Tag: privacy

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Excuses to stealth

At age 14, I strategically used Valentines Day to anonymously share my feelings with girls I fancied or admired in class and watch from a safe distant never revealing myself in person.

Today it’s almost impossible to be truly anonymous and successful hiding is actually frowned upon as freakish and creepy.  The same techniques to surprise a Loved One can be used to destroy, mislead or corrupt without trace but It comes down to moral intentions and belief systems. Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to bring out the undetected schemer in you.

Stealth: The ability to reach and/or kill your target without detection.

Stealth mood is one of the most satisfying gaming strategies built into a wide genre of titles, in fact, many games award or punish you based on your stealth skills.  I’m rather addicted to stealth IRL and in my digital playgrounds, the best penetration testers often adopt this mindset to their core.

“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”  Kali OS

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Make me redundant

In my early career, the word redundancy used to strike fear into my well-being. Decades later it’s a place a comfort and represents resilience.  Backing up the backup and testing the back-up routinely is an easy habit to adopt. Sadly. For  many end users, they simply store all their precious data on a single device with unknown backup status.

Where’s my data?

A family member nearly lost over 5000 images because they critically failed to even grasp the relevance of backup or data management.

The strategy should always be protecting the data first and the end-point device second but unfortunately, we love our shiny phones way too much to think that way.

Zero gameplay or medication today

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Burying the survivors

A flight leaves Heathrow at 13:00 on route to Paris, on the way it experiences fatal engine failure and crashes in the Channel. The flight carries 120 passengers 20 in first class.

How many survivors will be buried on the French side and how many in the English side?

 Question the question

It’s interesting to observe how people communicate differently on personal matters depending on the device and method.  There are so many factors that impact the sender’s mental state and tone of the message (personal or work device, signed or unsigned, the speed of transport (instant or slow), public or perceived private.

Formal and personal – hard copy letter.  Shows the sender put in some thought and invested some resources (print, paper, envelope, postage and time costs) before sending and serves as hardcore historical evidence.

Formal and less personal –

email unsigned from a personal mobile device

email unsigned from work or business device

Email digitally signed on mobile device

Email from workstation

Email from laptop

Email from browsers

Many end-users actually see this as cold and heartless as “no one” emails about personal stuff anymore.

Informal and very personal

Instant messaging

WhatsApp

iMessage

VOIP phone calls

The method of choice for a vast amount of people. The user tends to speak from the heart whether angry, sad or happy.  Data is sent with no regard of security levels and assumptive privacy.

Consequences can be catastrophic or a euphoric high.

  • I Love you by email = Low euphoria
  • I Love you by Instant messaging = High euphoria
  • I Love you by letter = High euphoria

Choose your method wisely

 

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f0rbiDd@n Scientist

I always wanted to mess with chemicals, a scientist spending my day experimenting and hunting for clues.  I was terrible at school though, never paid attention to the teacher and missed out on any opportunity to spend time in the laboratory.  I was “informally” excluded at 16 and that was that.

Now that I’m old and ugly enough nothing can stop me.

Here’s one of the lab kits I really wanted at school over 37 years ago…where would I be now?

Finding hidden figure prints
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Beefing up privacy and controls

The mandatory system update 5.0 for PS4 rolled out a number of new features included better user control over child accounts. It seems much easier to monitor your child’s gaming activity now.

In the meantime, Uber announce “more information about how you can control what we collect and how we use your data, including location information .”

These are all common sense issues that are now only being implemented because of mass dissatisfaction from user groups, a bit like 2-factor authentication being deployed after a breach.

It’s about time

the meantime, I added two new titles to my Games Library. The award-winning Metal Gear Solid V and a horror set named Amnesia: Collection, which contains both The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs. Both titles are free to PlayStation Plus subscribers and make the membership fee actually financially viable for the year.

METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN

I have followed many multiplayer sessions of Metal Gear Solid over the past 24 months but actually playing it was epic and jaw-dropping. Amnesia had a weird notice at the being of the game.

“Do not play this game to Win”

Amnesia Collection – Scary Stuff

What the bleep bleep?

Anyhow, the two titles will get moderate attention from me after the Star Wars Beta session this weekend.