Online Security & Privacy 101
Mini Blog20240526In the UK, a huge potential privacy issue is presented by the ongoing introduction of so-called smartmeters by electricity and gas suppliers. There are other issues in relation to these 'smartmeters' too, but here we shall focus on the privacy issue and only very briefly deal with other issues in passing.
'Smartmeters' started to be introduced in the UK in 2011, ostensibly with the aim that they would help reduce energy use and contribute to reaching the government's net-zero greenhouse emission targets. However, another scenario at least potentially presents itself. But first, a little insight into how 'smartmeters' function.
Briefly, they read your consumption of energy continuously like a conventional meter, but send these readings at user settable intervals - varying from every five minutes to once a month - via the cellphone network to the supplier. The data are processed - allegedly anonymised - by a specialist company before being returned to the supplier for billing the customer. However, unlike a conventional 'dumb' meter, 'smartmeters' record energy use in great detail, such as spikes and drops, in real time. Given the characteristics of various appliances and gadgets, it is possible to distinguish what is being switched on and when and when it is switched off.
All these data further can be used to exactly profile your energy use and more besides, such as the times you are active in your household, the times it is likely to be unattended, and more.
At present, energy suppliers claim that your data are not shared or sold on. Even if true, this could change at any time and most likely will eventually. But even in the absence of this, imagine what could happen in a major data breach : all your data could for instance end up on the dark web, giving a perfect guide to when it might be easiest to burgle your home!
Essentially, 'smartmeters' represent a massive violation of privacy that nobody should tolerate.
For a variety of reasons, almost half of UK households have so far refused to have 'smartmeters'. What the situation might be in other countries I have been unable to ascertain so far, although I certainly discovered that some countries have so far not started introducing them.
Of those households in the UK that have 'smartmeters', about half have or have had problems with them, such as malfunctions causing unusually - even stratospherically - high bills, and others. The other half seem happy with them and claim that having a 'smartmeter' is saving them money, sometimes a lot of money.
Apart from the gross privacy issue, there are as already indicated earlier other issues concerning 'smartmeters'. Perhaps one of the other major ones, if not the major one, is that the return of data to the supplier via the G5 cellnet network occurs in bursts at much higher energy levels than a cellphone, and this technology has not been around long enough yet to be considered safe with any degree of certainty. The considerable number of households that have or had problems with their 'smartmeters' is another.
However, it is of course the issue of massive privacy violation that is totally unacceptable. This is as bad as anything that the likes of Big Tech Google and others get up to. With one difference though - the energy suppliers themselves are completely clueless where IT technology is concerned! 'Smartmeter'? No thanks!
Finally, a brief return to the topic of encryption. While not a recent article,
Can Encryption Be Broken? is nonetheless of interest in this context, as well as
What To Do If Your Data Is Leaked?. The former explains the most common causes of encryption being broken, while the latter gives advice on what measures you could take in the event of your data being leaked.
How Passwords Become Compromised is about exactly what it says on the tin, while
Hacker tricks are getting smarter... deals with various fairly new methods that hackers use to get their hands on your data and how Proton's privacy apps can keep you safe.
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All rights reserved20240504Today, everything you always wanted to know about encryption but were afraid to ask. Well, almost everything.
Without further ado, the Proton Blog's
What is Encryption? article is a good introduction to the topic. Further information can be found in
What is PGP Encryption?,
What is End-to-End Encryption?, and
Zero-Access Encryption.
Also of interest should be
Post-Quantum Encryption, which deals with post Quantum-safe encryption, that is, encrption that should or will be safe even once Quantum computers do become a real threat as they should be able to break current encryptions.
Of further importance to note is
What is a Brute Force Attack?, a common variety of attacks seeking access to user data and more.
Last but perhaps not least,
Is the Future Passwordless? deals with the increasing number of methods of passwordless log-in and the for the foreseeable future co-existence of passwords with methods such as PassKeys and more.
Of course, this is by no means any kind of exhaustive information on the subject of encryption, but at least it covers a few bases.
Meanwhile, work is continuing here on further articles as listed on the Contents page, albeit slowly due to extreme time constraints. These latter also mean that Mini Blog posts unfortunately may have to take a bit of a backseat from time to time.
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All rights reserved20240420Something a little different this time - back to the usual next time. But this affects us all.
