stupid_asshole69 [none/use name]

I generally point people away from both the solutions you’re asking about and the thing you’re doing.

If you are concerned about recovering from a failure then everything you’re talking about doing will make it very hard to complete using standard tools and techniques and very easy to lock yourself out of completing.

If you’re not concerned about recovering from a failure then why are you doing what you’re talking about doing?

A more functional solution for a laptop or desktop might be ext4 with dm-crypt or whatever and nightly backups. Another fix might be moving towards software that doesn’t require the capacity to reverse updates frequently.

Just speaking one hexbear to another: switching away from the operating system and ecosystem favored by the security industry and privacy conscious elite which has a well documented history of being the hardest target for law enforcement, requiring the highest bar for legal cooperation and providing methods of protecting personal data (even if that behavior isn’t the default) and yet keeping yourself on the voter rolls is something to chew on.

I been mulling over your reply and I can’t put into words what I feel but it’s similar to when a friend in recovery with a ton of trauma and long ass rap sheet was excited to get out there at the demonstration.

I can’t say what’s best for you but it makes me worry.

I’m about halfway through extreme privacy and I’m legit about to order a personal copy just so I can scribble in the margins. I’ll read your link too probably tomorrow after work.

You can always do a computer swap. Figure out what you want, like for example a dell or thinkpad with core or libreboot and swap your mac for it. That way there’s no money that changes hands. There’s a hardware list on both projects websites if you wanna windowshop on ebay.

One way to improve your privacy that people always overlook is to stop registering to vote. The rolls are basically public information, all you gotta have is a specific type of company to get access to them.

So, that has nothing to do with apple or macs. (Except a part at the end which might not be what you’re talking about)

When you use a credit card the transaction record is kept by the merchant who sells you the computer, the card processor and the card issuer (I’m probably using the wrong terms, it’s been awhile since I had to accurately talk about the precise operation of credit card payments.). So when you buy anything using a credit card, at least three entities who can be ordered to submit to law enforcement requests and are legally required to keep records of transactions actually have records of that transaction.

So when I swipe my visa to get a bag of apples at the wal mart, wal mart, their processor and my bank all have record that they’re required to keep for accounting purposes and will turn over when they get a lawful order to do so.

I don’t remember if it’s the law now, back when I was really in pos there were lots of bills trying to make it law, but it’s certainly industry practice to record serial numbers of high dollar items. The goal is to have a more precise and quick return/service process. You bought unit abcdef123456 and that means if they don’t get abcdef123456 back when you try to return it then there’s a problem.

So when I buy an ideapad at Walmart with cash they record the serial at time of sale and when I try to return a different one with my receipt there’s a serial number line that can be compared and verified.

That transaction is only stored by wal mart, but can be corroborated by my banks records where I withdrew enough money to buy a computer all at once in person because it’s more than they let me pull from an atm at one time.

I’ll go even farther:

Know your customer laws require that merchants verify and in some cases record ids of people making some purchases. So when I go to the wal mart to buy a cheap phone and a prepaid SIM card to stuff in my glovebox, they’re required to record my id for both purchases.

Now one thing that is true of apple computers and phones and that you might be referring to is that it’s super fucking difficult to remove a device from someone’s appleid without that person doing it for you. When you first use a mac or iPhone you have the chance to tie it to an iCloud account, just like you can with google accounts in android devices and Microsoft accounts on windows computers. If you do, then in order for someone else to reset the device and wipe/reinstall/take ownership of it you have to remove it from your account. Theres a wizard that guides you through the process just like in windows and android. If you never do this then the person who bought the device (or stole it, or dug it out of the trash) can’t use it.

If you lose your password then apple can verify your identity using their records (if you have their adp turned on then you just have to give em your code and make a new one when you’re done doing whatever you’re doing) and reset the password and remove devices from your account. Certified resellers/repair shops can do this too, but they’re under a lot of scrutiny when they do because Apple views them as possible cracks in the anti-theft armor.

So that means that when I dig a mac out of the trash to fix and use or sell, I have to either contact the iCloud account holder and convince them to drop the device from their profile or perform some decently tough microsoldering and reprogramming of tiny chips on the mainboard.

Of course, all that is optional. People just almost never choose not to do it because it is all upside and no downside for the owner. You as the computer owner get theft prevention, stolen device tracking and control over who can use things you bought in exchange for essentially nothing (especially if you turn on adp).

I haven’t read extreme privacy. I will as soon as I can, but I gotta ask: what are you trying to accomplish or understand? Sometimes for people who aren’t technical it’s easier to start from goals as opposed to metabolizing a bunch of literature on the topic.

No, if what you described were true it would be impossible to give someone an apple computer without getting confused for the person you gave it to.

Or to refurbish and use a mac from the trash can without being mistaken for the previous user.

I have done both with no problems.

Apple does know what you bought from them… because they sold it to you and gave you a receipt and kept a record of it to accurately account for taxes just like wal mart does when I buy a bag of apples from the produce department.

Wal mart doesn’t serialize their apples, but they do serialize their game consoles and keep track of those, so maybe that’s a better example.

I guess I gotta ask: what do you think is happening between the credit card and the serial number of the computer and how do you think it’s happening?

Again, it truly depends on who you want to avoid sticking out to.

If you don’t know that or don’t feel comfortable articulating it then I can’t help you.

I can’t just give a detailed explanation about what you might decide with regard to even some of the broad categories of entities that might hold, access, search or compile data about you and leave it up to you to figure out which person concerned about which entity in which circumstances you are because there’s a lot of circumstances around that and it would be unreasonable to write all that out and it would still be too general to be useful.

It depends on your goal.

If you want to prevent cops from using information about you in data brokers’ dbs, yes it’s worth your time.

If you want to keep from getting scammed or duped or have accounts open in your name then yes.

If you just feel worried then probably not, just freeze your credit with the reporting agencies and schedule a temporary unfreeze when you want to apply for something.

No matter what you decide, rotate the passwords to each account you’re worried about to a new unique one.

I have and use both.

Without choosing some sort of dns based ip blacklist (offered by both providers btw), neither one really does what you asked about.

What are you actually trying to prevent? If you don’t know what language to use, just describe the situation.

Yeah it’s unimportant how many requests go out.

A secure browser ought to phone home on startup (and honestly with as little overhead as requests incur nowadays, on tab open) and make sure it’s updated to the latest version, do a dns sanity check, etc.

I don’t even mind Firefox having ads in the default homepage.