New form of censorship?

submitted by magnora7 from self.censorship

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]chottohen 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Here is another technique to silence a user who often posts things that are too close to the truth for a particular interest group. Let's say that this user is aware that there are bad actors out there but doesn't always practice secure Internet protocol. For example, he sometimes doesn't bother to log out, uses a short, easy-to-guess password, one he has used on other sites. Let's say the group he has offended is skilled enough to hack into banks, large corporations or just about anywhere. It would be a piece of cake for them to get into the sloppy user's computer and make a few changes so that user cannot log in to his favorite sites. Then, Mr Sloppy tries to change his password to something more secure but runs into trouble: the site won't let him use the same identity because of the changes that have been made from inside his computer. So, in desperation he changes his username, creates a new, much longer, stronger password and logs back in to a site like saidit, for example. Nobody knows him, he has no reputation, etc. and just gives up. If he does post anything he will probably try not to offend the particular interest group he suspects of getting inside his computer. This is a form of censorship, don't you think? [This is in no way to be interpreted as a criticism of saidit. This is my favorite place on the Internet. So, what was I trying to say? Anything connected to the Internet can be hacked. Take all the security precautions your computer allows. Use a VPN.]

[–]magnora7[S] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Yup. That's one way, but it would be tricky.

Another possibility to find users IP is when someone PMs you a link, pretending it's spam they PM'd everyone. But instead they send each user to a unique link on a server they control. Then they log everyone's IPs, and can connect it to usernames because each user got a unique link.

Watch out for this kind of crap.

[–]chottohen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's a good idea. Whoever this is—probably a bot—is even trying to gaslight me by moving my cursor around randomly. That happens sometimes when I take a quick look at saidit, then go make a cup of coffee or am away for a few minutes. The first time it happens, it is disturbing. I do not have delusions of grandeur but I have appeared on a certain group's radar a few times, here and on reddit before and they decided to put a bot on me, I think. But it's a time-share sort of thing where it is not always there but it does seem to correlate with whatever I posted recently. If I posted something critical of that certain group then the bot kicks in within a few hours usually. So is this sort of thing usual? And yes, once a year or so ago, someone suspicious sent me a link and I just automatically clicked it, then realized it could be tracking me and quickly clicked away. That's the same technique you mentioned and I think they got me on that one. They sure are out there and it's a little spooky but I won't be put off and know that, for them, I'm not important enough to warrant more than a bot sometimes. Oh, and yes I use whaat I think is a good VPN. Thanks.