Being anonymous is getting harder and harder

for a very long time being anonymous online was mostly a given at least if you wanted to you could create an account with any nickname any email address you wanted for any service data collection was relatively minimal before targeted ads swept over the internet and governments largely accepted they couldn't really do much about it unfortunately this is no longer the case being anonymous online is getting increasingly difficult most most big tech services guarantee you will never be fully Anonymous and a lot of countries are trying to or actively implementing laws that will make privacy and anonymity very hard or impossible to achieve so I thought today I would take a look at the most concerning developments on that front to make sure that everyone is suitably worried and I'm not the only one panicking sitting down in my office but to cheer you up I still have this segue to our sponsor this video is sponsored by proton creators of the private endtoend encrypted Suite of services that 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in the description below and get started with proton so let's begin with data collection because this is the root of most anonymity problems as long as no one collects any data about who you are where you are and what you're doing you can be anonymous online no one knows what you're doing but when companies and governments start logging and storing and sharing data that's when the problems started virtually everything online now collects data big tech companies of course like Facebook Microsoft Google Apple and others but also many many websites that display ads whether they're big or small any website that implemented analytics to know how many views they get also collects data and if they use something like Google analytics this data also goes back to Google directly basically if you're using a website or the internet you can be sure that you're leaving a trail web browsers and even operating systems nowadays also collect data if you use Edge or Chrome or even Firefox if you didn't disable Telemetry you are giving away some amount of data large or small if you use Windows you're giving a lot of data to Microsoft if you use Mac OS you're giving data to Apple I documented this in a dedicated video a while back but it is also true of Android and iOS your device by default is not private and does collect information fortunately there are a lot of ways you can reduce all of this you can disable some amount of telemetry you can install tracker blockers in your web browser you can use privacy focused operating systems apps and services like Linux instead of Windows you can use another web browser or different service providers than Google or apple or Microsoft even with that though you might still be leaving enough information behind to be identified that's what we call fingerprinting with a bit of device related data like your OS its version your CPU model the amount of ram you have combined with the browser you use the hours you visit a website at the extensions you use It's relatively easy to identify you across websites anyway and to know that it's you they won't know much about you person personally but they can still know it's one single person visiting all these websites but if you're watching this video you probably already know all of this and you might be wondering why does it matter if these companies collect a lot of data about me it's generally to serve me targeted ads and if I have to see ads I probably prefer seeing ads that are tailored to what I actually like right and that's very very wrong because this data doesn't stay at the website or the company that collected it it is being shared it is a giant Silo of data that governments and other agencies can have access to see in a lot of countries governments have the right to ask a company to provide all the data they have collected on their users you might think oh this guy is talking about China but no that's the case with a lot of governments companies have no choice but to comply with these requests which is also why using endtoend and zero access encrypted service is crucial even if the company could identify and provide the data the government wants it is basically useless as the company cannot provide the means to decrypt it in terms of requests for example the US can request any company to give them data on a specific user they've done so more than any other country in 2020 but other countries do the exact same Germany Denmark South Korea France virtually every country does this which should make you immediately understand why giant tech companies collecting user data is a big problem if they don't have that data they can't share it with the government if they do have it they have no choice but to comply if you want even more scary numbers in 20122 meta the parent company for Facebook Instagram or Whatsapp got 127,000 requests for data and they complied with 76% of these requests this might not seem like a big deal though if you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't worry about your government requesting data about you right except this is a pretty weird argument to make because this data isn't just accessed one time it is being kept and your government in the future might use it to Target you with specific other laws or surveillance what you're doing right now might not be illegal but it could become so in the future and while what you've done in the past cannot be used against you in most cases it can still be used to put you on a watch list or to have mass surveillance about your activities just look at China's social credit system do you really think that such a system would not take into account past behaviors Based on data your government has access to all this data you're leaving behind is a ticking Time Bomb depending on whether your views political belief sexual orientation gender or religious beliefs align with the current or the future government of your country so this is already a big big problem but it is getting increasingly worse because governments don't just want to collect data they also want to pass laws that prohibit being anonymous online there are a lot of legal offensives being planned or already implemented in various countries so let's look at a few in Russia recent laws from 2017 banned Anonymous use of online messenging apps and prohibits the use of tools that would circumvent government censorship this means that while vpns were not exactly banned if they let people access banned websites then those vpns would also be banned in turn and the government maintains a registry of people who violated this law this has happened to at least 15 VPN providers including nordvpn proton VPN and Opera VPN not great but it is not limited to Russia and other admittedly authoritarian countries in Australia in 202 21 a law was proposed to force people to attach their real name to their social media posts apparently to fight online trolls bullying and harassment while the goal itself is laudable in theory because let's be honest being anonymous seems to give some