<
https://www.404media.co/trans-rights-privacy-online-cybersecurity-workshop-deadname-not-found/>
"It’s Trans Day of Visibility, and I’m at an event space in the heart of New
York City’s Commie Corridor to learn how to become less visible online.
The crowd gathered at the aptly-named Trans Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens is here
for “404: Deadname Not Found,” a digital self-defense workshop which promises
to teach trans people how to find and remove their sensitive personal
information from the internet (and which also has no relation to this website).
The vibe is giving OpSec rave happy hour—attendees sip colorful drinks, groove
to DJ sets, and huddle around laptops using online tools to track down their
own digital footprints.
The goal of the exercise is to find holes in your digital defenses, a practice
cybersecurity folks call “red-teaming.” A slide deck guides participants
through this “self-doxing” ritual, instructing them to use websites like
IntelBase, PimEyes, and haveibeenpwned to find addresses, selfies, passwords,
old names and aliases, and other personal info that might have been left
sitting around on the open internet.
It makes for great cocktail party banter. One participant raises their arms in
triumph upon receiving a clean bill of health while checking if their
information was leaked in a data breach. Others swivel laptop screens and
compare notes on the various places their digital detritus had cropped up. In
my case, I was lucky: I mostly found data brokers with incorrect information, a
long-forgotten MySpace page, and a woman whose spam calls I’ve been receiving
for the past 10 years. Finally, participants are directed to various pages
where they can request data to be removed, or sign up for discounted services
like Kanary and DeleteMe that do the removals on your behalf.
Behind the fun and light atmosphere, everyone here knows the unspoken reality
that drives tonight’s activities: an unrelenting wave of discriminatory bills
and executive orders that are rapidly demolishing trans rights across the US.
“Trans Visibility” is a nice idea, but it turns out it really sucks to be
visible in a fascist surveillance state where the highest levels of government
are obsessively trying to destroy your ability to live.
“In this world of hyper-surveillance, I want to make sure all my stuff is safe
and that no one is trying to harvest my data for anything,” Anna, a workshop
participant, told
404 Media. Anna asked to use a pseudonym to protect her
identity, which is not surprising given that the goal of the workshop is to
make it harder to be doxed. “Especially now that there’s lots of incentives for
the federal government to get into that business, I just wanna make sure all of
that is under wraps.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
