People can run secure systems that share minimal info.
And those generally aren’t the machines you want to connect to the internet and use for all your everyday browsing.
This requires all systems to store and share specific info.
Specific, unverified, info. That you are already sharing in most of the situations where it is being asked for.
So you’re making it illegal to have a private system. Sure most people don’t, but now you’re making it illegal.
A lot of things are illegal. Without the third party verification requirement, you are perfectly fine to hardcode that to say you were born on June 9th, 1969 by default. And that complies with the California legislation (last I read through it).
You think that’s okay because we don’t have good privacy laws right now? You want to give up?
No. I want people to actually understand what is going on so that they can actually protect themselves.
kurwa@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
How do you want people to protect themselves?
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
That is really going to depend on what your actual risk is. There are a decent number of articles and videos out there that go into what journalists have to do and… they are generally ahead of the curve on stuff like that.
But what people SHOULD do is to gain an understanding of what is actually going on. This entire debacle REALLY feels like a mix of people being mislead as to what the California legislature actually is (whether for Views or more nefarious reasons) combined with making it abundantly clear that they know absolutely nothing about their current risks.
Like, you telling pornhub you are over 18 is not telling PornhubCorp anything they don’t already know from all the other cookies and fingerprints you are carrying everywhere. Hell, a lot of services are dedicated to tracking by IP to get around incognito mode and even caching to get around VPNs (although, most don’t have to bother since people have been trained to just put EVERYTHING through a vpn so that it doesn’t matter in the first place). They are literally just ticking a checkbox in the hope of not getting blocked by more payment processors.
So if you truly care about protecting your age? Have multiple devices. Learn how to split your traffic based upon device to get around many fingerprinting techniques. Figure out where to sit at Starbucks so that you have your back to a wall but don’t look like a pervert. And so forth.
Rather than freaking out and throwing tantrums because people are trying to inform you about how little a self-reported age at the OS level that can be requested matters.
MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Can I ask you to explain your point, “age doesn’t matter, your digital footprint carries over?” You mention solutions to protect yourself from the digital footprint carry over, but this law would just make it easier to overcome those solutions.
Now instead of having to figure out the various unique patterns of accessing the internet to determine info about you, you just tell them your age (or that you’re an adult, whatever) on those systems directly.
I also think it’s a bit disingenuous to call ‘this is the first step towards something worse’ a slippery slope when that is exactly how the creeping erosion of privacy has gone in the US historically, but especially the last few decades.
You acknowledge that a lot of people don’t fully understand how to protect themselves (and offer solutions that require more money, time, and education to accomplish) and in the same breath that is why it’s okay that we make data collection easier.
I know this probably comes across as accusatory, but I really don’t mean it that way. I’m genuinely trying to understand what your perspective is.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
I… didn’t say that? Not sure if you replied to the wrong person?
But I’ll try to respond to what I can?
Assuming we are referring to the California legislature (I believe most/all of the US legislature if on the same grounds. The proposed EU "framework"s are very different), there is no requirement for third party verification.
It is literally the same check we already have. “Enter a random ass date that is more than 18 years ago”. This doesn’t “overcome” anything and, arguably, is a good law to get on the books so that you can say “Something is being done” before all the legislature and “frameworks” that want to be built around third party verification and “digital passports” do gain traction.
All of this is already happening and HAS already happened. You know all those stories about how google knows you are pregnant before you miss your first period? You know how you can quite often just click “verify you are human” and it processes without making you generate training data?
Hell, you know how targeted ads are a thing?
All of that is the same thing. It is about building profiles that tend to be so ridiculously specific that it isn’t even “This user connecting from Norway actually lives in the US and is from Cleveland” and is more “Oh, this is Oswald Harvey using his nordvpn subscription. He tends to favor the endpoints that are 25% down the list”
Both of which speak towards why people need to educate themselves to understand what information is already out there.
Yes? I am sorry that protecting your privacy takes effort? I am sure that if you pay a random sponsor on an LTT video that they’ll claim to do everything for you?
Like… I really don’t know what to tell you?