Directly related to privacy and security are the concepts of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and ultimately freedom of thought. Without these, there is no freedom, and democracy cannot exist.
All of these are being eroded to a frightening degree and indeed are threatened as never before. The tyrannies of 'Political Correctness' and Identity Politics - the politics of basing identity on the belonging to some kind of 'group', i.e., e.g., feminists, belonging to a particular minority religion, belonging to a certain minority ethnic group, Zionists, the LGBT (I'll stop at the 'T' as the 'T' is abomination enough IMO!) 'community', and others, and the 'woke' cult and ideology, 'cancel culture', and more - are certainly most instrumental in this erosion of freedom. Indeed, Identitarians practically and effectively act as a thought police.
Not enough that social media and similar platforms are firmly in the grip of this thought police, Big Tech itself has been quietly or not so quietly working away for some time at ways to censor speech and impose the ludicrous politically correct Orwellian NewSpeak on users.
Big Tech Speech-Police Feature To Promote ‘Inclusive Language’, an article by 'Save Britain' dated April 26th, 2022, makes for interesting reading! Of course, the villain of this particular piece should be familiar to everyone and it should come as no surprise that it is none other than 'Big G' aka Google itself.
And for a prime example of woke and cancel culture in action in the developer world seek out
this series of articles.
All this certainly reinforces the need for all internet users to fight for their privacy and for freedom and democracy itself. If you have not done so already, come and join the privacy revolution and embrace open source privacy software such as
Proton! All Proton apps are available in free versions - free not because of advertising but because of the large numbers opting for the paid versions.
Personally, I shall never succumb to NewSpeak and Political Correctness and other absurdities etc. Hence, let me conclude by paraphrasing that wonderful living, talking teddybear Ted: "F*** that! Who gives a shit about shit!"
Next time, the planned coverage of encryption and more.
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All rights reserved20240413A bumper crop today!
If you have ever wondered just how much email providers and various apps for your Windows or macOS PC and your smartphone care about your privacy, then discover just how you are being conned in this
"Privacy Washing" article on the Proton Blog!
Some news on the web browser front. This topic will be covered in some detail in its own forthcoming appendix here of course, but just a few 'head ups' for now. I am rather dismayed to discover that the otherwise possibly very good DuckDuckGo Browser for Windows is in fact a Microsoft Store app! I couldn't possibly comment on the macOS, iOS, or Android versions of course, and I was waiting to see when a Linux version would appear before having a closer look. In view of the news here I am not sure that I would actually recommend this browser.
I have been meaning to have a closer look at the
Waterfox Browser as that is once again an independent project in the hands of its original developer since last year. However, the Linux version seems to be a portable app without an installer and will run just from its unarchived directory. I still have not got around to creating the sym link but will do when I get a moment. First impressions are very favourable. Shall also install the Windows version ASAP.
Meanwhile, the Mullvad Browser does get used a bit - mainly in Ubuntu Linux - and performs well. Other browsers to be included in the appendix will include Librewolf, Pale Moon, and others.
Something for the Windows 10 and 11 users, but definitely somewhat savy ones, is
Windows Tool from Chris Titus. Open source of course. This runs in Windows Powershell (with Admin privilege) and lets you, among other useful things, tweak your Windows to your heart's content and remove a lot of junk and privacy/security impeaching stuff. For instance, it lets you get rid of that ghastly data harvester Windows Edge! It is a brilliant utility. I have been using it a fair bit for quite some time now and find it to be invaluable. I should have mentioned it here from the beginning of this Mini Blog but somehow always forgot until the topic came up in a query in a forum the other day!
Some of the results after first tweaking etc. session, only Windows 10, Proton VPN, and ESET running. (I kept a list! I was amazed!) Edge and MS Store apps - gone. A lot of other junk too. Hooray! Active tasks (e.g., Windows services - loaded only when needed) down 30-40%. Memory use down about 35%, overall resource use down substantially. Everything running noticeably faster. Shutdown almost instant. Reboot very fast and booting up very much quicker too. Result!
Definitely a 'must have' utility for privacy and security conscious Windows users.
