Information hygiene in a country with non-free Internet

Recently there have been various detentions in different countries on the basis of reposts / posts / comments in social networks, this is due to the lack of understanding of the current reality, laws on regulation and methods of law enforcement in the network.

It seems to me that it is worthwhile to derive the basic rules about how to behave (what can be done and what is not) , so that everything would be fine .
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The main message of this post is how not to accidentally break.

What are ordinary people put on the Internet for?

Put behind:

• interaction with information prohibited by law
• for generating information prohibited by law

If you think that you know all the laws that would not accidentally break something - this post is not for you, but if you admit that you may not know something about the laws in your country - welcome. After it, I hope you will understand that it is better not to do something so that by chance something does not break.

We abstract from various "hackers", virus writers and other people who are not included in the category of a regular user. A regular user uses the network as follows:

• Social network
• News publications
• The shops
• Browsing sites not falling into the first two categories
• Messengers
• Cloud Services
• Online Games

And now let's analyze the threats and methods for their elimination for each group.

Social network

Each of us (okay, there may be exceptions, but we are still talking about the Soviet ordinary person) using social networks, someone on Instagram, someone vk, and someone, forgive forgiveness, classmates and my world, You can endlessly list social networks, but they are all divided into three large groups. (like any other site on the net) .

• Domestic (legally located in the country of your stay or, even worse, physically)
• Overseas
• Semi-overseas (The site is located in a country that is friendly with yours or has a legal representation (yes or any other asset) that can be squeezed nationalized)

In social networks, you can break the law if you publish any content or interact with it : Post, repost, like, join a group - everything where interactive interaction takes place is your potential threat.

Immediately take the following as an axiom - the Delete button - does not work , forget about it, it just hides the content from you. Information will be stored as much as the social network itself or its sponsor wants.

The highest threat comes from the type of resource 1 - Domestic, then we have semi-foreign and as the safest option - foreign.

Why domestic = dangerous resources ?!

Everything is very simple, any authorities in any country of the world would need to go to a resource and request such information in order to obtain information who is hiding behind an avatar. (there may be completely stupid and unnecessary steps that for some reason happen in other countries - courts and warrants, but we will not talk about it) As soon as the information was received, your name in the social network + your IP + if you are lucky the number to which linked page - congratulations you are guilty, you have been identified.

If we work with a semi-foreign resource, a version of the court is possible there and the resource itself will still need to think whether it will have to comply with this order.

With foreign resources is still easier. If you do not violate the laws of their country - nothing will happen. ie, you should not drown for (organization prohibited by your supervision) in facebook if in the states it is also considered not desirable .

News publications

Here the sphere where you can stumble much less (if you are not an editor) for example, you can publish a link to the material in another network (social network) but then you will play according to its rules that are already described.

In general, there is only one problem place - comments (which, by the way, falls under the rule: everything where interactive interaction takes place is your potential threat ) , problems may arise here due to two things:

If the site falls into the classification of domestic, or semi - to identify you simply enough - and it means to start office work and prosecution. But a foreign resource also does not give you guarantees of anonymity if you:

• Log in to the site through a social network that is at risk
• Your photo and name are real

The shops

It would seem that there is something that can be broken - yes, everything is simple, you ordered a camera that does not look like a camera but looks like any other object - welcome, this is a special technical tool.

How to get around? - It’s very easy not to buy, as people usually break by accident and just keep this rule in mind.

Browsing sites not falling into the first two categories

Here, in fact, everything is simple, first we determine which category the resource belongs to (by location), and then we apply the rule (adjusted for the category) :

all where interactive interaction takes place is your potential threat

Messengers

Is there anything that can be broken ?! It's very simple, in one country there were sentences for sending SMS messages with poor content, just the same thing for messengers is a matter of time.

To feel safe you need:

1) Check which category the messenger belongs to
2) Check the level of encryption in the messenger
3) Is the messenger blocked in any country?

If everything is clear with the first item, then there can be questions about the second and third: the messenger should have strong encryption - you do not need to understand how it works (although it would be nice) on the table from EFF everything is clearly shown where more green is better.

And about the third point - here comes a bit of philosophy and observation experience - if the messenger was blocked (at least temporarily) in any country - it means the authorities cannot read it.

Even shorter, Skype, Facebook messenger, VK messenger, ICQ is a bad choice.
iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal is a good choice.

Tox is an excellent choice, but the audience is extremely small and has many limitations.

Cloud Services

Do you have backup enabled? - Congratulations, you are using the cloud. The laws of hygiene when using the cloud are very simple. Do not upload files there that you think may cause problems when you find them on your PC.

And here by the way it is better not to be guided by the rule of the location of the resource.

If you want to store sensitive information in the cloud - encrypt it, otherwise.

Online Games

Then what!? Swore at the user voice or chat - you can be a defendant for insults.

How to avoid? - do not swear, do not use the servers of your country and the game you play should be foreign, in this case the maximum that you will have is that you will be blocked from the account.

State traffic interception

Note that if you use a foreign site, but your state knows how to intercept traffic (and now almost everyone can) you must, no, you MUST check for HTTPS connections from the site.

And if you are not even going to write something on the site, please note - the history of visiting this particular page can be recorded, which can lead to unpredictable consequences.

Summarize

1) Check the foreign resource or domestic
2) Any action on a “bad” resource can be used against you.
3) Everything where interactive interaction occurs is your potential threat.
4) Sites without HTTPS bypass especially if you want to write something there