Is Your Privacy An Illusion? (Taking on Big Tech) - Smarter Every Day 263

Is this still an effort?

I am daily seeing subjects pop up on my phone/laptop which are things that I've mentioned in conversation within the previous few days WITH THE PHONE IN MY POCKET! I like the convenience of Google Assistant, but the invasiveness is troubling

I bet you stopped giving updates because you were told to back off this endeavor. The elites here want to implement a perpetual surveillance state.

Any update on this? I notice there is only one video in this series ;) Love your videos.

What came of this Devin? We just got offered a paid „untracked“ (more like tracked, but without ads) Facebook service in the EU, at a horrendous price and with a really weird offer.

I've been an advocate for digital privacy measures since I learn about Cambridge Analitica, the patriot act, and FB lawsuits with people trying to retrieve their data that went nowhere. Looking ahead just 10-20yrs from now we could have serious issues when start including AI and Neuralink into the mix.

Just downloaded, hope the project is still going! Only now did I see this video.

Did you guys get your project going?

No I so not trust them at all, but I need them tongue my phone, it's horrible I hate it.

What makes this app different from say encryption on vault within Microsoft OneDrive or any other file service e.g. Dropbox that may have encryption or a password manager? Also what backend is being used? AWS?

Thank you very much for this and all the amazing videos!

Zero Knowledge Proof

From where has this come from, that the privacies of all the people in their lives are being attacked all the time by other people and by social belief systems that are invading homes and minds to change the views and moods from the traditional and common to something completely else? Why is this subject of privacy such an extremity of attention and focus, all to be used for waste and for immoral and outrageous purposes? Why is it connected to money and success in a such way that it attracts all the worst sides of everything to be accumulated as problems in life?

Call it 4p.

I'm old enough to remember the shock people had when Google admitted they scanned all their users' emails. Now the younger generation(s) just accepts that big tech looks over your shoulder, and now one thinks anything of it.

Google betrays me daily after 20+ years of usage, lol

How is this going? We never saw a follow up episode for this series.

Silicon Valley was essentially started by Intelligence Agencies, Phones/TVs/Computers came from Military Tech, TOR was set up by the FBI, NSA outsources their storage to Israeli companies (that was disclosed after 9/11)...all that to say - you will never actually have privacy, just the appearance of one.

Where are we at with this? Still hosting in USA? Maybe moving it to Canada.. I have resources available

Right on the problem is most "apps" say at the bottom of like a thirty minute read.... " our privacy policy can change at anytime without notifying you".... Im not a big fan of "apps"....

One point that people don't seem to consider is look at what Hitler was able to do with very little technology. Yes he had military technology but imagine how much worse it would have been if he had the surveillance cameras, microphones, license plate scanners, gps tracking, facial recognition, x ray scanners, as well as Facebook and google and such.
Imagine if in 1930 you post pictures on Facebook at a friend's bar mitzvah and a decade later the Gestapo is watching your every move. Imagine how difficult it would be to have any sort of resistance movement, or even to assist those being persecuted.
Another aspect to consider is that places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan's major advantage over us was we had no idea who was who or who's side they were on. Imagine if before invading a country you first hacked into their systems and downloaded the dossier they've been keeping on each citizen. Names, pictures, family, friends, political leanings, religious beliefs, what they own, and much much more. It's not as though you have a hall of records any more that could simply be destroyed before the enemy can get to it.

I'm actually against privacy. It's a relic of the past that's holding us back. We live in the digital age, so we should strive to share everything instead of keeping everything for ourselves. There're no leaks anymore if the information is already out in the open. Nobody can steal your identity if your data is tied to all of yourself including your physical house (or apartment). Right now, all people need to do is steal your emails, passwords, and phone number to hack you. Imagine if they had to physically copy all your credit cards, your phone, your voice, your fingerprints, and go to your address to impersonate you. "But I don't want people to know where I live!" Why? Because you did something bad? It's like expanding your neighborhood to the rest of the planet. Those who don't care about you won't bother looking you up. Those who want to find you already can btw. And for those who threaten you online, remember that the ones who're seriously planning to come for you won't warn you before doing it; they'll just do it. Without privacy, online threats will drastically go down because it'll be super easy for the police to arrest people who threaten, slander, harrass, and attack others.

