Anonymity vs de-anonymization
Recently, I read a lot of reasoning about how to properly hide in the Internet. Someone writes about the technical side, someone - about the methodological. I myself am paranoid by nature, but I try not to lose my common sense. As a result of deliberation of previously read reasoning and common sense, it turned out following.
1. Privacy is dead - get over it. This mainly happens because users (in a broad sense) tend not to be inclined to think about long-term consequences, especially possibly bad consequences, especially very rare (regarding their lives). A person is much more important to be able to communicate with friends, for example, than keeping his body and thought-movements secret from those who can use it to the detriment of the person himself (an elementary example is burglary at the moment when a person calls up from a social network). went for a long time somewhere). Fighting a crowd of lemmings is meaningless, at least to fight for their fate.
2. Services that require de-anonymization from users often do benefit. The same social networks, surveillance cameras, and even recordings of moving a cell phone between the towers - if used properly, they provide many opportunities for gaining knowledge / pleasure / avoiding trouble.
3. The main threats from de-anonymization:
- State and society: this refers to the pathological inclination of the state in general and individual structures in particular (including public institutions) to abuse their power against citizens for the sake of different purposes, secret and obvious. It also includes organized crime, since it differs from the state only in sign. This also includes unfortunate and frankly stupid near-moral laws, the observance of which is difficult or not always possible, and often requires sacrificing health (mental), common sense, other moral norms or long-term interests. An example is the struggle against child porn (although the phenomenon itself deserves a struggle), where the degree of absurdity in the interpretation of ordinary actions has passed all limits, especially in individual states.
- Companies earning from advertising and selling services (their own or others). Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. For the sake of their profits, these companies use information to distort the overall picture of the services offered (in the results of search results, for example), which can harm (and strategically - harm) the interests of certain people. Also, due to the specifics, these companies are subject to the influence of various public and state organizations that may require the removal or distortion of publicly available information. The information itself cannot be changed, but it is easy to change the idea of ​​accessibility or the characteristics of information.
- All sorts of media corporations - suppliers of films and music (both offline and online). They are similar to the companies from the previous paragraph, but the threat is not in the distortion of a part of reality (cinema has long become a parallel reality), but in an interpretation of the concept of “reproduction” and those payments implied by this interpretation, which is far from common sense.
- Unorganized and partially organized crime. The presence of a threat is fairly obvious here, although some specific threats may surprise.
- Overly curious fellow citizens. Actually, the threats themselves do not practically represent them (unless they can be overly annoying), but they can supply information to the previously listed categories, voluntarily or involuntarily (more often by stupidity).
4. The essence of the threat. Any conflict (and positively-colored interactions are not considered here) is won by the participant who possesses the greatest amount of reliable information, not only about other participants of the conflict, but also about himself and about the “landscape” of the conflict, i.e. the rules and laws by which the conflict develops. Information about yourself is always available, other types of information must be obtained. Wins the one who got more, and whose production is more accurate. It is possible to reverse this statement in the following way: the less information the enemy has obtained, the harder it is for him to win, with a constant amount of information available about the enemy himself.
One of the parts of the “landscape” is knowledge about the distribution of information, in some way reflection - the knowledge of how much and what information the adversary possesses, how it can use this information and what other information it can try to extract. The distribution is dynamic, since both the properties of the information itself, and other parts of the “landscape”, and opponents change over time.
If we formulate the above more clearly, we get the following: the threat of de-anonymization consists in providing the potential adversary with information about himself and / or about the “landscape” of the conflict, which will help him win in the event of a conflict.
5. What to do? First, we must realize that any act of disclosing information about oneself carries both positive and negative sides. With the awareness of the presence of negative sides, people traditionally have difficulties in all areas. Secondly, in any act of disclosing information, it is worth thinking about what kind of information and in what extent it should be disclosed. Not necessarily the amount of disclosure should be minimal (although desirable), but in any case it should be controlled. Thirdly, in any social interaction, in any act, you should be aware of the amount of information that is potentially available to other participants in the interaction. This helps control the dissemination of information, mentioned earlier.
Fourthly, it is necessary to be critical of information received from outside. It would seem that this has nothing to do with de-anonymization - because the information is not disclosed, but on the contrary, it turns out. But it is worth taking into account the fact of misinformation - when an opponent (not necessarily with conflicting interests) provides information that he thinks will benefit the situation for him. A typical example is when a child answers the question “who walked with” is not true in order to avoid swearing for walks with “wrong” friends or in “wrong” places. A more subtle example is Google’s search results, as well as any “personalized” services. Fifth, the eternal task of separating the wheat from the chaff, and so standing in the process of extracting information, can be complicated for the adversary — by adding information noise and direct disinformation.
As output we can say the following:
De-anonymization itself is not bad and not good. She accepts the color in each specific case, taking into account the situation and the participants involved. Control over information is needed, but control is not only total closeness. Different types of information require different types and methods of control. As in any other interaction with the world, it is important to understand what is around and what is happening, what you give, what you get in return, it is important to analyze the facts.
