Every time I talk about privacy online, the pessimists always come out. "It's impossible to have any online privacy." "They've already collected so much data about you. Why bother?" Is it really well and truly over? Or are there actually good reasons to still care about online privacy in the age of surveillance capitalism? 🌐 My website: https://ericmurphy.xyz 💸 Support the Channel: https://ericmurphy.xyz/donate 🎥 Watch my videos on Odysee: https://odysee.com/@ericnmurphy 0:00 Intro 0:48 It's over 3:08 "You'll never have total privacy online." 5:49 "They've already collected so much data about you." 6:41 Privacy goes mainstream 9:08 Under the influence 9:32 Why pessimism fails

In sharing this video here I’m preaching to the choir, but I do think it indirectly raised a valuable point which probably doesn’t get spoken about enough in privacy communities. That is, in choosing to use even a single product or service that is more privacy-respecting than the equivalent big tech alternative, you are showing that there is a demand for privacy and helping to keep these alternative projects alive so they can continue to improve. Digital privacy is slowly becoming more mainstream and viable because people like you are choosing to fight back instead of giving up.

The example I often think about in my life is email. I used to be a big Google fan back in the early 2010s and the concept of digital privacy wasn’t even on my radar. I loved my Gmail account and thought it was incredible that Google offered me this amazing service completely free of charge. However, as I became increasingly concerned about my digital privacy throughout the 2010s, I started looking for alternatives. In 2020 I opened an account with Proton Mail, which had launched all the way back in 2014. A big part of the reason it was available to me 6 years later as a mature service is because people who were clued into digital privacy way before me chose to support it instead of giving up and going back to Gmail. This is my attitude now towards a lot of privacy-respecting and FOSS projects: I choose to support them so that they have the best chance of surviving and improving to the point that the next wave of new privacy-minded people can consider them a viable alternative and make the switch.

  • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    5 months ago

    Quantum computers eh? Yeah that’s not even remotely true. Currently they are a scientific curiosity with very very little practical use.

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      2·
      5 months ago

      It does not even matter, namely if tomorrow quantum computers were to become a commodity then we would at the same time switch to quantum resistant encryption, e.g https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography

      The name “post quantum encryption” sounds super complicated, and to be fair the math behind it is beyond my understanding (and I won’t even claim I would have enough time in my life time to study it and assume I can formally prove all of it to be correct) yet switching is actually relatively trivial, namely your software, say a browser like Firefox or Chrome, and the server it communicates with, e.g lemmy.ml relying on e.g nginx or Apache, “just” have to have at least 1 matching encryption scheme, one way to exchange data that is post-quantum resistant. In practice that means configuration files on both sides that you, as a user, do not even know exist and that can be done through basic updates.

      TL;DR: most users will switch to post-quantum encryption without even realizing, and then even if say the NSA were to buy a $1T quantum computer, even your $1K computer and the $10K server it communicates with would be able to handle it no problem, even a $30 Raspberry Pi computer will.