#personal privacy

[titleknown]

Will California Eliminate Anonymous Web Browsing? (Comments on CA AB 2273, The Age-Appropriate Design Code Act) - Technology & Marketing Law Blog

I’m continuing my coverage of dangerous Internet bills in the California legislature. This job is especially challenging during an election year, when legislators rally behind the “protect the kids” mantra to pursue bills that are likely to hurt, or at...

...You know those bad internet bills I keep talking about? Like EARN IT and the SMART Copyright Act and that sort of thing?

Well here’s another one, but this one’s state-based! Specifically, it’s in California, and it basically wants to mandate websites to force you to use your real ID to interact with more or less anything, in the name of “protect the children,” because of course it fucking is.

Now, not only does this fuck over sex workers, but it fucks over everyone privacy-wise, including kids! Imagine being forced to give all of your sensitive data to strangers to basically do anything online. and it becomes clear how much of a nightmare this is.

And that’s even before we think about the implications of eroding online privacy like this in a post-Roe world, or the real probability of privacy leaks!

And make no mistake, as one can probably gather from the famous “this product is known to cause birth defects or cancer in the state of California” labels, this is very likely to affect these services in other states.So this bill is dangerous.

So, if you live in California, contact your members of the California State Assembly and State Senate and tell them not to vote for this bill, because it is awful and will put a wrecking ball through privacy online.

And if you can’t, for the love of god, please boost this. God I’m sick of these bills...

[xnackery027]

Sometimes I’m like “ahhh, maybe I could share one (1) detail of my personal life, surely posting one thing wouldn’t allow someone to track my exact location” and then I remember that one internet guy who finds people’s locations based on like light patterns and shit and that other dude who finds people’s height using the pixel measurements of their Trix cereal box in the background and I’m like. Ah. Nevermind.

[blogquantumreality]

Judge denies creating “mass surveillance program” harming all ChatGPT users

OpenAI will fight order to keep all ChatGPT logs after users fail to sway court.

This is actually a very real and serious issue.

If you, or your company, are using now or have used OpenAI services for any reason, you need to cancel or stop that service immediately. OpenAI cannot guarantee your privacy when there is an open court case that seeks to extract from OpenAI chat logs that could contain potentially sensitive information - and they want more.

Whether you are anti AI or not, you should ALWAYS be pro PRIVACY!

[givemeunicorns]

If you are living in the US right now, especially if you live in a conservative state, am begging you guys BEGGING you to install a VPN on your devices. I am begging you to start switch away from google, start using ad blockers and and anti tracking extensions. Not just on your computer but ALL your devices. You phone, computer, tablet, iPad whatever. Install a VPN and change the location setting regularly. You have to start taking your digital privacy seriously.

Everyday conservatives are tightening their strangle hold on personal privacy rights and you need to be doing everything in your power to push back, side step, and skirt the rules as often as you can.

"But I don't interact with [insert "bad" thing here]"

Well I have news for you- if you aren't a white able bodied evangelical christian conservative - you are a target to these people. To these people "degenerates" are anyone who doesn't fall in line with the way they think. They have- and will continue- to move the goal post of what is considered "pornographic" and "obscene" to include anything THEY find to be obscene. This includes discussions medical information they don't like- like gender affirming care, public health data, vaccines. This includes discussions of climate change. It includes discussions of race. It includes any kind of talk of queerness or trans identities. Hell, it includes talking about women's accomplishments.

It doesn't matter that you don't like porn or problematic ships, if you don't think immigrants should be rounded up and put in prisons or that trans people should be allowed to exist or that maybe we shouldn't be prosecuting women who have miscarriages for murder, and you SAY that on the internet, you are an enemy to these people. And they want to be able to know who you are. That's why state like Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia, and my own state of Indiana are trying to force people to upload their id to access certain sites and apps.

I know a lot of people reading this may think I sound like an alarmist, but I work in a public library in a conservative state. Every day we are getting requests to remove books from shelves for being "obscene". These are books that have two people of the same gender on the cover. Books that have medical and health information in them and therefore depict nude bodies. Books about intimacy at any age. Books that criticize the government or the christian church. Not just in our physical building, but in our digital collections as well.

At this time, there are no state laws that require us to remove those books but there is a danger of that happening. The one good news for libraries is, this has happened before, and that's why most libraries no longer keep a recorded history of the books people check out. But nation wide, library funding has been slashed. Conservative governor's are trying to tighten the leash of what we can allow in our collections in order to push their narrative of the information people should be allowed to access. And as more people turn to the internet for answers, the same people who want to get ride of libraries want to censor the internet too.