That was an awesome video I would appreciate more videos about privacy on the internet. I also think Nostr protocol could in the future help with encryption of data and decentralization of social media but it's to early to talk about that.

No big tech can't be trusted. They need to be broken up because they've to much control and have been in violation of monopoly laws and antitrust laws.

Tor network.

Never trust a "cloud". A cloud is just someone else's computer. That's step one. Have real, physical copies of your stuff. That's step two. At a bare minimum. have a physical backup. A real SSD in your desk is worth millions. After Apple deleted thousands of my songs, I gave up on other people handling my data. If I can't drag and drop things I physically have into folders, I don't need it.

imagine this combined with AI in the futrue. We dont stand a chance against the goverment

I’d love to see this happen

The current US Supreme Court has decided you don't have a right to privacy. That's what Dobbs was about.

I love it when people talk about malwareanalysis and security issues so I can know how much attention I need to pay attentio

As a 23 year old, the explanation of how the US changed after 9/11 was phenomenal. I knew everything changed, but the explanation of "This is how the country was thinking back then" and the self-awareness to say "maybe we were thinking too much with emotion" was incredible to hear

No. Im not in full control

wake up

I just started watching your channel. Your videos are fun and informative.

I totally agree about that big tech and big government are trampling on our personal Liberties. The same thing is happening in the ‘green revolution’ under the guise of saving the planet. I’d like for you to do a video on electric vehicles and analyze how clean they really are. The environmental and human costs from the massive strip-mining of minerals and use of child and slave/forced labor by despotic regimes like the chinese communist party are not much publicized.

You will find that EVs are not green but is really about shifting power and money through coercion.

@smartereveryday would you disclose the nature of your relationship with 4Privacy?

Privacy is an illusion simply because the people hellbent on violating your privacy play mind games to make you think they are not.

Now that the Democrat party has basically become a branch of the Chinese Communist Party and are in control of our government at all levels, we all do have something to hide even if we're not criminals but hold "politically incorrect" political views.

I would love to see a continuation of this series. I think the expectation of privacy has actually gotten worse over the last year, at least for the average user that isn't actively fighting for their privacy.

Thank you for curating this video as well dedicating a series to it and even working on a solution by creating an app that puts the encryption keys in the users hands. Would love to see more on this series as well as advancements in the app and other ways to protect end user data. Kudos!

Hi Dustin. I think you made some execelnt points and a great proposition for have to change the current situation of the internet. Your main focus seems to be protecting data from attacks coming outside of the network.


This still doesn't prevent social engineering attacks within companies hosting our data. One obvious solution to this is ofcourse selfhosting. What would you propose to create a faster shift to a decentralised internet?

How do we educate more people on how to self host and make it viable for uneducated users? One issues stated in a comment is people don't want to use PGP just to send a text because it's a hassle. Greater privacy does mean more effort on the users end.

Finally I also think privacy is still upto the governance on the internet, yet again selfhosting solves part of this issue, however most websites break if you use letterboxing or disable scripts or cookies. Websites simply don't work if you don't give data. How can we push more opensource and more important POPULAR alternatives of sites for mainstream audiences which focus on privacy?

I see that this is supposed to be a series, but I can only find one video from a year ago.

One of the major contributors to this issue is placing trust in the "Big Tech" and allow the data to be transported, stored (data at rest) and accessed by these companies. I watched the migration from on premise email servers to cloud based, same thing with voice, camera and security systems. Much of the current communications security features/protocols rely on the reputation of these systems (IP blocks, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC). A swift transition away from this architecture would result in a storm of bad actors taking advantage.

I would propose using an older but still in use protocol like onion routing (P2P) used by most illicit file sharing programs to host your own data for email, search engine, social media and communications but evolve these protocols for current security standards. This is a double edged sword as the cloud hosted by big tech is far more secure against bad actors but wide open to law enforcement, government agencies and "allowed" data scrapers.

Hosting your own data could be achieved with private clouds, storage "on premise" but then we are back to a lack of redundancy, resiliency, and a single point of failure.

One thing is certain though, Big Tech and Government are sleeping together and trusting them is a bad idea.

The app delivered is nothing that Destin was talking about. It's just a second rate file sharing app. Bait and switch.

🎉thank a lot to you efforts

Where are with this effort, Dustin?

Yesss!