If they can identify the user’s computer, they can cross reference against all the other tracking metadata available. Since they know the browser down to the individual, they also know the predominant IP of said browser and can link your actions from before and after the vpn/proxy account was created.

As long as javascript is running they can track your mouse movement, which is similar to people’s gait when they walk. it’s unique, it’s identifiable. You can probably fuck with them by using a trackball on one profile, but once they link that trackball movement to your profile with other metadatas then the cat is out of the bag and you’re permanently known to Reddit and whoever it sells it’s data to.

As much as people will claim “just disable javascript!” - you’ll find that you practically cannot use the internet without it… and having JS disabled makes your fingerprint even more unique as few disable it carte blanche.

Basically, once they have a shadow profile of who you are it’s just a matter of time for them to link any account created to it. I suspect almost everybody’s shadow profile is quite complete.

Proton mail didn’t ask me for a phone or email. But I’ve had it for years so maybe that changed.

It changed. I made one in the past week. You can create an account, you cannot get any account verification emails from ANY other provider, they block them and then restrict your account until you verify with someone else.

I don’t know why you think I don’t get it though. The amount of metadata accessible when visiting a website is crazy nowadays. They can track things people never even imagined, like the arc of how your hand moves across the screen with a mouse, the cadence of how you type, and then tie those to profiles with any other details they have managed to scrape. Combine that with hours of activity, browser versioning addons etc, resolution and any number of other bits of metadata and suddenly someone has a shadow profile linking you to your proxy IPs or whatever else.

Sure, i’m more paranoid but I don’t believe anyone with a head on their shoulders would say privacy on the internet has ever gotten better.

Protonmail is highly accepted

Sure, requires 3rd party email or cell phone to work though.

tutamail didn’t ask for my number or another email

The last one, run by little over a dozen people as FOSS, and easily quashed by the long arm of the law or a pricey lawsuit. What happens then?

I just stop using those accounts that force me to give up my number. It’s called standards

You still need an email that is completely associated to you for official things like medical interactions, government interactions, and stuff like sports tickets if you care about going to a sports game in a town like Boston. Hell, when you send resumes I assume you have a professional inbox for that too.

So how do you do it? Do you live in two worlds with a burner phone / never checking your ‘private’ stuff outside of some kind of proxy/vpn scenario where you remote into whatever box is handling your actual private online presence?

lol try signing up for an email account today without tying a phone number to it or another established email account. It’s incredibly difficult.

You might be able to create an account, but then all “3rd party services” (e.g. creating accounts on absolutely fucking anything) will be blocked and your account will be either restricted or forced to submit a kind of verification that doxes you to lift said block, probably.

I found a single sketchy provider that would take verifications from proton mail that allowed me to then create more accounts, but I had to try over a dozen mail providers before I found the obscure one that did not require any pre-existing accounts, phone numbers or identification documents to just create an email to simply sign up for any web forum, service or basically do anything most people do with email. Everything ends up linked to each other at some point.

There’s just no privacy anymore. The ones who think there is are probably not as private as they really think they are today.

This is not solely a european problem, and it’s not new.

A faction of conservatives will scream up and down that they’re protecting the children. Most people will generally side with privacy.

My suspicion is that the end goal is to classify people to target your opponents, even the ones who don’t have much of a platform.

Once you can identify all the anonymous people on the internet and build profiles of all their communications with ML, you can easily generate a list of people who are against your policies and target them. I’m pretty sure you could find other subsets of data linking these people so you can then target them indirectly without too much friendly fire against your supporters.

In the US, One easy target I haven’t seen any actions for is Marijuana. All those medical patients are in a database somewhere. All the debit card transactions in stores are in a database somewhere. It’s still federally illegal and the punishments are nuts if prosecuted. Take your communications list, and the MJ list, target the ones on both and ignore the rest. You get to legally enslave your opponents under the guise of weed.