Consider this:
- Good morning! Time for coffee as you check your phone for any IM’s, reply to any you have and sit down to the New York Times. You then hit CNN and the BBC, then a weather site for your morning commute, then hit Pandora for music while you get ready for work.
- Over the holiday, you’re visiting with family. You wake up, get coffee… and check your phone for any IM’s, hit NYTimes, CNN, BBC, a weather site and then Pandora while you cook breakfast for the family (or get ready to be social). We are creatures of habit.
- We get up at about the same time each day, visit about the same sites and do about the same activities almost regardless of circumstances, if able.
- Metadata – information about information but not the information itself (how’s that for a definition) is not considered data by our government. In other words, When you sent an email and to whom is not the email itself, so that surrounding information is fair game for any and all analysis and by anyone.
- Therefore, anybody with access to the Internet trunk such as Verizon, AT&T, Level(3), Comcast etc, can fingerprint your activity and know where you are every day and even how you’re feeling.
- This information can be used to make money, with you – personally – as the product.
- Lastly, personal VPN’s and even TOR are useless.
This is not conspiracy theory, it’s been happening for years now and it’s called Pattern of Life analysis. The minute your smartphone or desktop PC are turned on (and sometimes even with them off) they are surrendering information about you and your life. When Windows 10 boots up, it sends a signal to Microsoft telling them so, even when such logistical settings are disabled. Your smartphone’s wireless controller has a separate operating system from your phone; iPhone or Android, your wireless antenna is providing information about your device even when it’s powered off (you have to pull the battery, but have you noticed that removable batteries aren’t an available feature anymore?).
From that moment, every text message or email you send has its metadata analyzed, and not just when you use sites such as Facebook but how (do you linger while reading or do you scroll?) are factored in as well. You as a person are then converted into a histogram – the picture at the top of this article – and your histographic activity is traceable. If you use a personal VPN such as TunnelBear, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, HideMyAss or others, you can still be picked out of the crowd – instantly – by anybody who has access to the Internet trunk such as all carriers and the government.
To hedge their bets, Verizon, AT&T, Microsoft, Apple and others have “Advertising ID’s” that are embedded into your operating system. In most cases, this ID is injected into your web traffic so that there’s a blatantly obvious tracking identifier that can be added to your histogram. Wake up, boot up your machine and 10 minutes later it’s clear that you’re online, your locale can now be tracked as can your mood, shopping habits and other personal details. Artificial Intelligence routines in YouTube and others determine what you’ll most probably click on, and sidebar advertisements know if you’re depressed and need a flight to Las Vegas (for only $99.95!).
The purpose of this article is to highlight the fact that point-to-point VPN’s or even the TOR privacy network do not sufficiently hide your Internet activity. Most people think of their individual web traffic and whether it’s encrypted but histogram analysis is the ultimate magnet in the barn, readily finding any needle of interest.
The only way I know of to defeat histographic and metadata analysis is to use a spread spectrum VPN – something that “shatters” your traffic so that your activity goes out multiple, random endpoints. Even if you use a VPN to access TOR and then set an encrypted web proxy in the browser, all your activity is still going out one IP address. That’s enough to build a histogram (not to mention the advertising ID’s and other browser identifiers that cut right through those technologies).
With a spread spectrum VPN, your CNN traffic routes through LA while your NYTimes traffic comes from New York. Your PC rats you out to Microsoft from Texas. All this traffic blends in with everyone else’s, messing with their histograms and blurring yours as well.
Spread spectrum VPN’s are covered here : https://www.whisperloudly.net/projects/spreadspectrum-vpn/