people a weird form of disorder where they feel they can spread hate and be extremely nasty it is still a very worrying way of handling the problem users would have to provide an ID before opening any social media account which would obviously open the door to surveillance monitoring and censorship not great either and one might think this is not a problem in a democracy they will not abuse this power except there is no guarantee that a government will stay a democracy forever and democracies can also be authoritarian we have plenty of examples of that and these sort of laws generally never get repelled in France the country where I live we have the recent sren short for secur regul numeric or law aiming to secure and regulate the digital space this thing was voted on recently and passed by the assembly National it would give the Telecom Watchdog powers to block certain websites and it would require tools for age verification this is aimed at adult websites but it could easily now be extended to other spaces this thing still needs to be accepted by the Senate but there's little doubt it will be requiring age verification basically means providing an idea which means this is not Anonymous anymore on top of that the law will give the government capabilities to demand web browsers and DNS providers block certain websites so it is basically a nice little sensorship tool on top of being a surveillance one in the UK the Online safety bill of 2022 allows the regulatory agency ofcom to force websites to collect people's personal data allegedly to prevent harmful content to reach children or they will be able to scan to restrict and to remove content that is considered harmful the bill also mandates online communication services to be moderated which basically means endtoend encryption cannot be enabled there anymore which obviously means that this data is now more easily readable by the government if they request access to it and these are just a few examples with the ability to collect and Order access to data that is being collected by giant companies and the various laws that governments are trying to pass to actively prevent you from being anonymous online it is clear that they really really want to know what you're doing online so what can you do about this well fighting the anti- anonymity laws can only be done using the Democratic tools you have access to like voting for people who don't want to turn your country into even more of a surveillance State this is still reliant on the general politic Tendencies of your other countrymen though if everyone is easily swayed by threats of inside or outside intervention and fear and they want a surveillance State because they feel afraid then there's not much you can do about it you yourself alone but for protecting your data at least there are plenty of things you can do first you should stop using privacy invasive operating systems if you can't move to something like Linux try at least to disable all the Telemetry you can in Windows or Mac OS in Android and in iOS you can try using a de Googled privacy focused Android ROM on your smartphone for example leaving Chrome for a more private browser is also pretty much mandatory Alternatives like Firefox with Telemetry removed of course or things like brave are a relatively solid bet same goes for your online services you should stop using Google as a search engine stop using Gmail Outlook one drive iCloud and the like they are tons of options out there that are equally as user friendly and featureful and will not collect any data about you I have a full playlist of videos on how to degoogle your life from your operating systems to your search engines to your online services everything check it out in the link in the description below it's a good place to start using a VPN is also a solid option to at least try and blur the lines it is not a silver bullet but it does help and adding a Tracker blocker extension to your browser will also be a very nice addition as per your internet service provider the most you can do is to try and enforce https in your browser settings to at least encrypt what you transmit to the websites you visit but they will still be able to see the request you made to a DNS provider which can also be relatively revealing certain VPN providers will provide their own DNS Services which will prevent your ISP from seeing what you're trying to access but you also have to trust that VPN provider to not collect any data or logs it is pretty hard nowadays to be fully anonymous online as long as your government doesn't mandate you revealing your personal identity your real name or to communicate an ID to log to certain Services you can still limit a lot of the data that can be collected about you but it does require some time and effort in any case this is a pretty scary Direction the world is headed towards and I hope you're all suitably worried and so to make things a bit lighter I still have one more segue to our sponsor if you're looking to buy a new computer and you plan to run Linux on it you should stop looking at devices that ship with Windows pre-installed because they don't offer any guarantee that Linux will work you should buy something that was made to run Linux from our sponsor tuxedo they offer a big range of devices laptops desktops no at every price point every power level they are all very customizable and all their Hardware was picked specifically because it runs really well with Linux and if they encounter problems or quirks to fix they generally submit patches Upstream so everyone can benefit from these fixes you can customize most of their devices with a lot of different components you can have your own keyboard layout on your laptop your own logo laser edged on the lid and all the laptops can be opened repaired and upgraded so if you need a new computer you plan to run Linux on it and you want to support linux's development click the link in description below and get yourself a device from tuxedo this is all I use right now my main editing station my Steam OS console they're both from tuxedo so thanks everyone for watching the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications to write a comment and if you didn't like the video you can always dislike it and tell me why in the comments as well and if you really like the channel and you want to support it there are plenty of links in the description of the video to do just that so thanks for watching and I gu you'll see me in the next one [Music] bye

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 64,878

Keywords: cyber security, digital culture, social media, online privacy, online anonymity, how to be anonymous on the internet, how to browse the internet anonymously, how to be anonymous, go anonymous, how to become anonymous, the case for anonymity online, complete anonymity online, online privacy guide, online privacy tips, online privacy for students, anonymity is dead, anti privacy laws, privacy laws in the us, data privacy laws, SREN france, online safety bill, russia vpn ban

Id: u0s3qbfEWjc

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023