1. Privacy is dead - get over it. This mainly happens because users (in a broad sense) tend not to be inclined to think about long-term consequences, especially possibly bad consequences, especially very rare (regarding their lives). A person is much more important to be able to communicate with friends, for example, than keeping his body and thought-movements secret from those who can use it to the detriment of the person himself (an elementary example is burglary at the moment when a person calls up from a social network). went for a long time somewhere). Fighting a crowd of lemmings is meaningless, at least to fight for their fate.
2. Services that require de-anonymization from users often do benefit. The same social networks, surveillance cameras, and even recordings of moving a cell phone between the towers - if used properly, they provide many opportunities for gaining knowledge / pleasure / avoiding trouble.
3. The main threats from de-anonymization:
- State and society: this refers to the pathological inclination of the state in general and individual structures in particular (including public institutions) to abuse their power against citizens for the sake of different purposes, secret and obvious. It also includes organized crime, since it differs from the state only in sign. This also includes unfortunate and frankly stupid near-moral laws, the observance of which is difficult or not always possible, and often requires sacrificing health (mental), common sense, other moral norms or long-term interests. An example is the struggle against child porn (although the phenomenon itself deserves a struggle), where the degree of absurdity in the interpretation of ordinary actions has passed all limits, especially in individual states.
- Companies earning from advertising and selling services (their own or others). Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. For the sake of their profits, these companies use information to distort the overall picture of the services offered (in the results of search results, for example), which can harm (and strategically - harm) the interests of certain people. Also, due to the specifics, these companies are subject to the influence of various public and state organizations that may require the removal or distortion of publicly available information. The information itself cannot be changed, but it is easy to change the idea of ​​accessibility or the characteristics of information.
- All sorts of media corporations - suppliers of films and music (both offline and online). They are similar to the companies from the previous paragraph, but the threat is not in the distortion of a part of reality (cinema has long become a parallel reality), but in an interpretation of the concept of “reproduction” and those payments implied by this interpretation, which is far from common sense.
- Unorganized and partially organized crime. The presence of a threat is fairly obvious here, although some specific threats may surprise.
- Overly curious fellow citizens. Actually, the threats themselves do not practically represent them (unless they can be overly annoying), but they can supply information to the previously listed categories, voluntarily or involuntarily (more often by stupidity).
4. The essence of the threat. Any conflict (and positively-colored interactions are not considered here) is won by the participant who possesses the greatest amount of reliable information, not only about other participants of the conflict, but also about himself and about the “landscape” of the conflict, i.e. the rules and laws by which the conflict develops. Information about yourself is always available, other types of information must be obtained. Wins the one who got more, and whose production is more accurate. It is possible to reverse this statement in the following way: the less information the enemy has obtained, the harder it is for him to win, with a constant amount of information available about the enemy himself.
One of the parts of the “landscape” is knowledge about the distribution of information, in some way reflection - the knowledge of how much and what information the adversary possesses, how it can use this information and what other information it can try to extract. The distribution is dynamic, since both the properties of the information itself, and other parts of the “landscape”, and opponents change over time.
If we formulate the above more clearly, we get the following: the threat of de-anonymization consists in providing the potential adversary with information about himself and / or about the “landscape” of the conflict, which will help him win in the event of a conflict.
5. What to do? First, we must realize that any act of disclosing information about oneself carries both positive and negative sides. With the awareness of the presence of negative sides, people traditionally have difficulties in all areas. Secondly, in any act of disclosing information, it is worth thinking about what kind of information and in what extent it should be disclosed. Not necessarily the amount of disclosure should be minimal (although desirable), but in any case it should be controlled. Thirdly, in any social interaction, in any act, you should be aware of the amount of information that is potentially available to other participants in the interaction. This helps control the dissemination of information, mentioned earlier.
Fourthly, it is necessary to be critical of information received from outside. It would seem that this has nothing to do with de-anonymization - because the information is not disclosed, but on the contrary, it turns out. But it is worth taking into account the fact of misinformation - when an opponent (not necessarily with conflicting interests) provides information that he thinks will benefit the situation for him. A typical example is when a child answers the question “who walked with” is not true in order to avoid swearing for walks with “wrong” friends or in “wrong” places. A more subtle example is Google’s search results, as well as any “personalized” services. Fifth, the eternal task of separating the wheat from the chaff, and so standing in the process of extracting information, can be complicated for the adversary — by adding information noise and direct disinformation.
As output we can say the following:
De-anonymization itself is not bad and not good. She accepts the color in each specific case, taking into account the situation and the participants involved. Control over information is needed, but control is not only total closeness. Different types of information require different types and methods of control. As in any other interaction with the world, it is important to understand what is around and what is happening, what you give, what you get in return, it is important to analyze the facts.
')
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/137475/
All Articles