The smart girl's guide to privacy

What Hacker News says

1. uzakovNov 2020
   There are a number of things you can do that can help you with your privacy and security:

   1) Have a different online identity for things that can compromise you/you feel uneasy about. We are talking about a "full identity": number, email, maybe even things like Linkedin

   2) Perform Threat modelling

   3) Getting own domain is always good, as it gives you the control of your life

   If you are just starting out, check out "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy"

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2. newscrackerJan 2018
   I don't condone these ads. They do look like stalking and harassment. One word I would use to describe these is "crass".

   She says "I just mostly came here to see pictures of my friends' dogs and kids", but what she wants from Instagram is different from what Instagram thinks she's interested in.

   It's obvious (leaving aside bugs in Instagram) that she has visited other websites to look up information on yoga and also probably on bras, or shown some kind of engagement with these topics in a place where FB/Instagram was watching, so to speak. This is where things become confounding, because the actual sellers of bras and other clothing have decided that they want to target people doing yoga, which is related to general fitness, which is related to feeling comfortable while engaging in fitness related activities, which they also believe is about looking good — it's a broad net that they cast so that they get more people to look at ads and buy their products. The sellers have also decided that these kind of pictures are what help them (oblivious to the actual experiences of those seeing the ads and the consequences). Of course, this seems like the targeting is actually pointless and that they're wasting their money, but this is how a lot of ads work and how a lot of these ad serving products (FB, Insta, Google, etc.) work. They're still not good enough to target people who're more likely to buy, but competition in a specific product/service space makes sellers wanting to grab as much as possible based on ill informed hypotheses of "their target customer is ____, _____, ____".

   It's also clear that Instagram and FB working together isn't really that good for the users, and whatever services FB and Instagram use to profile people around the web look shady as well in how and where they collect information and how they use that information to make inferences that are creating such experiences. If it's not bras, it may be lipsticks or moisturizers or slimming products or bags or so many other things that are sold as things that we should aspire for.

   This problem is not going anywhere unless people get more educated about online tracking, how to have at least some control over it and also demand more from these companies that provide "things for free".

   In this context, this book "The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy" [1] is something more people should read.

   [1]: https://www.nostarch.com/smartgirlsguide

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3. r3blMay 2016
   The Linux Command Line has basically taught me everything I know about using bash.

   I've never read The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy, but I've heard so many good things about it. It's on my to-read list.

   The Bug Hunter's Diary is really interesting, although someone reading it now might feel like it's a bit outdated (it got released in 2011 if I remember correctly). I didn't particularly enjoy reading The Art of Exploitation. It was a bit dull for me.

   Edit: spelling

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