Sergey Shkundaleu @archit3ct@social.ssbx.dev

TIP: Any internet request starts with DNS and you might be profiled by DNS server provider, so choose your wisely! Get it under your control: replace default DNS service from your ISP and try avoiding companies that supply other services to you. Better run it yourself. #punkprivacy

TIP: Divide and conquer or more business friendly separation of duties is very applicable to privacy, if you are using particular mobile phone vendor, just do not use web browser that was made by a same company. If you are using some web service(like free email) try to use tools(browsers, mobile devices) made by a different company to access that service. Less connection particular corporate entity could make off of your data harder for them to profile you. #punkprivacy

I don't use Google, but people were complaining that service is down. Any one?

TIP: For better privacy use a search provider that doesn't personalize your internet searches, and potentially doesn't track search criteria. For example DuckDuckGo declares in their FAQ that they do not track user search criteria and thus can't filter out items based on previous searches and they don't have access to any other cloud data that can be used for the same purpose. #punkprivacy

Went out to whiskey tasting event organized by North Texas ISSA, it was good to meet fellow cybersecurity practitioners and taste some whiskey.

Some people take dramatic turn and switching to dumb phones, while there are actual benefits as when it comes to your attention and just general health and well being, biggest drawback is your privacy as mobile cell phones and SMS messages are easily interceptable and unencrypted. You'd be better off switching to Linux phone, same benefits due to a lack of main stream entertainment/social media apps, plus encrypted communication with strong communication apps. Best of both worlds! #privacy

Thus protecting your privacy is not necessarily about protecting your data it's about protecting your metadata. It's about depriving providers of those pieces of metadata they would typically use to perfect prediction models they created for you. Models that would better understand you, even better than you understand yourself, up to the point when your next move is sold ahead of you reaching decision point for it.

When talking about privacy especially in the context of a social media people often resort to an argument like "What's a big deal, I meant for that picture to be public." and you are absolutely right, that picture of yours is the least important price of information. What's more important is what is called metadata. Metadata that allows provider to answer questions like what he was doing before he posted, what he was doing afterwards, how friends reacted, why he posted and so on and so forth.

Free market does not exist when market players make their purchasing decisions based on metrics that have no correlation to price or value of the product or service.
However true power comes when you can control social narratives that define those metrics and if you can bet on players acting in a particular way because of those social pressures created by metrics you have achieved ultimate power to predictably generate piles of money, hmmm ... wait this is how media-WallStreet symbiosis works.

Distraction or perfection, here's how it went. I received a security key board today and was eager to get my hands on OpenSK, so I sat down to see what capabilities are. However as I looked at the board I realized that it's not really perfect to work with bare board, so I needed the case, I put 3D model into slicer, and got a connection error, damn certificates expired on the printer, I started refreshing certs, but ports are closed on network ... mmm fun wait what I wanted to do?

This article has a very catchy title, however it does not tell you why they were able to search any data in the first place. The answer is very simple, mainly because people had been using services from Big Tech where customers do not own their data and those guys have back-end access to customers data. Think about it, at the end of the day it's YOUR data! #privacy #ethiork https://www.nextgov.com/analytics-data/2022/05/fbi-ran-over-3-million-searches-americans-electronic-data/366420/

I am stunned how many organizations "misuse" cybesecurity insurance. While it make sense from a business perspective, I think that's where ethics should outweigh purely calculative approach. Any insurance is designed to restore what is broken, in a way rebuilt to it's original state. However with any data breach nothing was broken, it's unauthorized people have seen information that should not have been seen. You can not undo that, there is no way you can put genie back! #cybersecurity #ethics

Make no mistake, data is gold for any tech company that sells their customers in packages, it's just a question not much that tech company can obfuscate their data collection practices. https://thenyledger.com/tech/russian-tech-giants-data-harvesting-raises-security-concerns/ #privacy

I am starting to wonder, it looks like censorship to me, or LinkedIn deliberately hiding my post from my network. Here is the story: I've appeared on podcast and as a normal person shared it(post from podcast page) with my network. It's not an automated scheduled post, I shared it manually through LinkedIn interface. After 5 days it had low number of views. So I posted posted screenshot of my Mastodon post to LinkedIn and in 5 hours it generated more views that original post in 5 days. Weird...

I've been honored to appear on 808 Podcast and had a blast talking with Bob Clark about privacy and steps people could take to protect their it in today's world. Here you can watch an episode on their web site https://808podcast.com/808-podcasts/265-sergey-shkundaleu-iontec-software-llc/

REMEMBER: Cyber-security insurance is not your cyber-security tool, it won't help you prevent incident or reduce risks it's just something that might make mess clean-out cheaper.

Privacy is a human right, people may choose not to exercise this right every time, but that doesn't mean that people ever meant to forgo this right, like many corporations trying to make everyone think.