ilzolende comments on A pair of free information security tools I wrote - LessWrong
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Of course now if I want to rubber hose you, I'll be sure to ask about your second account, too! Jokes aside, I think that's a good tool to keep in the belt.
I've always struggled with the idea of how to promote the practice without lessening its effectiveness since the more people that know about it, the more likely a rubber hoser is to ask about both.
Hah, the decoy account is trivially easy to determine to be not-mine, the idea is less "permanently trick someone into thinking it's my main account" and more "distract someone while I log into it so that it can send an automated email, then keep them from powering down my computer for 30 seconds while the program sends the email, because I can't get it to do that in the background just via Automator".
Also, in that sort of scenario there really isn't that much I have to hide. There are some computer of my computer usage that I would strongly prefer not to disclose, but at that point I wouldn't be concerned about "linking ilzolende to my real identity" or "what if my friends/parents/future employers know about my actions" or "what if something I did was actually intellectual property theft" or "what if I had to change all my passwords that would be really annoying".
If there was something I really didn't want to disclose I would probably do it from other people's computers using Tor Browser or a TAILS DVD with URLs I memorized. There isn't something I value my privacy for that much, so I don't do that. (Although I'm considering getting a TAILS USB for using with the school computers mostly to make the "the fact that this browser didn't tell me that Website X was not a reason I chose the browser, I use it for privacy, the fact that it apparently circumvents the filter is just a side effect, what am I supposed to do, check if the website is blocked from a different computer before I visit it?" claim.)
Honestly, a lot of my motives here are more "normalize security/privacy" and "make sure that if something goes wrong I can say that I took a ton of preventative measures" than "losing control of my data would be a complete disaster". If I were truly concerned about privacy, I wouldn't have participated in a study involving MRI scans and DNA analysis from a blood draw and whatnot for ~%100. I mostly don't like the state of affairs where people have more information about me than I do.