Replies (44)
Alexander Hamilton used a pseudonym to write The Federalist Papers. George Orwell is not the real name of George Orwell. Satoshi Nakamoto would've been hunted like a stray dog and dragged through the mud if he would've used his real name.
An attack on pseudonymity is an attack on freedom.
Pseudonym protects against other people in the Internet, not against the government. The gov always knows who you are.
Oh, there's better examples than Hamilton, come on 😁
He actually should have been tarred and feathered - central banks... Pffft.
Only if you're sloppy with Opsec.
lol. Better not even be online, then.
It's because the receiver doesn't have a nip17 client. You are forcing it, but it is likely the person will never receive it.
Yes. But you can still be online without the government knowing who you are, if you're not sloppy.
I don't think so. They can track everything. ISPs are in their pocket, Mobile providers too. Most public WiFI spots track your connection to them as you walk by. Cookies link your identity even if you are using Tor. And Facebook can link your account ID even if you don't run any of their apps. Google does the same. Apple does the same. Samsung does the same. There is no way to participate in the web without leaving traces to the government.
So the solution, opt out entirely.
The goal is to increase the cost of mass surveillance to the point that they have to use targeted surveillance again. We don't throw our hands up and say it's all lost, we use what's available.
Not really. You can use a nym, but that only protects your identity from other plebs. There are some benefits to it. The government controls too much to be fooled by simple tricks.
💪
You must not have your name attached to your ISP. There are ways.
Use a VPN router.
Mobile phone must be a PAYG sim, unregistered, and no Apple account. Use GrapheneOS.
Public WiFi spots would then only know phone#e79y279ee7 has passed by. Not your identity. There are spoofers too if you really need. And use a VPN.
Explain cookies on Tor, I don't agree.
Idiots use Facebook (although I have used fake profiles in the past).
Don't use Apple or Google or Samsung. You don't need them. GrapheneOS.
It's a lot of work and you always risk leakage. But 99% of the battle is not to be wanted, so if 1% leaks out, they'll never bother to go on a wild goose chase after you.
But it does make their life a bit harder. I try to be as anonymous as possible, so they spend a lot of resources on me, only to find out after months of investigation that I'm the most boring average Joe 😂
All VPNs report data to government, when they don't actively sell it to them as part of the business model. I dealt for years with medical data and the first rule was to never use an off the shelf VPN... ever. When you use a VPN, you are just choosing who can track you. You can make your own VPN, but single users don't get any annonimity from it. You have to have multiple people using it and they can still track the group together.
You will always have your name attached to the ISP. You can choose a proxy, but they will track the proxy too. And the proxy better not have worse security than you. By just tracking your over time, they can farily estimate which devices you use.
People tend to significantly underestimate how much leaks when somebody is tracking your for a long period of time. Especially when your credit card and phone are always together.
Some VPNs accept lightning. Use those. Same for esims.
Precisely.
yeah only if you steal someone else's identity and use their information to get online.
Imagine if everyone encrypted all of their notes behind a 1 sat paywall with fanfares.io
Mass surveillance and AI theft would be destroyed 🫡
There happens to be a great audiobook on Fanfares about this topic:
Fanfares
Digital Sovereignty
8,000 sats - The book that fixes the internet ⚡
A good VPN has no usable data to give the government upon subpoena.
Your name need not be attached to the ISP. No proxy is needed (although even a proxy significantly breaks the chain). There is no way to determine which devices you use if there is no identity tied to the devices. And you still have device spoofing if you wanted.
Not at all. You can use other people's ISPs. Or live in a communal home where one person orders the ISP for the whole household.
I guess I should set that up someday.
Australia has enacted a world-first ban on social media for users aged under 16, causing millions of children and teenagers to lose access to their accounts. They would all be very welcome in Nostr, where the government has no power.
In the US, the ISP privacy policies say "we will collect and share everything" and US policy says "we can subvert any ISP at any time with an NSL" so it is unlikely that using a VPN over the ISP can be worse than using your ISP without one. To your point, there are better and worse VPN services. If your VPN asks for your name, address, and phone number, for example, that's a red flag. Of course they're going to see your IP addresses and DNS requests, but again, it can't be worse than your ISP. Tor can help with that. If TLS isn't broken, then neither the VPN nor the ISP can see the contents of what you send to what site.
I agree if the gov'ts want to "get" someone, they can and will. But we shouldn't make it so easy.
So the choices are literally steal someone else's identity or practice communism...
worse. the powers that be can just make things up. if they want you, they'll get you.
use cash to buy a visa gift card buy VPN?
@Gigi Those who dominate privacy tools dominate the game.
most important tha motcha cockar should stop surveillence and stop put cctv everywhere...
as if they know better than the parents it self in determined which one should or should not for the kids . we should resist at once and give freedom back to our kids .
I wonder if #nostr is one of them “dark corners of the web” that the reportage on this social media ban is so fond of referring to. Gee I really hope so. 😬
A very poor straw man. You use other people's ISPs when you stay at friends, relatives, hospitals, and coffee shops.
"Communism" to you is a homeowner buying the ISP and the lodger using it..
Just say you lost the argument and move on. You'd lose less face.
Correct.
You literally said if people are living communally.
And then said they can share something without payment.
That sounds like communism.
When I go to a coffee shop to use the WiFi (I don't but let's play pretend)
The coffee shop charges you money.
You buy a coffee.
And yeah public hospitals funded by the taxpayer that provide free medical services?
Well that's state based socialism isn't it?
Relatives are my family, you really think that hiding your identity behind a family members identity is a smart way to stay anonymous.
I didn't even realise we were having an argument until you mentioned it either.
Lol that's not communism at all, or stealing someone's identity. But if you want to be online without the government knowing it's you, these are the ways to do it. Figure out the nuances of when staying with family.
If they can track it to your family they'll track it to you.
How much torture do you think your family can take?
Stealing a random strangers identity is much safer.
And even if you practice communism, they're going to track it to your commune and how much torture do you think your comrades can take before they give you up?
I'm just glad I don't live in UK and I might have a couple more months to work it out.
UK had to early release all the rapists just to make room for the thousands of people getting sent using slurs on social media.
If your family were at risk of torture from the regime, you'd be reckless to use family. But that's assuming the regime knows where you live, and are wanted. Every individual has a dynamic puzzle to work through. Being an informal lodger (no contracts and they think your name is Bob) in a rural home is pretty safe. Just keep your internet activity masked behind a good VPN so the ISP can't see it.
State surveillance won’t stop. It will only grow until the people’s sovereignty is completely suffocated. That’s exactly why we need decentralized tools: to protect our assets, our privacy, and our freedom of expression. ☕️⚡️
It’s so disappointed what happened in Australia . Some kids 14 years old can not browse you tube to learn how make up for Halloween party .
I agree with the idea of the veto, but I see two issues: raising the age to 16 is absurd, and letting the State decide this is even worse. This should be the parents’ responsibility, allowing access around 12–13 because of the child’s brain development. The real problem is that people love being intellectually led because they hate the effort of thinking for themselves, so they hand over their thinking and their sovereignty to the government for free. I’m writing an article on free will that expands on this idea as well.
Then definitely don't lookup his dad. 🐸
psyop. they won't be able to unmask the LLM slop of my alts