Questions tagged [surveillance]
A broad program of constant observation/interception of communications and behavior of individuals and organizations by state and (rarely) non-state actors, including foreign and domestic intelligence agencies.
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Spying on a smartphone remotely by the authorities: feasibility and operation
French lawmakers agreed to a justice reform bill that includes a provision granting police the power to remotely activate suspects' geolocation, microphone and camera (source).
Following the senators, ...
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Can my ISP see request data being posted to a website when a DNS leak occurs
From what I understand, the ISP can see the host you're trying to connect to in the event of a DNS leak. But does that mean they can see the data being sent like the requests body? or even headers?
Or ...
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What prevents certificate authorities from issuing fraudulent TLS certificates?
There have been reports of attacks against certificate authorities resulting in the issuance of fraudulent TLS certificates for sites such as google.com, yahoo.com, and skype.com. These attacks seem ...
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Are alternative and open source front-ends for "surveillance capitalism" services better for privacy?
I think in 2021 everyone knows how harmful surveillance capitalism is for society. The biggest corporations are Facebook and Google. But still, most people want to use social media and other services.
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Best practices against mass surveillance for everday internet usage? [closed]
Corporations and governments use a variety of de-anonymization techniques to identify and profile users.
All aspects of our personal lives are now consolidated online (banking, medical, academic, ...
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Is there a way to completely disable all forms of microphones/audio recording devices?
There are a variety of anti-audio recording devices out there, including white noise generators which can block audio recording equipments especially phones. What specs should I be looking for if I ...
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Feasibility of CPU Backdoors
Recently I was thinking of the feasibility of hardware backdoors in the CPU introduced by manufacturers at the behest of three letter agencies. I can think of two potential backdoors that seem ...
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Is there a thing as a small bag which BOTH blocks signals AND sound for securing a mobile phone on the go? [closed]
I've been hunting for this for a long time. I've been able to find "Faraday" bags that (allegedly) block signals to/from the surveillance unit (phone), but they never mention anything about ...
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Can my ISP see which VPN protocol I am using?
I know that my ISP can detect when I am using a VPN, but can it see which protocol I am using?
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How does the government install a trojan horse on somebody's mobile phone?
I am reading a news article (in italian) in which the police snooped on the Dean of a university by a trojan horse that the police had installed on his mobile phone.
In particular, the trojan horse ...
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How can I best obfuscate surveillance against my browser? [duplicate]
I mostly use the Tails browser, but I also use Firefox in Fedora with several add-ons such as TrackMeNot, HTTPS Everywhere, uBlock Origin, NoScript, and Fingerprint Detector.
I would like to obfuscate ...
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What can I do to get Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter out of my Life as Much as Possible? [closed]
Now that those four are in the censorship business and cooperate to surveil and exclude, I want to do more to get them out of my life.
No Facebook, no Twitter, no YouTube, no G-mail, no Microsoft, no ...
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Work-at-home surveillance software: How do they install on Android devices?
Surveillance software allows employers to monitor all activity on PC and Android devices including screen, voice and chat. All of them, like FlexiSPY and Neatspy (compared here), endlessly list all ...
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Why governments use spywares instead of just redirecting traffic to their own servers by announcing a new path on BGP?
I was reading about The Hacking Team on Wikipedia. It produces "offensive intrusion and surveillance capabilities" and sells it to "to governments, law enforcement agencies". Its ...
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Securing internet connection with hostile ISP
Please excuse the lack of details, you can understand why. I have a friend in a foreign country who is certain that he is a surveillance target of his local government. Other people he knows in his ...
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How does a person under surveillance safely download tor or tails in a hostile environment?
One of tor's stated goals is to help individuals such as journalists, activists and whistleblowers protect against surveillance, and in many countries people in those lines of work or activities are ...
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Analyzing Tor traffic through Deep Packet Inspection?
I've just read about the detecting and blocking of Tor traffic by DPI but now I'm curious about analyzing the data you send over Tor and matching it with your true identity by deep-inspecting the data ...
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Why are IMSI and IMEI still used?
While I understand their function, both IMSI and IMEI makes tracking and surveillance possible by virtue of being persistent idenfitiers for SIM and handset, respectively.
Why aren't these replaced ...
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Abilities of my ISP to stop me from browsing [closed]
I visited a football site yesterday to stream a match online, and since then my connection is unstable. Like, I get connected at times and loses at times. I was over at my friends' and did the same ...
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Do advertisers listen as we talk?
A person talks about a certain thing (product or service) with another person and a short time after the talk the person gets the advertising of the discussed thing on the mobile or desktop device.
I ...
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How to protect against unwanted photographs?
Problem
Possible defenses against the attack vector of facial recognition via unwanted photographs.
Background
The advance of facial recognition technology has promoted unwarranted photographs from ...
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Does HTTPS protect mobile internet connections against "network injection"?
The Star recently published an article describing an alleged attack against a Moroccan journalist. The article describes the attack as such:
Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on ...
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How can I prevent WiFi router owner from seeing what websites I visit? [duplicate]
Like when using public wifi, what can I install/use on both my Android phone and Windows laptop to make it impossible (or very difficult for someone who is not an expert) from seeing what websites i ...
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Why do people use "burner phones" rather than Signal or similar solutions?
Why do people use burner phones rather than Signal or similar? I would imagine that if you are high value target the police or intelligence service would simply eavesdrop every phone call passing the ...
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Can the school see my computer? [duplicate]
During all this covid-19 stuff my school is letting students sign out computers and take them home until the end of the school year. When you log in to the computers, you log in to your school gmail ...
