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posted by on Sunday February 23 2020, @03:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the anything-not-illegal-is-compulsory dept.

Bleh. Apparently not caring what you do on other sites or even requiring any personal information isn't good enough for the state of Confusion^WCalifornia, so we have a shiny, new, temporary Privacy Policy posted on every page and linked at the top of the nav bar.

If you feel like prettying the language, layout, or whatever up before I get around to it, feel free to do so and submit a pull request.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by BK on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:18PM (12 children)

    by BK (4868) on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:18PM (#961458)

    You collect the username I provide.
    You collect the email I provide which you don’t verify
    You collect and log IP address I visit from which my isp also collects
    You collect moderation that I submit
    You collect my posts, if any,
    If I name friends or enemies, you collect this info

    You connect username and ip info with each post
    If I log in, you associate ip & username and link to moderation to produce karma
    If I do or don’t log in, you associate moderation to my ip to produce invisible karma
    Because my isp also collects ip info, anyone with access to both datasets can associate me with my posts.

    You keep this information probably forever

    And if the fbi shows up and points a machine gun at you, you’ll probably give em the whole mess and complain later about warrants and systemd.

    Amiright?

    --
    ...but you HAVE heard of me.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Touché=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Touché' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:43PM (2 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:43PM (#961463) Homepage Journal

    We do hash the IP info but IPv4 addresses aren't something you can secure with a hash anymore because of the relatively small key space, so you're functionally correct even if it would take a few minutes to brute force the hash with a vid card. And we keep it for... two weeks. Precisely because we don't want anyone to even be able to come along and demand it from us with a court order.

    Username and email address? Really? You could put random characters in there. It's as much your choice to make that information in any way personal as not putting links to pictures of your driver's license in a comment is.

    Me support governmental infringement of your rights? You really think a guy who was okay with getting killed or crippled for the rights of people he doesn't even like is going to balk at eating an obstruction charge? Get real, man.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @06:06PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2020, @06:06PM (#961913)

      I must say that, even if I don't always agree with your political perspectives, I admire your guts and the courage of your convictions.

      Case in point, this privacy policy. It's short and easy to read. Amazing. I guess it helps that basically SN doesn't collect personal information (to sell to the highest bidder, or worse), so it's easy to say what little you collect and why.

      (Why can't more websites be like this one?)

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 24 2020, @10:17PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 24 2020, @10:17PM (#962039) Homepage Journal

        Because, for all their oft-signaled socialist/equality virtues, nearly all tech workers are not just happy to but absolutely ecstatic to sell their utopian dreamland project to a bunch of bean counters for a dump truck full of cash. Nearly everyone on the planet are lying hypocrites.

        Me? Some folks may consider me an asshole but I wouldn't take the combined net worths of Bezos and Gates to go against my principles in even a relatively minor way. It's not an easy way to live but you can look in the mirror and not just be satisfied but downright proud of what you see in the morning. Now I will occasionally react contrary to them before I think but that's just ordinary human fallibility and I'm not going to apologize for being imperfect until I meet someone who isn't.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:44PM (8 children)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:44PM (#961464) Journal

    re: username, mod points, posts, friends/enemies

    Are these things SN collects, or are they things users generate? Is there a meaningful difference? If the collection is obvious like a post, does it have to be spelled out?

    I also don't think it is necessary to collect IP info. What collecting IP data prevents is a user posting as AC, and then logging in and upmodding his/her own post. Since you can only mod a post once anyway, that isn't a very large evil in my view. Besides, anyone with a VPN can do the same evil without much effort, and lastly, on the scale of evil, upmodding one's own AC post is so low, there's are probably "good acts" that are objectively more evil than that.

    Unless I'm missing something about IP collection, I'd be happy to see that go away.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:55PM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday February 23 2020, @05:55PM (#961469) Homepage Journal

      It's handy (as in extremely effective) as a first line of defense against spammers too. It also helps us spot obvious sockpuppets. It doesn't stick around very long though.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @07:32PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 23 2020, @07:32PM (#961516)

      TMB lies to you, they do store the hashed IPs for a long time and he has admitted it would be trivial to get the actual IP out of it but he is just "too lazy."

      Just FYI, don't take his statements at face value.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 24 2020, @01:12AM (5 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 24 2020, @01:12AM (#961639) Homepage Journal

        Use IPv6 if it bothers you. They most assuredly are not a trivial keyspace. And, yeah, I lie all the time. It's not like I have more than half a dozen other admins with vastly differing views on everything except our free speech policy reading the Meta stories.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday February 24 2020, @02:26AM (4 children)

          by edIII (791) on Monday February 24 2020, @02:26AM (#961675)

          Or use the TOR address. You guys got that right?

          For the record, part of why I'm not worried about this site's privacy policy, are the admins like you. I can give you shit about some things, but not for being a liar or a coward. I trust you guys.

          Is it just me, or is the grammar off here:

          Privacy Policy: We don't track anyone except on this site

          Does that mean you don't normally track people at all, unless they're on this site? :)

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Monday February 24 2020, @08:43AM

            by Chocolate (8044) on Monday February 24 2020, @08:43AM (#961751) Journal

            Or VPN. Just reconnect every few minutes.

            --
            Bit-choco-coin anyone?
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 24 2020, @12:53PM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 24 2020, @12:53PM (#961801) Homepage Journal

            We do but since none of us staff have a ToR setup that allows us to resolve .onion addresses, it could very well be broken at any given time and nobody would know until the WTF reports start coming in. Anyone who does go through all that trouble and feels like keeping it working is welcome to join staff and do so.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 24 2020, @01:00PM (1 child)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 24 2020, @01:00PM (#961804) Homepage Journal

            Sorry, didn't catch the question at the end. Switch "normally" with "ever". We track all kinds of things about everyone's interactions with this site (kind of necessary if we want to be able to put user names on comments and such) but nothing about their actions anywhere else. Hell, we don't even log referrers.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:57AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:57AM (#964506)

              Hell, we don't even log referrers.

              You should put that as the last sentence of the privacy policy.