r/privacy

I don't want to do it. Would you? Why or why not.

I searched for someone on LinkedIn by their first name and clicked on their profile because I wanted some to check one website that they posted about like a week ago. Anyway, I clicked on that website and shared it through chrome to my PC.

Then, after 15 min or so I opened my ult private Instagram account that is related by email nor contact share enabled, and found this guy is the first one in "Suggested for you"!!

PS: please don't judge me for using LinkedIn :)

I wonder if there's a way to bypass Ubisoft age verification, I've tried many 3D characters and pictures with OBS studio as people recommended on many reddit posts, but nothing worked, I have been trying for 3 weeks, I would appreciate any advice.

The company that does my life insurance works with Trust Stamp. turns out they also work with ICE (multiple news sites) and train their AI on your sensitive information (privacy policy) despite touting themselves as being privacy-first and “hashing” your facial geometry.

Nice find that allows you to generate noise for Data Brokers ! (not sponsored, not affiliated with the developer, just randomly saw it on F-droid's home page and wanted to share :))

FaceTec, a Face/ID Verification company stores all user biometric data in a weird client app. This company is widely used in banking apps, and some random apps like Grindr.

I was trying to remove my data from a website, and they were forcing me to make a facial verification. When I complained, the support agent for some reason, sent me an email back to my request with a picture of some kind of client app with the attempt I've made to verify my identity, showing that it was denied. The picture had the face of multiple people, the date, their location and device/browser used.

I've looked into their website and this seems indeed the case. So if a website uses this company to verify your age, avoid at all costs.

Seeing flock cameras everywhere and seeing satellites that are able to track your every move whilst you are consistently being tracked online for your political beliefs and what you're interested in and then there are door cameras that can detect your face and cross reference it with all the previously mentioned, I feel as if I cannot hide myself anymore.

This is especially concerning due to the number of data breaches that keep happening, and no company is held accountable for said breaches. Like, I will wake up and see Malwarebytes give me a notification about a data breach, and nothing will even happen to get any justice.

There's also the concern of people search services where ordinary people (not megacorporations) can use OSINT software to track you using usernames, then easily recover your information using said information you may have leaked online that can lead to doxxing.

Also, with the way the political climate is right now and seeing people get prosecuted for the things they say online, it feels like free speech is just dead.

Like I want to live a private life away from these corporations, but I don't want to boot up TOR browser every day with a VPN, then every website I visit blocks me because of my private browsing practices (also not mentioning that these private browsers are EXTREMELY SLOW, making the web surfing experience horrendous).

Just got locked out of Bluesky until I "verified my age" and of course that required me to either give this KWS company a copy of my ID, a face scan, or the last 4 digits of my SSN.

How about no.

Deleted the app and that's that.

Most privacy conversations on this sub frame the issue as a Fourth Amendment question. Search and seizure, probable cause, the warrant requirement. That framing is mostly wrong, or at least mostly incomplete. The doctrine that actually decides what's protected and what isn't, in almost every smart home, cloud account, and digital service case, is the third-party doctrine. It's older than most of the technology it's applied to, and it's the load-bearing wall in the house-of-cards we all live in.

The case is Smith v. Maryland, 1979. The court held that a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information they voluntarily share with a third party. The facts were narrow at the time. Smith had called a victim from his home phone, and the police had the phone company install a pen register to record the numbers he dialed, without a warrant. The court said the numbers weren't private because Smith had handed them to the phone company by the act of dialing. The phone company was the third party. He'd voluntarily shared. No warrant required.

I spent eighteen years working traffic homicide cases in Florida, and the doctrine quietly decided more of those cases than the Fourth Amendment did. Cell tower data, cloud backups, app records, smart device logs. The framework that determined whether I needed a warrant or just a subpoena was almost always third-party doctrine, layered with the Stored Communications Act, not the Fourth Amendment in any direct sense. The Fourth Amendment governs the house. Smith governs the cloud.

The doctrine has been eroding, slowly. Carpenter v. United States, 2018, was the first real crack. The court held that historical cell site location information, the records of which towers a phone connected to over time, is sensitive enough that the government needs a warrant to get it, even though the data sits with the carrier. The reasoning was that the information is so revealing and so involuntarily generated (you don't really "choose" to ping cell towers) that the old logic of Smith doesn't fit. But Carpenter was narrow. It carved out cell site location, not everything else. Cloud email, cloud photos, smart speaker logs, Ring footage, thermostat history, search history, all of it still lives substantially in Smith's world, modified by the SCA, which gives weaker protection than a warrant.

