Things to Consider while on your smartphone ... (Privacy? What's that?)

So, things to consider.   All wise-ass-ery aside.  (except for some.   Because I'm, you know, Kenova.  The asshole - but having a beard makes up for it.  Ask half the girls I've spanked.)

Rule 1.   If you post it, they will come.

They are web crawlers, and post it, meaning put it out there, anywhere.   On your phone.  On a private server.  In an IM to friends one-on-one.  On a memorial site, ten years ago.  In an article that some grandmothers eventually scanned as part of scanning a newspaper into archives.  As a joke, tweeted and then deleted.  On a .Gov email that you both "got rid of".  On a private selfie that you keep in that hidden folder on your phone, where you hide all your gay (and selfie) porn.  On a friend's phone.  On a screen cap.  Walking past someone with a digital camera or a phone held up in the "selfie" or "I 'm-a-tourist" pose.

If it was taken, web crawlers will eventually find it.  A class I've been to numerous times (seven at last count) takes a digital photo taken by a cell phone using a wide angle setting during the Obama inauguration (nine years ago) and a computer blows it up to the point where over 90% of the faces more than half turned in the direction of the phone are recognizable by the (now on hiatus) Google Face or Google Image Search.

More than 90%.   Maybe over half of a group in a single photograph, of hundreds of thousands of people.  On a camera from nine, fucking, years ago.   On one today?  Who knows.

That folder on your phone? The private, hidden, ultra-secret, password-protected gaper porn and selfies one? It probably backs up—without your permission—to Google Images, Dropbox, Redland, Instagram, Pictoria, Picasa, or any of thousands of other sites your phone connects to, usually via software you don’t even know is there.

And if you think shutting off Google uploads and Dropbox will keep your data safe, that's not enough. Many apps install third-party add-ons when you grant permission to another app. These hidden installations won’t appear unless you check the list of every active process. Are you prepared to research each process by name?

Rule 2.  Teh Interwebs is furrevers.

I was recently jokingly challenged by a friend, an adult actress (yes, I have friends who don't look as nearly troll-ish as I do) to find anything I could on her before she changed her name, her face, her gender, her body type (lovely what a gym and breast implants will do), her hair color....etc, etc.

Her real (non-work) name is (blank).   Her real age is 27.  Which means she began adult acting at 23, prior to FFS, given that her first video's rip/upload date is 4 years old.  She routinely eats at (blank) and orders Pad Thai near her house in Newtown, PA (address: blank).  She grew up as a boy named Chris (blank) (8 different photos, including middle school and high school class photos) and played tennis and soccer.  

She joined the Navy at 18 (graduation photo printed), left at 20 with a "other than honorable" discharge (she came out as a gay man; I was even able to find the name of her former CO).  She had her facial feminization surgery done at the Zukowski Center.   Chest implants are done at Penn Medicine's Plastic Surgery Center in downtown Philadelphia.  Her father's name is (blank), and he's divorced from her mother (blank), who lives a few miles away from each other in Grove City at (blank) and (blank).  Her private Facebook profile is (blank), her private phone number is (blank), and her private email address is (blank).

She has been arrested for soliciting 3 times, twice with charges dropped for lack of evidence, once with all charges withdrawn in return for enrolling in a "safe sexwork" program.  She has an open bench warrant from Bucks County, PA, for a parking ticket that was never paid.

Sum total of work time - 30-40 minutes online, with a few phone calls.  Not a one of them illegal, nor did I ever have to identify myself - people will share information with anyone who asks if you sound polite and official enough. No ID, not even a name, needed.

Number of non-publicly accessible sites used - 0.

Okay, so maybe it would take longer for most nuts.   I'm a trained investigator, and I already know where one line and one link lead to another.   I'm trained as a specialist in this kind of work.

But if I can do it with no real interest in less than an hour, a stalker can do it in a few days or a week.

Rule 3:  There's just no hiding anymore, anyway.

You can hide behind Tor, and you have ten different ISPs bouncing you, or maybe an ISP blocker or cloud, and a dedicated server or a hardened VPN line...

(Btw - Tor?   People on Tor aren't safe because they're better.  They're safe because, unlike most of us, they know how to keep one step ahead of the dogs.  They aren't winning through technology - they're winning by exploiting how long it takes to get a warrant, and moving on a day or two before it.  You don't hear about it when they get caught - they get buried in a hole before it hits the news.)

