I was just thinking as a phone number for all those services that ask for phone numbers to sign up.

What stops anyone outside the us from using this service? The postcode doesn’t need to be verifiable, if needed, just use a VPN?

Man what a world, to have to pay for privacy.

For those out of the know: what’s the advantage of using open VPN?

Hmm. That’s not been my experience. I’ve been using proton with VPN with no issue. But yes, as you say, if that’s your experience, it’s shady. I would stay away from them were I in your shoes.

But proton doesn’t need a phone number? You can just do a captcha. I would never use an email that asks for a phone number. Or even a phone.

What are some (legitimate) examples where public records can’t be released?

Wouldn’t it fall under 2a to just shoot all these?

To me a smartphone is defined as a full fledged computer with dumb phone capabilities.

What is the rest of Google (alphabet) doing?

For example, in China the crime rate is incredibly low.

I think a correction is in order: petty crime such as what you have described is indeed low, but organized crime is through the roof. Far higher than in countries considered ‘the west’. Scammers mainly. So much so they’ve had to expand to neighbouring countries in the south/southeast to expand their ‘market reach’.

Wouldn’t it then be a simple matter to notice that a 10gb for only yielded 5gb of “innocent” data after decryption?

Especially since it would be (I assume) simple to ‘predict’ the size of the (“unnested”) plaintext if the cipher and key is known

But if two different messages are encrypted with the same key, doesn’t it by nature produce two different ‘plaintext’? Unless the real secret is much smaller than the decoy message as in the example of the ww2 artist

But wouldn’t a VPN be encrypting my cable internet traffic? (Same for VPN on the phone)

Isn’t there some information theory that says you can’t have two pieces of unique information inside one ?

“stealth house”

I don’t know why people don’t use crypto or one time cards for this kind of purchase. You pay for anonymity, you pay for it anonymously.

Maybe I should clarify - I’m not a fan of human noise (there’s probably a more precise term) - I’m more in favour of privacy/anonymity in the midst of actual, randomized noise, that isn’t just random human activity.

I don’t even mean t shirts with a logo. It could’ve been a pair of jeans on a specific date at a place in conjunction with 5 other (random obfuscated) things that a poi also happened to do. Like googled ‘how to fold a swan’ or whatever.

Even if you didn’t do these things but was instead random generated traffic, it would generate unnecessary attention.

One might argue that if enough people adopted such methods, authorities would have too many leads to follow up. But then again, the chances of a random string of generated activity coinciding with that of a poi isn’t high, so there likely will be a manageable number of leads.

Even if the number were higher, they have proven to have no qualms about skipping due process. As long as they might’ve gotten the actual poi, they have no problems subjecting many more unrelated to the same treatment because everyone is some sort of terrorist now.

They could also arrest you just because you have higher than normal randomized traffic and activity that you can’t or won’t answer for.

“Why did you search how to fix a sink leak and then how to fold a parachute within 2 minutes of each other?? You must be a terrorist generating random activity to hide your true actions. What do you have to hide?” - “found coke stuffed in all the couches and beds boss”

Wdym until February?

I’m actually not in favour of obfuscation methods, as recent events have shown - authorities questioning a dude for wearing the same innocuous shirt?

Random traffic might turn out to be ‘traffic of interest’ for just being the at the wrong place, wrong time. I would prefer actual strong cryptography and isolation.