re: Is anyone else worried that Google and Amazon are taking over our lives?

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And I never once said that it doesn’t happen, not sure where you are getting that impression

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ok, you said you're not 'technical' so let me present a pretty simple scenario to you.

lets say you live in an apartment (not too much of a stretch is it for most people right?)

you, along with 50 other people within range have WiFi.

some scumbag lives above you (again, not unlikely given the demographics of people who live in apartments)

he uses one of the thouands of tools to tap into your WiFi..hell did you even know comcast-branded routers come with a guest-wifi radio built in that anyone can connect to?

he downloads child porn for months; comcast detects it and flags your IP. feds knock on your door and boom, there you are left explaining that it wasn't you who downloaded it.

how do you prove you're innocent?

how do you prove its not one of your wireless devices doing the downloading?

can you prove to the feds which devices you own? every ipad, phone, etc. would be confiscated and then would the feds believe you?

how do you prove your innocence? seriously how? you will never be completely above suspicion because you CANT PROVE there isn't a device owned by you doing the downloading. you could literally buy a laptop from craigslist with no paper trail and use that for your porn and keep it stashed behind a bush or something so its not in your apartment.

HOW CAN YOU PROVE YOU ARE INNOCENT?

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Just give them my computer and tell them to have at it?? Not sure what you’re looking for here

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read what i added. you can't. its impossible to prove you don't own the device in question because you could literally pick it up on craigslist and have someone else keep it in their apartment. see how this goes? you can't prove innocence. how do you prove you ***ONLY*** have a phone and a PC accessing WiFi. how do you prove you don't have other devices as well that aren't on you at the time you were raided?

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Off topic, but I just spent $400 on light bulbs because of your arse

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which ones? i definitely have my favorites.

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So, here’s an open ended question for you or anyone else who operates the way you do: what should I do? How do I protect myself and my information? What should I do/not do? Where do I start?

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you were on the right track with the password change.

1. always apply latest updates to your router firmware. i know this is a PITA but those firmware updates exist because the router is the easiest exploit to gain access to your WiFi.

2. throw your router away every 2-3 years and get a state-of-the-art which will have both hardware & software that is more savvy and less likely to be compromised.

3. use the strongest WiFi security possible on your router and change the password often.

4. if you have the ability; set up guest access on your router & insist all your 'friends' and family use that. while it won't completely exonerate you if comcast sends the feds your way, you can at least use this to show you tried in good faith to protect your IP address and guest access is probably not you.

5. Kork and others may pop in here and add purchase a VPN but to me, this seems like you would DEFINITELY go on comcast's naughty list immediately if you start encrypting everything you do.

i made an extreme case above because all this is very fluid right now and comcast knows the same thing i wrote above..that its almost impossible to prove your innocence *ESPECIALLY* since they're the ones putting the 'xfinitywifi' backdoor in every modem/router they ship to customers so "anyone" can tap into your WiFi even if you don't want them to. BTW you can turn this off in the firmware but its on by default for EVERYONE using comcast-leased equipment. comcast tries to make this pill less bitt by (a) requiring anyone connecting to it to go through their account and (b) claiming its not hurting your bandwidth.

and if you believe (b) then comcast has some upgraded cable tv packages they would like to sell you.

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I still think my cousin is a retard

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i have the same friend. he's like 7' tall and when the electric company installed the new wifi meters on everyone's house he went ballastic and now he has some weird kind of 'energy dome' he paid like $200 around it.

everything your cousin does, he does and then some.

eta its something like this

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Do you have any idea how many people are falsely accused every single day? Any idea how many people are falsely imprisoned right now?

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Kork, as my life stands right now, there is virtually NOTHING that would lump me into the categories that you speak of.. nothing.. I am not a terrorist, I am not a criminal, I have nothing to hide... I’ll give it about a .003% chance of me ever being falsely inprisoned for something.. my god, what are you doing that has you so paranoid about this?

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Have you not considered the impact on your life if you were a suspected terrorist? You don't just dodge that bullet.

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Again, where the hell are they going to pull this incriminating evidence from? I know CAD said that people can steal my WiFi, so I guess that’s one avenue, but I just am not worried about it happening to me. Laugh all you want to at me, I just DGAF..

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This stuff happens every single day, nothing "wayyy out there" about it.

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Perhaps... but to whom? I’ve never seen anyone around me go down like that.. shite, I haven’t seen it in my parish, city, etc... I don’t know anyone that’s ever had these hypotheticals happen to them... sure, you can dig up articles of it happening, but the odds of it happening to someone like me are virtually nonexistent..

Like I’ve been saying, I’ll protect myself, but some of y’all are over the top with this

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i once felt like you until i found my poor parent's computer filled with russian porn and turned into a zombie/slave within 8 hours of me creating a security hole.

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But the normal everyday person doesn't do this type of activity to their parent's PC to allow it.

Also, these Russians or whomever did this wanted to just use the power of your parents PC. They weren't spying on them making coffee and talking about playing shuffleboard that day (going back to the Nest Cam argument).

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i guess i'm lucky i found it when i did..i can't imagine the cops showing up at my parent's door and confiscating their PC because of some weirdo porn.

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And at worst they would've been taken in for questioning and the cops are smart enough to know that you're parents got screwed with this and that they weren't the ones behind it.

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easy to say on a messageboard until its YOUR parents and YOUR fault it happened. scared the hell out of me i wont lie. i was apprehensive for months someone was going to knock on their door.

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Fair enough. I'll give you that, however, do you think that this event has skewed or jaded your opinion on this topic a decent bit?

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there is virtually NOTHING that would lump me into the categories that you speak of.. nothing.. I am not a terrorist, I am not a criminal, I have nothing to hide

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You've said versions of this over and over, which means you still are not getting the point. It does not matter how innocent you are if someone has an ax to grind. If all of your data is available to be used against you, incriminating things can be found against ANYONE, you included.

But the broader point is that even though you specifically might never have a problem, you are still a part of this enormous pool of potential victims. I just want you to understand that.

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Again, where the hell are they going to pull this incriminating evidence from?

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And again, it could be a joke taken out of context, or "suspicious" purchases, or a particular set of location data that flags you. I'm more than sure that you will not be imprisoned if you are innocent, but the warning here is that data is available to cast these extremely wide nets. And even the innocents that get caught up in it suffer regardless of the outcome.

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Perhaps... but to whom? I’ve never seen anyone around me go down like that.. shite, I haven’t seen it in my parish, city, etc... I don’t know anyone that’s ever had these hypotheticals happen to them... sure, you can dig up articles of it happening, but the odds of it happening to someone like me are virtually nonexistent..

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As of a few years ago, 150 people had been exonerated that were on DEATH ROW. We almost killed 150 innocent people. How many have we already killed? And those 150 people were obviously the ones shouting the loudest about their innocence, and they were exonerated because rape and murder cases get a lot of attention. How many people convicted of "lesser" crimes are falsely imprisoned?

In 2015, a record 149 people were exonerated that year alone for a variety of crimes and sentences. Of those 149 exonerations, in 75 of them it was determined that no crime actually occurred! Here is the report. So in one year alone, at least 75 people were imprisoned even though no crime was even committed. And those are just the ones the legal system had the time to find. How many innocents still wait to be released, and how many more do we lock up every year?

All I'm saying is our data makes it easier to make a case against someone whether they are guilty or innocent.

Just set up my HUE lights... I feel overwhelmed




Feel free to bump an old HUE thread and school me