Private messages are viewable by administrators. Private messages on Discourse are not actually private.
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This is true. Itās also true on basically every other web platform you use, other than end-to-end encrypted communication apps like Signal and Telegram.
Iām the only admin, and Iām not going to read peopleās PMs (unless e.g. asked to review a flagged PM or required by law enforcement), but I am an internet stranger and you should not use PMs on a webforum for sensitive communications that would ruin your life if they got out.
I did a lot of stupid things when I was younger. Now Iām too old to care.
For the especially slow-witted, let me point out: nothing on the internet is truly private in principle. The only question is how much effort it takes to extract the information.
In other words, if intelligence agencies are interested in your data ā know this: anonymity does not exist.
Although I can, to some extent, help with this so-called āanonymityā.
I say just let it get all out there because none of us is perfect and transparency is where real breakthrough happens. I wonder how many people are living in secret who would be like āoh my gosh Iām not the biggest weirdo on the face of the planetā if everybodyās crap was all out there.
Some people could end up getting fired (like the Coldplayed dude). But I think if they havenāt done anything stupid like that in a very, very long time ā¦ they should be considered rehabilitated. Unless, of course, they know inside themselves (& tech like lie detectors reveal) and confess that, if given the opportunity, they would do it again. not necessarily all over again, but again a second time or third, etc.
Is it possible I put too much time and effort into this answer? Perhaps. Then again perhaps not. Moving on.
Thatās a good rule of thumb, but itās not literally true. State-of-the-art encryption is effectively unbreakable, so encryption used carefully can achieve secrecy greater than basically any other means of communication, even when sent over public networks and intercepted.
To break it, someone would need to compromise the software youāre using (e.g. a backdoor), or compromise your device (e.g. a keylogger). But that level of intrusion in order to intercept communications isnāt really anything about the internet; even with a handwritten letter someone could open your mail, steal your code books, or look over your shoulder while you write it.
The internet just makes it a lot easier to be insecure, and to assume that things are more private than they actually are.
I usually agree, but in times when college students are being disappeared for their op-eds and tourists are being denied entry for their social media posts, we should question whether transparency is always an unalloyed good.
Well, in that case, I hope the good guy nerds do as much as they can to protect peopleās privacy (Iām not talking about Op Eds or public social media posts) ā¦ unless they are really bad people like Epstein.
Not really. Pay attention to what I wrote. The cost of hacking information may not be worth the information itself. Thatās why thatās what stops hacking. Itās easier to bypass encryption. For example, all you have to do is ānailā the person who encrypted it and they will open the unencrypted data.
For example, to get the Wi-Fi password from a neighbor, itās not necessary to decrypt the handshake. You can simply ask for the password under the pretext that the internet was cut off due to non-payment, and in order to pay, you need internet access. I easily give out my password whenever someone asks.
Thatās a fair point: even if I can be trusted not to snoop on peopleās PMs, I am a fallible human and a single-point-of-failure in the security of PMs on ILP.
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