Obviously a lot of people here hide a lot of information. What is keeping you all from extreme stress considering the possibility that a government is spying on your actions despite strict privacy practices? Considering my current situation and my extreme threat model it feels like the privacy walls around me are closing in. I’m very paranoid. I do a lot of risky and dangerous shit on the internet. Every knock on my door and phone call feels like the police. I don’t talk with others about what I do and I’m always hiding my internet activity from others. Any thoughts would be helpful
What is keeping you all from extreme stress considering the possibility that a government is spying on your actions despite strict privacy practices?
Threath model analysis. I do enough to not be in the bycatch as more than a IP (no cloud & social media, encrypted private communication) and low profile enough to not be targeted directly.
What is keeping you all from extreme stress considering
Not being prone to paranoia, as unhelpful as that is
I’m also a realist, which keeps my expectations in check.
Remember that you are one person. Nobody in government censorship or reconnaissance of the public cares about you enough to spy or hack you. You alone aren’t worth the effort or resources.
Remember to play. Go outside for a walk, meditate, consume entertaining non-toxic, non-fiction media, have sex or masturbate. All work and no play makes Ringpop a dull person.
consume entertaining … non-fiction media
Not much there for me. 99% is worn-out tropes or boring telenovela and gameshows. The beauty of drawn media is, that experiments can be published on a budget.
The Onion Router, for internet stuff, or a (reliable and well reputed) VPN. But you have an entire community of people more specialised than me for how to not get noticed on internet anyways. Stays informed on the world, and reduce risky things, for you to get some better sleep. Dunno what businesses you do, but your priority is to stop depending on them. Hiding everything you do is just like putting yourself under the spotlight.
A physical diary that only you knows about, to free yourself from your stressful thoughts and ideas, (with a lighter always nearby) will ease a lot. It works very well for me.
All evenings, take 10 mins of your free time to yell the hell out of your mood in your pillow (gotta think about neighbors). Do sports, or things of your interests. Works too.
Oh and you shouldn’t post things implying that much that you are doing suspicious things, anywhere on internet. Best irl stuff about you to talk about on corporate internet is none, even mundane things like your country. Illegal things must be done irl the good old way.
To remain free (for good reasons or not btw).
But at the end the goal is to protect the freedom for everyone and give everyone a chance to live without interruptions by any entity that wants to regulate that
What is keeping you all from extreme stress considering the possibility that a government is spying on your actions despite strict privacy practices?
Because I’m a fan of my fucking rights and I’ll defend it against an authoritarian government. I don’t need to be a terrorist to value free speech.
How do you all stay calm with all this pressure?
It’s hard, but by using good tools, writing out my privacy model, being informed. It will not necessarily make you calm about the current state of everything but at least be knowledgeable about how good your entire environment is.
I don’t really have anything to hide… but I still believe in a fundamental right to privacy and personal agency. For a lot of people, these tools keep them alive (ex. Targeted minorities in oppressive regimes etc).
But for me, this is more of an academic exercise - I find it interesting, and the things I learn can be shared with others who need them more.
If your activities are affecting your ability to sleep and have peace of mind, my only advice is to stop.
“I do a lot of dangerous and risky **** on the internet”
Well, you’ve already failed. You just admitted on an open forum accessible by everyone that you’re clearly involved in something.
This is not a failure. I did not disclose what I did to anyone and it is not like ringpop is my real name
If there’s one thing I know for sure, anonymity on the internet does not exist. Everything & everyone is trackable.
Why are you doing sketchy things on the internet?
If your own conscience is haunting you, that’s a good signal for you to fix your behavior so you can have a clear conscience and you won’t need to worry about the law closing in on you. What a horrible existence that must be.
User LemmyKnowsBest publicly claims that all laws are just, fair, and reasonable.
Hey I’m technically doing something illegal right now that I do every day all day long and IDGAF because the law regarding this thing is stupid & oppressive & I’m not hurting myself or anyone else.
But WTF is OP doing on the internet that makes him constantly worried the SWAT Team is gonna be banging down his door? That’s not normal.
The kind of “privacy” you get by using a VPN or avoiding Facebook tracking your web browsing is absolutely not appropriate for using against a threat model that includes three-letter agencies or even, frankly, the local cops. They can just, like, come to your house when you aren’t there and bug it. Point a camera at your screen, station a dude in the closet, replace the computer with a cunningly painted cardboard replica of the computer which is a spy, etc. Or from the other end, they simply exploit a zero-day in every one of your seven proxies, because they care enough about catching you to burn them.
Sometimes the threat model says you just lose and you can’t actually get what you want by using computers, because you have an information technology hammer and a fundamentally legal or political problem.
If you think the police are actually on to your crimes, stop doing those crimes! If the crimes needed doing for some reason, someone else less likely to be known to the police will probably do them instead, and you can surely find less-crimey ways to further whatever they were meant to accomplish. If you’re in it for yourself for some sort of personal gain, quit while you’re ahead.
If you think you’re drastically overestimating the likelihood that the police are after you for your crimes, and it is affecting your ability to function, that’s definitely a problem for your therapist. Presumably one who doesn’t insist you explain your various crimes to them in detail, a thing which your lawyer (which you also maybe need?) might have concerns about.
