For some reason many people I know ask me cybersecurity/privacy questions. I'm sure it's not because I rant at them a lot.
(I realize this question is technically off topic, but I believe it is of interest to many if not most readers, who are probably in the same position of fielding similar questions from normals. If I'm being inappropriate, please let me know.) Someone asked me about dealing with facebook and in particular facebook live. I'll call this person Ida (she), without loss of generality. The questions is basically: Ida would like to watch some things, related to people she knows, that are only available via facebook live, said to be within a private group run by these people she knows. The people are happy to add her to the group once she just emails them her facebook username. (Other than the people's decision to use facebook, they are ok people, and Ida is not trying to hide from them.) Ida has never had a facebook account, and doesn't want to have one. She doesn't want to have one, and doesn't want people she knows, who unfortunately use facebook to send her friend requests. Ida doesn't want to be tracked by facebook, and is worried about browser cookies. She is also somewhat worried about facebook associating her home IP address with her access to the facebook live stream and then engaging in tracking based on that. My advice is basically: Only deal with facebook with a separate computer, from an account that has none of your bits. Do not ever ever log in to facebook with any other device. If you get friend requests, just click deny/no. Don't worry about it. If anyone asks you in real life about this, just tell them you are using facebook only for one specific purpose and are otherwise declining to engage with it. I am unclear on if you have to give your True Name; I hear rumors there is a True Name policy but I don't really know if this is true, or enforced. So am unclear on advice about pseudonyms. It's probably best to use some kind of VPN on this fb-only computer so that the IP address facebook sees is disconnected from your other internet activity. I tend to bitmask/calyx or to setup openvpn on one's own VPS, depending on how nerdy Ida is. Of course, calyx means trusting calyx, but showing facebook their address, and own VPS means showing that address, but if that VPS doesn't do other web stuff, it may still be good. It may also be good to disconnect from your ISP for a while after using facebook to provoke getting a new/different IP address. I am wondering if anyone thinks the above is off base, or has different or additional advice. Thanks, Greg _______________________________________________ List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev To unsubscribe, email: [email protected]