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Can my employer surveil me while using "remote desktop"?
My job uses the remote desktop application for us to work at home. I am just realizing that my laptop, and everything on it, can be opened through the file explorer on the remote desktop application. ...
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Can the GlobalProtect VPN of my company track websites when Disabled?
I just installed the Global Protect VPN from my company on my local machine so I can access our servers remotely. I just "agreed" to the following statement:
VPN Connected
This system is for ...
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Bought used IP security camera, should I reflash the firmware?
I bought an used IP security camera on eBay, I dont know who was the previous owner. I've always thought that we can't trust 100% any firmwares/OSes that were been installed or used by someone else. ...
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Does the telecom provider need physical access to the SIM card to clone it?
In many dictatorships SIM card cloning is used by the police (working together with the telco) to spy on dissidents, journalists etc. Some people say that you need the authentication key on ...
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How to use browser bookmarks more securely?
I have been wondering in how far any tracking sites or other instances could gather information about me through my browser bookmarks (ie. in Firefox). An online search did not result in a lot of ...
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How is leaving a telephone on the ground a "classic anti-surveillance technique"?
I am curious about a comment made in evidence at the London Bridge terror attacks inquest by the lawyer representing several of the victims' families:
There were "opportunities galore" to ...
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Mobile phone is picking up 13 bluetooth devices and not sure what they are?
I have a particular problem with a potential security breach. I bought a new device today that connects to my phone via Bluetooth. Nothing strange about that.
Surprisingly when I turned Bluetooth on ...
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Can my job see what I do on my home computer if I use my work computer on my home network?
I'm currently using a work computer on my home network. On the work computer, I'm connected to the company's VPN. Can my work see what I'm doing on my home computer because it's connected to my home ...
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What steps should I take to ensure there are no unpleasant surprises in a recently purchased home?
After buying a house from another party (i.e. not new construction) what steps should I take to ensure the previous residents have not left behind anything unpleasant for me?
I'm not worrying about ...
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Can employer see your posting content on a public site when using their network on their hardware [duplicate]
Can the employer identify you as the person that posted on a website (you logged onto the system using their computer) if the computer is replaced by a new one?
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Need to encrypt RTSP over LAN
I tried googling everywhere, but got no help with what I needed specifically.
Let's say I have several IP cameras on a local area network. This LAN will NOT be connected to the Internet. The IP ...
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Is it true that any current smartphone is broadcasting audio and position of its owner even if switched off and not given permission by the owner?
Is it true that any current smartphone is broadcasting audio and position of its owner by design even if switched off and not given permission by the owner to broadcast?
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The Girl in the Spider's Web: SCSI hack?
In the movie, the main character is shown tapping into a network of surveillance cameras.
She uses a SCSI connector which allows her to send the camera footage to a remote computer.
I know it's a ...
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Is the size of a packet sent through a Tor circuit consistent?
I was researching attack vectors on the Tor network and stumbled across something interesting
For example, suppose the attacker controls or watches the Tor relay you choose to enter the network, ...
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Do smartphones have built-in surveillance in certain countries?
I recently was in a third world country which is know as a police state with heavy cyber surveillance. I noticed that brand new smartphones came in a box that had a nice holographic seal showing the ...
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Is it possible to examine a Huawei device to answer definitively whether or not there is a security risk?
There has been a lot of news lately, and in the last few years, about Huawei being a security risk. Can someone explain what the basis is for the risk, other than speculation? Is there not a way to ...
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How to see the filesystem of a camera firmware?
I watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8DjTcANBx0 and in this video he downloads several camera firmwares and analyzes their files. As far as I know, the firmwares are binary files that you can ...
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Surveillance by mobile network provider
I am customer of Vodafone Germany as my mobile network provider. After extension of my RED S mobile contract i realized, that the option "Vodafone Secure Net" is enforced by the company without ...
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Police forcing me to install Jingwang spyware app, how to minimize impact?
Chinese police are forcing whole cities to install an Android spyware app Jingwang Weishi. They are stopping people in the street and detaining those who refuse to install it.
Knowing that I may be ...
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Hide ports being knocked during Port Knocking
A while ago I wrote an article about implementing Port Knocking using iptables. Later in the post, I also talked about making this mechanism more secure.
The way it works is that in order to open a ...
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How to obtain privacy and authenticity with DNS?
I use pfSense (Unbound) as my local resolver. Historically I've pointed it at root recursive resolution, because I perceived my main threat as trustworthiness and recency of data (poisoned/invalid DNS)...
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Why aren't foreign VPN companies forced to keep logs? [closed]
This link explains the inconsistency with what VPN services consider 'logging'. Certainly, there is no way for us to verify their claims without an extremely rigorous independent audit. But even that ...
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Research on pedestrian trajectories' interaction with camera placement
I'm looking for empirical research on whether pedestrian walking trajectories are affected by areas under video surveillance. Maybe this would depend on the interval after a camera is prominently ...
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How to protect myself online from the government? [closed]
I need something trusted and secure. I need to make “onion layers security” with the most secure and hard to hack/crack software.
How to protect yourself from the government on the internet?
I’m ...
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Could encoding messages into huge random-data balloons help frustrate/corrupt nosy intelligence/government activity?
The Dutch government recently passed a new law: Sleepnet (EN: Dragnet) and got it through both parliament and senate mostly unchanged.
The Sleepnet-law allows government-entities like intelligence-...
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