Nimish Batra, The Life And Times Of

There is a teeny tiny hole in the understanding of quite a lot of the ‘Facebook generation’ (i.e., us) about the nature of the internet and online communication. It is so small, in fact, that it is the size of a dwarf planet – no bigger than Pluto – if the understanding of the internet is taken to be (roughly to scale) the size of the Universe.

Nothing major. Except that this particular Pluto is hurtling towards us – and no one seems to care.

As best as I can summarize, there is no way us normal people can have anonymity or privacy, unless given certain parameters.

Here’s the deal: Say you create a new account on cnet.com, never use your real email account to log in, but use a free mail account for this and other sites, and never post your name or address or any other identifying details.

However, in the course of a long comment history, there would be hints such as your likes, dislikes, approximate geographical area, gender, age-group…

And someone, somewhere, hates your guts because you are a fan of some phone XYZ, and proceeds to figure out where you study, where you live (etc) from your comment history – and then goes ahead to find your real name on Facebook by narrowing down search results…

Do you see?

Lets say you create a new login everyday. So no one on the website can actually get a coherent picture.

What about the admins of the website? Do you think they will spot someone creating new accounts and abandoning them daily from a certain subnet at your ISP?

What about your ISP? They log everything and they already know your real name.

“Ah, but I’ll use Tor,” you say. Right. But once again, at the end points, the admins of the website see an incoming connection from a seemingly untraceable, but known-Tor host. And your ISP knows you are communicating using the Tor network. I haven’t read up a lot on Tor, but there you go.

No practical anonymity.

Further, many people believe that an HTTPS connection keeps everything safely hidden. Right. You remember that the ISP sits and records everything right? Which means that given enough data traffic, they’ll have enough information to decrypt most of your HTTPS.

Also, there was this magical idea that you can use proxy servers to download torrents and the ISP wouldn’t know. Guys, get real. Even if you encrypt the packets, the ISP can see the ports you use, the amount of traffic coming and going, the protocols used in the lower layers etc etc… Really?

The only way these tricks can work is IF AND ONLY IF you are tricky for short bursts of time and data.

Otherwise, I guess this is the golden rule of pessimists that we should keep in mind: If it leaves your network, assume that it is publicly available. If it is publicly available, assume that it will be used to your detriment.