Just a small heads up; ive noticed a uptick in links spread on Reddit, 4chan and even here to collaborative playlist from youtube, spotify and similar with very non or very few followers. All coming from new accounts.
Its a common way to fish for your personal data. They will make a new list and post it in only certain posts/threads and wait for you to subscribe with your account.
An easy way to protect yourself is by setting your phone or pc to open links in a second browser where you are not logged into anything. Set it to delete cookies on exit.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
I never ever use my real name or information on any sites I use except for like Best Buy or something. I’m like a ghost. Am I doing enough?
There are levels here to deal with different threat levels as well as your interest in disrupting your life. Obviously on one extreme 100 is going fully off-grid and living under an assumed identity, no social media, no online purchases, cash only, no subscriptions other than internet service under a false identity, using nothing but tor and tails and having a faraday bag for your phone which you keep with you only at home. Of course this would kind of destroy your social life and be very disruptive and difficult to maintain while holding down a job.
The other end is not caring at all.
I definitely think where you can, you should lie about your real name (obviously you can’t do that for certain things, bank accounts, things that can be disputed and if an invalid name is used could cause you hardship and anyways if you order online unless you’re using a giftcard bought with cash you’re using a credit card tied to your name anyways) and other aspects of yourself. False birthdays, ages, etc for non-important websites.
The problem is being tracked around on the web is relatively easy. Obviously a site like lemmygrad isn’t intrusive and loading tracking scripts from google and facebook and so on but most sites are.
I would suggest trying to containerize your presence online. If you use social media make sure not to use similar usernames that allow doxxing, don’t reveal personal details and even sew false ones if you’d like in your anonymous accounts.
Use an adblocker like ublock always. I would follow the other settings I mentioned if you can and if you use firefox. If you use google chrome well you’re trusting google not to betray you.
Privacy is not a few paragraphs or a post it’s a book-sized topic just for the online realm. Containerizing things though as I mentioned with the addons or otherwise separating your lives is highly recommended. Keep software up to date to prevent vulnerability exploitation, etc. Don’t click suspicious things, be suspicious and careful, educate yourself on privacy, basic computer security, etc.
Have multiple emails. Avoid tying politics like this to your main email or any traceable back to your real identity (for example an email you registered to a social media with is tied to your identity even if under a false name on the email itself).
As long as everything you are doing is legal and wont get you in danger in your country, you are fine. My posts is directed at other users and political groups fishing for data. But without any VPN/Tor browser, ex. the goverment will have no issue linking your IP to the person who ordered/pays for the connection.
There is always the non-zero chance the government ignores the law and continues to persecute, so I’m wondering if I should be safe and do what you are suggesting.