I used to be really into protecting my privacy online. These days I’ve mostly just accepted there’s pretty much nothing I can do short of disconnecting entirely. I’m not even sure why a smart faucet would be appealing to any consumer.
I feel like I’ve just accepted that we lost. I don’t see how we’ll ever get rid of mass surveillance. If we couldn’t get rid of the patriot act after Snowden’s whistleblowing, and we can get consumer privacy/protection now I’m not sure how we’ll ever get it. Maybe I’m just burnt out and cynical, but I don’t see why the government or corporations have any incentive to let people do anything without them knowing about it.
I have reasonable privacy online. None of my devices connect to google, except if I explicitly do so, which I do from time to time for a reason or other. None of my devices are even capable of connecting to Facebook owned domains, I have them DNS blocked.
JS off by default for all sites, no social media (except this site and one more that I run myself). I don't own a TV or any smart appliance whatsoever. No google assistant, siri, Alexa. None of that.
I buy things on Amazon. They know where I live and what I buy from them. They cannot show me ads because I let nobody show me ads.
All in all some people probably get some info about me, but the info collected on me is probably along the lines of what they were capable of getting in 2005. And good luck stitching it all together.
You can do a lot short of disconnecting. But you have to disconnect from the strip mall "internet". You can't wait on laws, because you're right, they have no incentive. You're the only one that does, so you have to do something about it, in your own life, for yourself.
You say reasonable, but that's more than 95% of what "privacy advocates" do and I'd say that's a serious level of privacy. I do most of the things you do as well, so I'm not calling you a radical, but that's not really reasonable; that's way more than most people, even "privacy conscious" ones.
Yeah, I know, but once you have it set up it isn't any more work. And it is a serious level of privacy (and it isn't the entire extent of my setup either) but if some alphabet soup agency wanted to find me they probably could. It's really just to protect me from data collectors and ad agencies and stuff online.
When a lot of people say "it is just too hard" what they mean to say is "I want to use services that track me." For most people, only turning on JS for web apps and not using malware as a service is all it really takes.
>None of my devices are even capable of connecting to Facebook owned domains, I have them DNS blocked.
Can't malicious application work around your DNS block? Is there a way to be 100% sure say all Facebook/Google is blocked? I am not a networking guy so maybe the future is to whitelist IPs/domains for each device and application.
I'm not sure about this actually. I would assume that an application could connect to a DNS server directly and request an IP for a specific domain and then navigate directly. I don't believe I have any applications on any devices that do that, but it is possible.
> I’m not even sure why a smart faucet would be appealing to any consumer
Very quickly off the top of my head I could imagine:
- measuring out the appropriate volume for the teapot and delivering at the ideal brewing temperature for the particular tea
- knowing that one family member likes drinking water ice-cold while another prefers near-room-temperature
- recognising that it's about to pour onto hands and reducing the temperature to below scalding
- choosing from various sources (tap, filtered, recycled storm-water) depending on use-case, to optimise supply costs, filtration costs, environmental impact etc.
It's annoying (from a privacy and security perspective) how 'smart'-ening even the most innocuous things can be quite appealing to the end-user, and how nasty (again, from a privacy and security perspective) the implementations that make it to market end up being.
It doesn't need to be that way though. Embedded software powered devices have been around for decades, and much like video-games of old nobody needed to beam updates to them throughout the life of the product, and they didn't stop working the moment the company went out of business.
All of those tasks could be completed with robust and simple software, rather than ridiculous stacks of constantly updating libraries connected to the internet.
Exactly! We have, as an industry, collectively forgotten that computing power can be had without connecting to the Internet. Nobody’s objecting to smart gadgets—we are objecting to gadgets that needlessly rely on Internet to work, serve unwanted ads to us, and surreptitiously send god knows what data back to the manufacturer.
>we are objecting to gadgets that needlessly rely on Internet to work, serve unwanted ads to us, and surreptitiously send god knows what data back to the manufacturer.
Don't forget "gadgets that are beholden to the manufacturer allowing them to keep functioning."
>It's annoying (from a privacy and security perspective) how 'smart'-ening even the most innocuous things can be quite appealing to the end-user, and how nasty (again, from a privacy and security perspective) the implementations that make it to market end up being.
I agree. The benefits of "smart" devices could be a great boon to all of us, far beyond the examples you gave.
In fact, most IOT devices would be most welcome in my home if, and only if, they only pushed data to a local source directly under my control.
At that point, as long as I can manage the flow of data, I would be perfectly happy with a voice assistant (which connected to the Internet only to service specific requests and didn't pass my voice data to "the cloud") or an entertainment device which would connect to the service(s) of my choice and retrieve/stream voice/video/music when I direct it to do so.
Video door entry systems, room-by-room climate/lighting control, automated oven pre-heating and a raft of other conveniences would be fabulous too.
The problem isn't the technology, but rather how it's implemented. And these ideas aren't anything new either. Heinlein, The Jetsons and many, many other sources predicted home automation like this decades ago.
The real barriers to such locally managed systems is widespread adoption of protocols and software to locally manage this stuff.
But it's a chicken and egg problem. Why would home owners/builders/renovators include such systems when the IoT devices all phone home and specifically forbid reverse engineering and re-purposing?
And why would device manufacturers implement such open protocols and integration with locally controlled/managed systems when there's both no market for it, and they can increase revenues by selling all that tasty, tasty data?
There's a multi-billion dollar industry for locally controlled/managed home automation/IoT systems that could be created and cultivated, but the current barriers to entry are pretty high and (given that general-purpose computing devices for the home are on the decline) getting higher.
I'd be happy just to have a faucet where a reasonable human can get water that comes out at a temperature other than "freezing cold" and "scalding hot".
I'd be happy with our hands-free faucet in the kitchen being able to adjust the temperature without going under the sink to twist a fiddly knob where the water is connected.
I haven't given up, because the fight still pays off. I just don't treat it as an all-or-nothing struggle.
Privacy is a side-effect of addressing other concerns. I use uBlock because the internet sucks without it. I delete old accounts to avoid data breeches. I avoid IoT because it's finicky and has a shorter lifespan. I compartmentalise my online life to keep the internet hate machine at bay. I don't use Facebook or LinkedIn because I don't enjoy it. I don't give my contact information because I don't want to be contacted.
All those privacy-oriented actions have other tangible benefits.
I see privacy like eating fruit and getting exercise. It's good hygiene, and even a half-assed effort is better than nothing.
I am by no means a luddite, and hope to enjoy the fruits of civilization and society for as long as it will let me. But I have started picking up a bunch of skills in order to maintain and build anew, devices and tools that will no doubt become unnecessarily bloated in the future.
I already have some rudimentary electronics skill, so it's mostly been metalworking, such as welding and machining. I have a 3D printer as well, I'm not against PLA for replacement plastic parts and not against using technology I have full control over as a means to my ends.
Don't need to buy a smart faucet if I can build my own very ordinary faucet.
I feel like I’ve just accepted that we lost. I don’t see how we’ll ever get rid of mass surveillance. If we couldn’t get rid of the patriot act after Snowden’s whistleblowing, and we can get consumer privacy/protection now I’m not sure how we’ll ever get it. Maybe I’m just burnt out and cynical, but I don’t see why the government or corporations have any incentive to let people do anything without them knowing about it.