[ExI] Tracking your internet browsing

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 04:20:25PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> I am using a plugin that switches the user agent identification
> randomly. And two different ones that surfs/searches randomly. This
> adds some confusion.

I'm afraid this is no protection at all.
 
> >It's an ongoing war! :)
> 
> Not really. It is a struggle between companies that want to track
> data and annoying users like me that generate a lot of chaff that

I have a fair chance of hiding from companies. I have very little
chance of intelligence agencies missing even a single significant
potential troublemaker. If you're worried if you qualify, yep,
you definitely do. And the nail that sticks out gets hammered,
eventually. The chilling effect is fully intended. 

> reduce the data mining clarity - about me, in certain dimensions. It
> does not affect the average user (who does not care much), the
> average analytics customer (who doesn't want to sell stuff
> specifically to people like me) and hence not to the average
> analytics company.
> 
> Now if somebody spread malware that did adversarial data mining to
> salt analytics databases, then it would be war. Or at least a
> guerilla conflict.

I have a few ideas of hostile acts. Building provably secure code,
open trusted hardware, keeping user-side secrets in hardened comparments, 
building global distributed cryptographic file storage, decentralized currencies,
decentralized energy production and fabrication, making decentralized
global networks operated and end by end users, fabrication from
open source design depositories. 

Try being a mere security hacker these days, and count the ways
of how you're treated specially. Now consider becoming a potential
large scale disruptor e.g. by building a P2P banking infrastructure,
and see how much trouble that will get you. 

I've seen people caught in such small guerilla conflicts. It can
make your life quite difficult. Do something big, and you better
be off the radar, all the time.