To the same audience: quit selling my fucking phone number!
I ditched a phone number I had for 10+ years because it was leaked everywhere. Only a few short months after updating my number with the DMV and a handful of other government agencies I started receiving scam calls/messages again.
At some point we need to adopt some fucking privacy laws. This is absolutely bonkers—is no one else fed up??
Edit: I already know how to silence unknown callers. What I want is to not have the problem in the first place, ideally by 1) having companies not sell personal data to third parties and 2) being able to block spoofed (non-encrypted) caller ID.
Oh everyone is fed up but we just elected a guy and government who is sure to make it all way way way worse.
He just helped put the nail in the coffin of the lie that crypto is for anything but scams, don’t worry, it’s gonna get real bad before it gets any better.
In South Africa, where I live, everyone is assigned an ID Number at Birth. You need an ID number, thumbprint scan AND proof of address to get issued a SIM card number due to a law introduced called RICA. It was meant to help fight crime. Worried that the government could listen in to calls or read their SMSs, the criminals just switched to WhatsApp, which also happened to become cheaper than SMSs and gained popularity in this time.
The cops never seemed to crack WhatsApp. The only drug busts that happen are when an open secret becomes laughably too open and when they harass every person arriving from South America at O.R. Tambo international airport just to catch the decoy mules carrying 12g of cocaine (total). Every dealer I ever organised with was over WhatsApp.
So now, woopsi, RICA stopped nothing and just became a liability. That treasure trove of fragile data made its way to scammers and spammers. A total net negative.
I’d encourage everyone else in other countries to apply major pushback to any government proposals in this direction.
This should be what digital ID looks like:
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
mDMEZ26+ARYJKwYBBAHaRw8BAQdAsUGMjbGNUyyz9PHsHKP4xj/tIfYIuHb4miPH 0iCPpu60K0VSUk9SOiBFYXJ0aC5leGUgaGFzIGNyYXNoZWQgPG5vQGVtYWlsLmV4 ZT6IcgQTFggAGgQLCQgHAhUIAhYBAhkBBYJnbr4BAp4BApsDAAoJEI6E3uMn31Z3 028BAM5o8ER0dqTsxFlZSgZOvvgFHGuy2eFgF3rULkGKl1KrAP9fdE7WwnYbBer/ AVmw5jr0P5m/XsEQQrSueuk/FLYBBbg4BGduvgESCisGAQQBl1UBBQEBB0BDR0Bv pf4jxbwp9rVowFTnL59NGqnnh6XyF/LjAoYDGgMBCAeIYQQYFggACQWCZ26+AQKb DAAKCRCOhN7jJ99Wd1dMAP45xmN03SodkWHi7PYOORqNXJUBdMzzfsRXdqE8ZXaW vAD+PqNqPcbwJYCOEAXkg7DlZ0SX3o9MViZLdzHFQ3TpUA8= =krDh -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
PGP Key Fingerprint: 857957d40f06cc816fd3d29a8e84dee327df5677
Should be good until quantum computers come around
I’m sad PGP didn’t become a popular way to log into websites. A challenge-response protocol could have even been built into web browsers. Big tech is reinventing that idea as Passkey, but with a very big tech flavor.
I mean, passkeys are… sort of… PGP… 🤷♂️
I’m already hearing about restrictions on exporting passkeys and some apps requiring that you’re not running a custom ROM on Android and stuff like that. Makes me worried they’re going to fuck that up and make it restrictive bs
Passkeys or WebAuthn are an open web standard, and the implementation is flexible. An authenticator can be implemented in software, with a hardware system integrated into the client device, or off-device.
Exportability/portability of the passkey is up to the authenticator. Bitwarden already exports them, and other authenticators likely do, too.
WebAuthn relying parties (ie, web applications) make trust decisions by specifying characteristics of eligible authenticators & authentication responses & by checking data reported in the responses. Those decisions are left to the relying party’s discretion. I could imagine locked-down workplace environments allowing only company-approved configurations connect to internal systems.
WebAuthn has no bearing on whether an app runs on a custom platform: that’s entirely on the developer & platform capabilities to reveal customization.
