-zuckerberg

Mental Outlaw briefly outlines how the mitm attack works without alerting the browser of bad certs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkLvpxImRGw&t=30

Your ISP doing a mitm attack would be multi-step and unlikely, but not impossible. The most likely use case would probably be the involvement of the federal government or bad actors who have compromised a CA, which has happened in the past:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_attack

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/03/23/revoking-trust-in-one-cnnic-intermediate-certificate/

https://security.googleblog.com/2015/09/improved-digital-certificate-security.html?m=1

For a malicious ISP to try to intercept traffic on it’s own, I imagine an attack like this would be used:

https://techgenix.com/understanding-man-in-the-middle-attacks-arp-part4/

Not an expert, so feel free to correct me but…

Selinux is open source https://github.com/SELinuxProject/selinux

Selinux is built into the kernel already. So if it has NSA spyware, you’re already compromised.

I’m unaware of any ‘official’ audit.

Using it should only increase your security.

With very little effort it would be possible to mitm all the customers and it would all be pointless. Look at what Facebook is recently done to steal user data. They have apparently been doing their attack for years.

Yes, you’re correct on the formula calculation. I keep “words x 0” to show that the variable has been accounted for. Sorta like significant digits.

The formula was developed because I regularly found myself in disadvantages relationships. I dont expect many if anybody will be able to relate much past this point…

I don’t blame anyone but myself nor am I mad with any of these individuals as I’m simply mentally malformed (context below). This formula gave me the ability to determine when a relationship wasn’t worth maintaining.

Mentally malformed context: I would take someone’s statement as truth over my own observed reality. Example, Person: You promised me you’d do X Me: I have no memory of that. Person: Well you did. Me: I’m sorry I didn’t get that done, what can I do to make it up to you. Person: X still has to get done, and you can do Y to make it up to me. Me: okay. Me to myself: I must be constantly missing time. I must be going crazy… Try to act normal so you don’t get locked up.

Having access to a absolute (though arbitrary) number has given me the ability to make better decisions.

Also, I would be interested if you elaborated on the social protocol you mentioned.

Only 80 hours? How lazy.

“I don’t care about privacy because I have nothing to hide.”

The threats I started with were just Google, Facebook, and data brokers… But it quickly progressed to a game level, where I do it now for fun.

It would probably be too inconvenient to maintain if I spent much time online. Probably 80% of the time I spend at the computer is trying to improve my privacy. Work doesn’t have any computer requirements (yea manual labor jobs) and I spend most of my personal time hunting, fishing, and reading.

I was speaking to a mechanic once and he said they offered a service where they’d go into the car and and physically disable the communications chip on the vehicle. So everything would function normally, but the car would be unable to transmit data. It sounds like a technically feasible solution.

I’ve since spent many hours online looking for tutorials, information, or stories and found almost nothing. Has anyone else hears about anything like this or have any experience?

I’d love to be able to start some kind of wiki for how to disable those chips for different make and models of cars.

This is what you’re looking for:

https://github.com/yaelwrites/Big-Ass-Data-Broker-Opt-Out-List

There is/was another website that had a large list but also all the opt out steps. I think they also had a service where they’d opt out for you, but you had to fill out a bunch of personal info.

I also heard that a lot or most of the opt out services were bought by data brokers. There’s one site that seemed to just be 2 guys and a side hustle thing. I went ahead and did that. I have no proof that they did anything or did a good job, but I was still happy with the service.

This person made a rough guide, and not merely shared their own setup.

I reread the post. Personally, at no point does it seem to be a guide or even a recommendation. I also got the feeling that the poster doesn’t consider themselves an authority on privacy and was just looking to move further in their privacy journey by posting their setup for friendly and constructive criticism. Your responses read as critical and barely constructive.

I do appreciate the links to the criticism of GrapheneOS. This is the first I’ve come across such criticism so I’ll be checking these out as soon as I have free time.

Here is my setup:

Web browsing

• I try to stay in Tor, but it doesn’t work everywhere.
• For general browsing I switch up using Brave, LibreWolf, Mullvad Browser, and (semi-hardened) Firefox. Working on shortcut(script) to randomly select my browser for me. Theory: Rotating browsers because fingerprinting and mitigating currently unknown security risks.
• I wrote a program I call the Browser Condom. It’s a separate application because extensions increase fingerprinting. It’s a clear window so I can still see the browser underneath, but the mouse movements aren’t sent to the DOM because the OS thinks I’m in another application. Working on adding the ability to pass text through at random intervals to prevent both mouse and keyboard tracking. Still a WIP
• Copy and paste all text into the browser until the browser condom is finished.
• I Host a SearXNG instance and Adguard DNS… Working on improvements to my DNS, I haven’t gotten it as secured as I’d like

Desktop

• QubesOS, Kali, Tails, Debian
• “More firewalls than the devil’s bedroom.”
• Application specific firewalls and VMs for all banking/financial needs.
• Full disk encryption
• For files that need encryption I use 2 different programs to encrypt just in case there’s a vuln in one. Files are on air-gaped machine. I also have lots of encryption programs installed onto that computer so you’d have to try lots of programs to find the right combo.