So I'm pleading with you, don't make it easy for them. Protecting your personal privacy is one of the best things you can do to fight censorship. Do not submit to putting your real face and government name on your internet presence. Do not submit to being tracked. Do not submit to being followed, surveilled, and advertised to. Do not let conservative politicians and the companies that pay their lobbyists decide what private citizens should be allowed to read, watch, listen to, or talk about. Do not follow their asinine rules designed to make people to scared to access the information and content they want to.

"If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is fascist ideology. It always has been. Everyone has the right to privacy. It's not about hiding anything, it's about a person's right to think and live and feel as they see fit, and about their right to chose what they do and do not want to share. Don't just let these assholes take that from you without a fight.

[xxsoulsilverxx]

Rant about the current scams

I am honestly so damn ANNOYED and ANGRY. I’m sure not many are interested in reading this, but anyway-,

I’ve been on Tumblr for a couple of years now, not really posting much myself but enjoying what other people post on here. I’ve also been inactive for some time until I recently started being interested in sharing things about my own interests. Posting things myself made me realize how MANY scammers or hacked accounts are on here-, spamming the shit under the comment section of my posts or even privately messaging me with stupid shit like:

“Hey, can you message me? I have something important to tell you. It's about your account, but I can't message you, idk whyy??”

NO, YOU MAY NOT MESSAGE ME. NO, I MAY NOT MESSAGE YOU BACK. I don’t give a crap what you have to tell me. LEAVE ME ALONE. I cannot put into words how furious I am about these accounts trying to scam others, when all someone wants to do is share the things they like and perhaps make new connections with others who share the same interests.

It is honestly so exhausting, and it simply makes me sad to get excited about a comment in hopes of being able to have a conversation with an actual user, and then realizing or seeing that it’s one of those scam bots or whatever (even more annoying when they mention you under their own post). Even more so, I truly feel incredibly bad for those people who actually fall for these types of scams because they’re perhaps new to Tumblr and don’t exactly know how things work on here or what might happen when you ‘carelessly’ interact with these types of accounts. Furthermore, I am on so many other social media platforms and have never been bombarded with so many bot or scam messages before, except for Tumblr. It makes me wonder if it truly is a good idea to keep an account on this platform, since it certainly looks like it’s not safe to be on here at all…especially when you start to realize how many of these scammers have hacked into accounts of ACTUAL users.

Be safe. Don’t fall for such tactics, always double-check, and DO NOT open any links people send you, no matter what, because you honestly can’t trust anybody, really.

[the-most-humble-blog]

🛡️ BLACKSITE ENTRY — “AGE VERIFICATION ISN’T ABOUT PROTECTING KIDS. IT’S ABOUT COLLARING THE INTERNET.” | Mr. Humble | Blacksite Literature™

Get more from Mr. Humble | Blacksite Literature™ on Patreon

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They said it was to “protect the children.” Twenty-five states later, the only thing they’ve protected is a pipeline straight to your ID, your face scan, and your history. Fiction gets locked down. War footage? Free to stream. The message is clear: Violence keeps you obedient. Sexual autonomy makes you dangerous. And this isn’t the last wall they’ll build — it’s just the first one you didn’t fight.

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[vivaciouscynner]

Normalize lying to strangers

For the next year and a half or so I'll be studying cyber security, so I may be annoying by posting little bits of info here and there about internet safety and the like.

A lot of times, the easiest way to hack an account of any type is not even with a computer. It's just by talking to people with casual conversation or what I like to call "hairdresser talk". You know, the type of talk you'd have with a hairdresser. They'd ask about your day, your family, your pets, birthdays, recent events in your life. And it seems nice, to talk about your day, because in some way, we all want someone to care about our lives.

But, that type of talk lets you just give away your entire life. What are some of your recovery questions on your account? First pet? Mom's maiden name? School? Year you graduated? Sound familiar?

This is a very simplified example of what I'm talking about. It's really easy to impersonate someone or someone who might be related to the target - like a friend, family, or co-worker. If you call a tech rep with a sense of urgency and state that so and so isn't able to confirm changes and you need access to act on their behalf, more often than not, you'd actually be able to do it with a little knowledge about the person you're targeting.

With that said, lie to strangers.