Where smart home data lands depends on where it sits. Data on a hub in your closet, on a drive in your house, on a camera that never reaches the internet, that's "papers and effects" inside the home and gets the full Fourth Amendment treatment. Data on a manufacturer's server, even data you generated, is third-party doctrine territory. The same camera, the same recording, the same motion event. Where it lives decides which framework applies, which standard the government has to meet, and whether you'll ever know they asked.

So the practical takeaway, if you're trying to build a private digital life, is that the doctrine is the thing to pay attention to. Not the Fourth Amendment, which is sturdier than people think but covers less than people think. The third-party doctrine is the one that decides what's protected, and it's built on the premise that you already gave it away.

Once you share information with a third party, the law mostly stops treating it as yours. That's not a future risk, it's the current rule. Be deliberate about what you hand over, to whom, and under what architecture. The default architecture of consumer tech is to route everything through someone else's server, which is the architecture the doctrine was designed for. Local-first, end-to-end encrypted, or off the wire entirely are the postures that keep your data on the side of the Fourth Amendment instead of Smith. You can't unshare what you've voluntarily given away.

I've never looked at men's thongs. Never cared for looking at men's thongs. I don't swing that way. Nothing on my computer about men's thongs. Unfortunately I'm now typing the words "men's thongs". But Google keeps putting men's thongs in front of my eyes. Every time I open Youtube, it's there. I scroll down to read comments, it's there. Mens thongs, mens thongs, mens thongs. I cant escape it!!!! FFFFFF! 20 years of being online without turning on Personalized Ads. Is this Google's way of forcing me to finally give in to Personalized Ads???

Have you ever worried that a photo, PDF, Word document, or video might contain private hidden metadata before you share it?

I’m trying to understand real-world file privacy concerns. For example: location data in photos, author names in documents, edit history, device info, timestamps, or other hidden details.

What type of file would you be most worried about sharing, and why?

TLDR; Windows Edge and other features “silently” re-enabled after being disabled(?)

I want to start off by saying that I’m not some tech guru, expert, or even have a job in the field. But I do have a curiosity, and know how to Google things or watch a few YouTube videos. So again, if I say something “wrong,” please keep that in mind.

Lately, I haven’t been feeling good about all these “anti-privacy” practices by big tech, and I’m generally a private person (I don’t even have social media/deleted them after high school 10 years ago \[Reddit doesn’t count\]). It’s not that I want to do bad things, I just don’t want my dick pics on the cloud, at best 🤷🏽‍♂️ that can be data-mined in the future like a sort of “new-age” fossil.

Naturally, that led me down to just trying to figure out how to make my devices and tech more secure and private, at the operating level, and even further as I learn. This has led me down a rabbit hole of home-networking, the awareness of data brokers, etc. Again, not an expert. But basically, YouTube and Google implied, or I at least assumed, that I would be able to turn some of these features off as a middle ground, before just changing OS’s, devices, etc. This led me to researching and carefully following de-installation guides, and even “registry edit” guides I could make, or even run through a 3rd party app everyone else uses, and change/disable some things.

I opted for the “basic” installer, and a few “extra” tidbits like disabling Edge and telemetry. I even followed other guides and downloaded an AI-free, light browser called Brave. I even reduced my 16GB Ram PC from having a 50% utilization in background processes just from being on, to 25% after all the edits I made, and restarting my laptop.

Again, not an expert, but I’m pretty sure I had experienced some degrees of success. However, come to find out, Microsoft Edge was “re-enabled” silently, even though I ALSO turned off auto-updates at the registry level, at least for a year. I think I even set that for “automatic / security” updates that are not something you should be normally able to toggle. This is insane, and when I Googled it again, that’s when Google basically told me “get f\*\*\*\*\*,” and that I had to “trick my device” into thinking I was from Europe, where it’s ILLEGAL for Windows to do the exact thing they just did to me. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Usually, when you delete your account, your messages and pictures will still show up in a chat, just under 'Facebook User' instead of your name. However, I've seen that some old chats of mine with deleted accounts no longer contain their messages, just mine, and it's happened to a few friends of mine as well. Has anyone here experienced this? Do you think Meta is beginning to phase out saving these messages?