Servers (too much to list but here’s some random stuff)

• SearXNG
• AdguardDNS
• NextCloud
• Calibre
• pfSense, OPNSense, combine with Software Firewalls
• Intrusion prevention and detection
• Proxmox
• Kali – Custom web scraping, pen testing, misc scripts running.
• Nginx
• A Reverse Proxy
• Traefik, tinyproxy, and HAProxy
• AWS, Linode, Some dark web services

Mobile

• LineageOS + GraphineOS + Kali NetHunter + Android (multiple phones + Sims)
• No GApps
• For my daily carry I have VPN on work profile and TOR on main profile
• I use InviZible Pro for main profile for Tor + DNSCRYPT + Firewall So I can selectively block apps from the internet and route everything else through tor or VPN depending on the profile.
• Faraday bag
• Privacy screen protector
• Developer mode enable so I can disable mic and other phone sensors
• Headphones both with and without microphone
• Opened phones and removed: cameras, some mics to eliminate triangulation, and fingerprint sensors.
• Change number, provider, and phone every year.

Messenger

• Signal
• Telegram

Online accounts

• Bitwarden for passwords but all emails are incorrect so if it’s compromised they still can’t login. I use their cloud sync service because with how many time I brick my machines/servers, I don’t trust my backups. I have physically lost 3 different backup external HDDs in the last 2 years.
• Have to go to email forwarding services to get login email address.
• Yubikey

Video streaming

• Invidious
• NewPipe
• GrayJay
• Torrents

AI

• GPT4All on air-gaped computer.

Social Media

• Lemmy - always rotating accounts, post both what I believe and what I don’t

Email

• ProtonMail + Addy.io + SimpleLogin.io + IronVest + DoNotPay

Shopping/Finance

• Gift cards
• Pay friends to purchase.
• IronVest (used to also have Privacy.com, when they worked they were great)
• Cash
• P.O. Box with a name as the ‘business name’.

Music streaming

• Nope. Downloaded files or nothing.

Programming

• VSCodium (VSCode with Microsoft telemetry stripped)
• Personal Git server

Misc

• I don’t have a smart watch
• I don’t have a smart car
• I don’t have a TV
• Reflectacles for glasses
• Custom Firmware on multiple routers so I can have networks that route through VPN/Tor/AdGuard/etc… depending on the needs for my device at the time
• I physically remove webcams from all devices and use USB webcam if needed.
• I don’t use Docker, I build my servers up from scratch. Takes a lot longer with many more headaches, but I learn so so much more. Also Docker is so easy it’s just boring.
• Tinfoil hat wasn’t good enough, melted down pop cans and forged my own just in case tinfoil comes with spyware preinstalled.

I feel like I’m missing a bunch of stuff and I probably am, but that’s all I’m going to include or I’d probably have to self-publish as a novel.

**Edited for readability

I have had great(ish) success with psychology books to learn about what behaviors and facial expressions to look for. They are well documented and accurate (in my experiencel) combine that with the formula: words x 0 + facial expression + action x 3. And making myself aware of deposits and withdraw on the bank of my good will.

(they obviously have my data anyway)

You’re generating new valuable data with every purchase though. Brick and mortar stores are some of the worst when it comes to data abuse (not really privacy because they don’t want to sell the data).

I haven’t tried it, but you should be able to make your own credit cards with a card reader/writer and put your virtual cards there. I was going to play with that setup a bit but never got the time… And now I’m not in a position to do so. However I might compile my research and theories and make a post about it.

I’ve been looking into trusts. They are actually easy to setup and you just open a bank account or send them some sort of official letter to transfer the name to the trust. Then you do direct deposit like normal because you are the sole owner of the trust so no extra steps to “funnel” money into it. I never even thought of using it as a privacy tool though I’ll have to think on that.

I also heard in passing that you can setup a business in Mexico without much oversight and use it here in the states without issue. But I haven’t been able to track down more info and the interviewwee didn’t site any source or how to guide.

Also for the mobile payments Apple pay doesn’t send any info along to the merchant they generate a new code with each transaction with no personal information. That code is what’s used for the payment. Also as much as I dislike Apple they probably use but don’t sell your info. So less bad than a regular credit card. Also privacy.com is planning (or maybe already implemented) virtual wallet cards. Their product was amazing, I was able to sign up with a fake name and address… But they removed the card funding feature and require you bank account number now. So they messed up my account and their support was terrible. Couldn’t get it fixed and ended up deleting my account.

I keep a jar in my glovebox. My local grocery store has cash-based self checkout registers with a spot to input change. Whenever I go, I grab a handful of change and dump the lot into there. It usually takes like $3-6 off my purchase with some change left over. But it’s an easy way to keep the collection low.

I loved privacy.com until they changes some things and removed debit as a funding source because after that I had a few technical issues and their support took almost 6 weeks to respond… And it was a one word response email that didn’t help at all. I’m trying to use IronVest, but also having technical issues, but their support is kind and answers in 24hrs.