And just in at the time of writing, Proton and Standard Notes
join forces. Excellent as Standard Notes is and much as this will be welcome by many users, I cannot help thinking this may be a bit of overkill, especially also considering Standard Notes' price structure. The top package costs about as much as Proton Unlimited. How that will all fit together remains to be seen. I cannot help being somewhat sceptical and concerned that this may be to the detriment of paying Proton users in terms of cost.
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All rights reserved20240324Lots of interesting and vitally important online privacy and security info this time.
To kick off, here's something for the iPhone users out there. Ever wondered how private using your iPhone really is? You may glean something from this
article on the Proton blog. After reading and digesting that, you may well want to throw the blessed iPhone in the junk and certainly ought to consider changing to something else, or at least making it as secure and private as possible. And BTW, much the same info pertains to the iPad also.
Also on the subject of privacy and data harvesting with particular regard to email,
this article from the Proton Blog focuses on Gmail but is likely to equally apply to other 'freebie' email providers, including at least to some extent to some of the claimed 'privacy' ones.
The lesson so far? Don't trust anything from anyone unless it's fully Open Source and gives you fully end-to-end-encrypted email with zero-access-encryption using fully open standard encrytion. (Hmm, yes, that leaves out Tuta - previously aka Tutanota - for starters.)
More on the topic of encryption perhaps another time.
The
Proton Pass Password Manager now fully supports
Passkeys for all Proton Pass users whether free or paid.
What's a Passkey? explains all.
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All rights reserved20240313Excellent news from Proton - their desktop app of the superb Password Generator/Manager / Identity Manager 'Proton Pass' for Windows is now available, in addition to their apps for Android and iOS. The Linux and macOS desktop apps should follow shortly, while in the meantime the browser extension is there. I personally have not had the opportunity yet to install the Windows app as I have not used Windows again yet - the Linux version will get far more use here when it comes along.
I would have provided a direct link to the Proton post announcing Proton Pass for Windows but only get an .onion (TOR network) link atm. You can find it easily enough though doing a quick search on the
PROTON WEBSITE.
And while you are there, you may also find heaps of excellent articles concerning privacy, security, and also all the superb Proton apps.
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All rights reserved20240224The documentary in the 'Storyville' series titled 'Total Trust: Surveillance State' broadcast on BBC4 TV at 22.00hrs GMT on 20th February in the UK proved of great interest indeed. Not only for what it actually dealt with, but just as interestingly for what it did not deal with - the world-wide descent into a surveillance society. Another point to note is, of course, just how accurate/credible this film was. Living in the age of 'fake news' and fake everything as we do, are any of the media still credible?
But let us assume for now that this film was accurate and credible. Yes, truly terrifying to say the least. But the western world is not very far behind, and in many ways it is well ahead of China. Digital surveillance and its consequent total erosion of privacy for one thing is far more advanced and far-ranging. But apart from that, other factors are at work in the erosion of freedom of expression freedom of dissent. In the west, we do not need any state apparatus to suppress our freedoms. The great public does a far better job already - the whole 'woke' and 'cancel culture', and the all-pervading identity politics make sure that dissent is not tolerated.
It is tragic and calamitous that the majority of ordinary people allow the erosion of freedom and privacy, and thereby democracy, to happen without even being aware of what is happening. It therefore is all the more important that people should vehemently and rigorously act to defend their freedom, privacy, and security online.
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All rights reserved20240217Another interesting
POST about just how much money 'Big Tech' is making from your data came up on the Proton Blog the other day. Data is indeed the new oil! For anyone wishing to explore the world of privacy and security in some depth, the Proton Blog is highly recommended in general, not just for the aforementioned post.
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All rights reserved20240213 The most recent changes to Outlook make it an unbelievably extensive and invasive Data Harvester. Have a look at this
Article on Proton's blog for all the gory details and ditch Outlook if you value your privacy and freedom and oppose total surveillance! This really is monstrous.
And more recently, in the UK London's Metropolitan Police have started 'experimentally' using Live Facial Recognition cameras! An unprecedented violation of privacy in this country, and civil liberties organisations may challenge this in the courts.
Still in the UK, BBC4 TV at 22.00hrs GMT on 20th February is showing a documentary in the 'Storyville' series titled 'Total Trust: Surveillance State' that should be of great interest to anyone who values privacy, freedom, and democracy. A surveillance state is totally incompatible with democracy and is in fact totalitarian.
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