Privacy

32130 readers

396 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Thoughts on Cryptocurrency? (programming.dev)

submitted 8 months ago by actual_patience@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

93 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was wondering what viewpoints and opinions this community has when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Personally, I'm not against it, but I'm not for it either. I like the concept of bringing back cash anonymity, and also decentralization (obviously). Although I don't think it will be viable for at least another decade.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I assume you're talking about blatantly illegal transactions, like trafficking or drug deals, but if that's not part of someone's threat model, is Bitcoin still reasonable private?

As in, if we remove state-level actors from the threat model, is Bitcoin still safe enough? I'm more interested in not getting doxxed for my choice in VPN, email service, etc if I choose to run for office, and Bitcoin is accepted by enough places to be useful enough.

[–] Kindness@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

talking about blatantly illegal transactions, like trafficking or drug deals, but if that’s not part of someone’s threat model

I am talking about anything that might become a skeleton in your closet, when political winds change. If you:

donate to anyone religious, vocally non-religious, political, controversial, extreme, or critical of government.
are American and can be linked 3.5 degrees of Kevin Bacon to any Russian.
purchase cakes from bigoted religious Christians.
bought merchandise of controversial figures
donated to the guy who taught his pug to Seig Heil and plan to visit Germany.
transfer money to protesters.
contribute to public defence funds.
purchase "suspicious" amounts of nearly random chemicals for reasons you don't care to explain.
purchase novels with Russian or Chinese themes and undertones.
do anything your governing body or enforcement division disapproves of.

The likely-hood of you becoming a big enough thorne for governments is small, but they are ultimately the key holder to your privacy. That should be your threat model.

if I choose to run for office

De-anonymizing crypto users is not illegal. Posting it is illegal, but finding out what you purchased for a smear campaign? Totally fine in most western countries. Advanced persistent threats would be that future's threat model. It is not hard for large political organizations to hire teenage nosy geeks to dig up OSINT dirt. Your level of risk tolerance is your choice. If it's too much hassle, it's too much hassle.

That said, the largest governments in the world have signed a cooperative agreement to share and process data they are currently collecting, regardless of the legality of collecting it.

Purchasing privacy coin, using TOR(Yes, in caps. They don't get to set the rules on acronyms.), doing anything "out of the ordinary" will likely warrant investigation into your affairs. Once they have that data, their track record of protecting it is not so good. "The Pentagon", "ANAO", and this one doesn't even mention why the UK suddenly needs a new task force with Russian advanced persistent threats "on the horizon".

Everybody else: If you just don't want your neighbors to know you have a fetish, knock yourself out with lightning and have the package gift-wrapped.