It's all wasted money, folks.  From the moment you sign online for the first time, your privacy is as thin as tissue paper to anyone who honestly wants to learn about you.  Your behaviors, your shopping choices, that Facebook photo where a friend tagged your face ten years ago without telling you, those supposedly "secure" credit card processing programs...

they all gather your information and share it.   It's part of a program Google purchased called Check Point Technologies.  Creating a digital, invisible behavioral profile of you, from every little mouse click - until they (every system powered by Skynet...er...Google) can recognize you a few seconds after you open a browser (any browser, btw.)

For the record: Anyone with five dollars, access to the Google app store, and your unattended phone can install a completely silent, invisible app that allows them to view your images, listen to your calls, read your texts, and copy any contacts stored on your device. If your Google account is linked—which it usually is—it will also give them access to your emails and internet activity.

You'll never know - once installed, it erases all traces of itself, the download history, and all.   It's a "child safety app" (suuuuure it is, you fucking perverts.)    No, I'm not naming it.   But it's one of over a dozen I know about, and the only one on the app store - the others are non-Google approved, and you can STILL buy them for less than 10 bucks.

Another app lets you "link" your phone to any other phone with a Bluetooth system in range.  It can even turn on some of those Bluetooth links. How many people do you know who know how to password-protect their Bluetooth?   Not many...

Another example?  Anyone with a few extra minutes and some time on Google can install apps that turn their phones into easy-to-activate recording devices, even when they appear shut off - and upload EVERYTHING heard or videoed directly to a private server, for the cost of a $10 app.  It's intended as a self-defense application against government abuse. (suuuure it is...)

Last one.   If you live in a large city, you know where most business and conversation happens.   Your front porch, or the subway station. Neither your porch nor your home is private or protected by law.  So anyone with an interest (a stalker, an ex, a baby-mama, a private investigator) can drop their cheap prepaid cell phone on the bench or in the nearby trash and listen to everything you say.  Ponder that the next time you're buying a cheap dime bag of weed.

Rule 4 (last one, I promise):   Your privacy was pretty much gone anyway.

I have another friend I want to mention.  (I know, right?   Kenova has fucking friends?!)

He was an undercover officer working in the Miami-Dade area, mainly around the airports and just outside the warehouses nearby, as a narc.   He spent his days and a lot of his nights away from his family.  For years, he built cases that kept people in Florida safe.

Then one day, his daughter posted a photo with Daddy at her Daddy/daughter dance.   A five-year-old photo.  Her 10th birthday happened to be the same day as the D/d dance.  Big thing for her.   She was smart enough to never post that her dad was a cop, and her mom and brother both knew the drill...she just really wanted that photo to show a few friends.

Unfortunately for the cop, his persona's Papi has a guy who runs Google images randomly on his runners and his muscle.  He was identified by Google Image Search from a five-year-old photo.   Not even a police photo - just one that was enough to blow his cover as a single, drug-dealing scumbag.  

His position as an undercover narc was blown, and his family had to move (for their safety) to another state.   He had to surrender his pension and transfer (with help from FOP, thank god) to another state as a highway cop, because his days under cover were over.

This officer did nothing wrong.   He left everything electronic in his car, parked in a lot off the swamps, and even went so far as to change clothes and walk to a bus to go home and see his family once a month.  No carryover at all between his two worlds.  

He spoke fluent Spanish at work, and his family didn't know he ever went beyond High School Espanol.  He never wore a wire, ID, or reported directly to anyone, shy of a few pre-arranged drops at coffee shops - about as anonymous as you can get in Miami.

A single old photo, posted by a family member, can be enough to expose your private information and endanger your safety, regardless of how cautious you are.

The lesson?

Learn to accept that you no longer have privacy.   Live your life with the understanding that anything you do, online or in spitting distance of a phone, camera, webcam, or witness (who might blog about it later) isn't private.  Those days are done.  Stop hitting on girls when you're married, stop feeling up that girl at the office, and stop making fun of your boyfriend's dick behind his back.  Live like you're supposed to - or at least be honest about how you do.

Privacy is coming to an end.

Adapt, react, overcome.

That's all we can do.