It is never a requirement to perform 100% of all “Privacy best practices” 24 hours a day and 7 days a week with perfect execution. Simply put, nobody has that level of threat on average unless they are someone like Snowden, a Journalist covering a story, or are working as an intelligence agent.
It is best to assess your threat level and choose Privacy preserving techniques and tools according to what best suits your life and situation first. Don’t overdo it, don’t try to achieve perfect privacy, don’t try to keep up with the metaphorical Joneses. There will always be new threats to your privacy to assess; and you shouldn’t be ignorant of them; but you also should not ever let that growing list of threats overwhelm you.
If you need to take time to stop reading privacy news…do so. Just like regular world and national news; it can put you in a state of constant panic. Manage your mental health and state first before you ever allow yourself to address your privacy issues at hand.
Once your mental state is clear and your focus is sharp; focus specifically on little things you can easily do to protect your privacy. Maybe make sure you have a VPN set up or ensure you go over critical privacy settings on your devices to ensure none have changed or shifted since you last visited them. Then consider other small things you can do; if you can say, for example, choose a new email provider, then do so. If not, pick a new thing to address and move on. Do not make managing your privacy a chore if you can possibly help it. Take improving it one step at a time, take breaks for your sanity and make sure you don’t overdo it all at once.
I dont do anything actually bad on the internet. I have never even went to the dark web with the onion protocol. Im just not interested in the shit i would find there.
I use privacy tools because thats what I believe should be default. People deserve their privacy. No company or government actually have the moral right to take it away. They are supposed to be elected by the people to work FOR US. That part is just forgotten now.
You can use and support Tor! It’s easy with a bootable version of Tails, I use it to access Proton Mail since they make their regular services also available on an onion site (the link is on their regular website).
Cannabis and alcohol mostly
I would speak with a professional therapist about this.
If op is legitimately doing things that can get them serious legal time or worse, then the last thing they need to do is talk about it with someone who can identify them.
I have thought about this but if I disclose my activities they could report me to the police
I don’t know what country you’re from but at least here in the USA the things that therapists are required to report to police are pretty slim, mostly just things that could cause direct physical harm to yourself and others.
Beyond threats to hurt another person, threats to sexually assault another person, neglect of a child, or threats of harm to oneself… almost everything else is covered by HIPAA patient privacy rules.
If you live elsewhere perhaps you could look into your local laws in terms of what is required mandatory reporting for therapists?
I’m unsure if the consequence with HIPAA could convince the therapist to not tell the police. And it is a super long story and even some of it does involve threats to harm others, and it is not drugs and not CP
Edit: I agree with you though I do need a therapist. I’m going crazy
If you go to a therapist, make sure they don’t keep any computerized records of your therapy sessions. :(
Hypothetically, if you were the most wanted man alive you would still go to a therapist and confess all your crimes as long as it is off camera and not a HIPAA violation?
Aren’t therapists mandatory reporters?
It depends. In the US I think it varies by state. And it’s only for big things like murder or child sexual abuse.
If you say “yeah I stole a piece of candy once” that’s not worth reporting. If you say “decades ago I touched a minor inappropriately” they probably won’t pursue it. If you say “yesterday I killed my neighbor and his family” yeah they’re gonna fucking bolt from that room and call 911 as fast as they fucking can.
I don’t know, it might depend on the crime. I believe that clergy get a higher level of privilege than therapists. You can literally confess a murder to a priest and they aren’t allowed to (and won’t) tell anyone.
Famously, in the 1970s, Daniel Ellsberg stayed out of jail after it emerged that Nixon’s fixers had broken into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to get his case files. These days they would just break into a computer.
Recently in the US, a murder suspect’s father told a priest, who tipped off the FBI, leading to the arrest.
Panicking and paranoia is counter productive.
If you do “lot of risky and dangerous shit” then it’s even more important that you do so mindfully. If you get careless because you are tired you increase the risk.
Personally my “trick” is to learn from others, e.g. in few weeks in Paris there will be https://splintercon.net/paris/ where tools and processes will be explained. I can learn from them.
Also my way to stay calm isn’t just to be mindful or learn… but do stuff, no matter how small. If you learn about a new thread, address it today. It doesn’t mean fix the problem entirely (it’d nice if you could) but rather do something, ANYTHING, about it. If it’s not solved, write notes about it and resume tomorrow or whenever you can. Every small effort does add up over time.
Finally I find that sport helps a lot to “evacuate” stress. If I feel some pressure from work or the overall situation, I go outside and sweat it out. It doesn’t magically make the World better but it insures I’m a bit more in shape to try to tackle whatever is thrown at me.
That’s actually epic. Please let us know how it goes
Finally I find that sport helps a lot to “evacuate” stress. If I feel some pressure from work or the overall situation, I go outside and sweat it out. It doesn’t magically make the World better but it insures I’m a bit more in shape to try to tackle whatever is thrown at me.
I just usually rub one out, but sports are good too.
Im not sure what to say with the risky and dangerous shit but as a person living in a country where an unmarked, untrained,unregulated paramilitary masked militia are going after people on pure pretense. I can say Im going to live my fucking life and fuck them all. Never before have I more understood this part of the lord of the rings:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time.”
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
