this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Privacy

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The Privacy Iceberg

This is original content. AI was not used anywhere except for the bottom right image, simply because I could not find one similar enough to what I needed. This took around 6 hours to make.

Transcription (for the visually impaired)

(I tried my best)

The background is an iceberg with 6 levels, denoting 6 different levels of privacy.

The tip of the iceberg is titled "The Brainwashed" with a quote beside it that says "I have nothing to hide". The logos depicted in this section are:

The surface section of the iceberg is titled "As seen on TV" with a quote beside it that says "This video is sponsored by...". The logos depicted in this section are:

An underwater section of the iceberg is titled "The Beginner" with a quote beside it that says "I don't like hackers and spying". The logos depicted in this section are:

A lower section of the iceberg is titled "The Privacy Enthusiast" with a quote beside it that says "I have nothing I want to show". The logos depicted in this section are:

An even lower section of the iceberg is titled "The Privacy Activist" with a quote beside it that says "Privacy is a human right". The logos depicted in this section are:

The lowest portion of the iceberg is titled "The Ghost". There is a quote beside it that has been intentionally redacted. The images depicted in this section are:

  • A cancel sign over a mobile phone, symbolizing "no electronics"
  • An illustration of a log cabin, symbolizing "living in a log cabin in the woods"
  • A picture of gold bars, symbolizing "paying only in gold"
  • A picture of a death certificate, symbolizing "faking your own death"
  • An AI generated picture of a person wearing a black hoodie, a baseball cap, a face mask, and reflective sunglasses, symbolizing "hiding ones identity in public"

End of transcription.

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[–] recklessengagement@lemmy.world 96 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I think this is the first time I've seen an iceberg meme with sources and explanations for each item. Fantastic. Your work is appreciated.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 17 points 11 months ago

To be honest, and it wouldn't work here, but I sometime enjoy the cryptic nature of iceberg memes at the lower ranks. It's like a scavenger hunt.

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[–] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 74 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Funny how you need more and more technical knowledge to go deeper into privacy, until the last level, which is basically giving up on technology itself.

[–] wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The last level is living in a cabin in the woods and writing manifestos about industrial society and the ills of technology O_o

[–] potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] wolfinthewoods@lemmy.ml 9 points 11 months ago

Hey, it's my house! How'd you get a picture of it?!

[–] mmhmm@lemmy.ml 40 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I was at the bike shop a few weeks back and a ghost walked in. He came in wearing a medical mask covered by a bandana, sunglasses, cap. They wore gloves, long sleaved pants and shirt.

First question from staff, 'this a robbery?'

Ghost, 'no, I just need 27 2.5 tubes, miss.'

They get the tubes, he agrees. Staff asks if he has an account. Ghost says, "nope, why would I need one?" Staff says they do it for records, insurance claim assist, and discounts. Ghost goes with a John Doe, pays cash and peaces the fuck out.

Total King, but dude was given up a lot. Half of us were drinking beers enjoying a warm evening in spring. I hope he has had some good rides.

I can say with confidence thay he was a white male. In his 50s. About 5'10". 140 lbs-ish. If anyone wants to get any tips, good luck!

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[–] pyre@lemmy.world 36 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I don't like hackers and spying

brave

lol. lmao, even.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 10 points 11 months ago

A beginner will choose what seems private, regardless of whether or not it actually is.

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[–] candyman337@lemmy.world 32 points 11 months ago (3 children)

It's genuinely wild that Firefox and LibreWolf are nowhere on these

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)
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[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Probably because people above the waterline don't know Mozilla exists, and people below have seen how things have been going lately.

[–] FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 8 points 11 months ago

They do perhaps know, Firefox did have about 27%+ of the market at one point and people outside of the USA are more likely to know about it. Nevertheless, FF is currently about 3.25% of the total browser base. That is still about 160+ - 200+ million users.

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[–] civilcoder@lemm.ee 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Kudos for inclusive alt texting!!

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[–] sharps9@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago (3 children)

ExpressVPN is an arm of Israeli intelligence and should be on the top of the iceberg: https://www.reuters.com/technology/expressvpn-employees-complain-about-ex-spys-top-role-company-2021-09-23/

All users should cancel their accounts immediately.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 19 points 11 months ago

"As seen on TV" does not imply privacy, it just implies a large advertising budget. These are software that market themselves as private (and are sometimes better than nothing at all) but may still be just as bad as software on the tip of the iceberg.

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[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just tell the normie that you have nothing to say if you have nothing to hide. Also, why there's no F-Droid?

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[–] wasabi@feddit.org 18 points 11 months ago (7 children)

I have no clue why telegram is often mentioned when it comes to "privacy focused messaging". They don't even have e2e encrypted group chats. Only 1:1 chats may be encrypted as an opt-in. Even WhatsApp is more secure than that, since they use signals encryption.

Also the "we don't give out even a byte of data to anyone" statements made by telegram have been thoroughly debunked as lies. When telegrams bottom line is in danger, they have and will give out your data.

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yea, telegram being advertised as a privacy messenger is a joke. If people want to have group chats like in discord and don't care about privacy, whatever. But to try and flaunt how privacy focused you are while using your own home-brewed encryption is a joke. Not to mention the fact you have to turn it on for every chat you want end to end encrypted.

The whole thing about not giving out data is really only accomplished by spreading user data across several countries. So you would have to get a search warrant from every country to get the data, relying on some countries not wanting to cooperate with other countries. That is not real security. Real security would be encrypting it so you literally couldn't give them the data, even if they had a search warrant. Ya know, like signal.

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[–] mycamgirl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I wouldn't put Telegram at that level. I would put it in "The Brainwashed." Its encryption is disabled by default. You need to manually enable it on each chat, and you can't enable it on group chats. The app gives a false sense of privacy. Telegram flaunts its end-to-end encryption, but it never mentions that it is disabled by default, and it refuses to enable the default. The final result is that people are not using the feature.

A cryptographer and professor wrote a good piece about Telegram's encryption, calling it "unusual" and the "non-standard authenticated encryption mode ever invented": Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

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[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago

Apple: “Brainwashed”

iMessage: “Beginner”

Well which one is it?

[–] ISOmorph@feddit.org 14 points 11 months ago (19 children)

Can you explain why you would think Steam is so bad? I would argue they're pretty fair, especially with the option to buy steam cards for cash to not disclose your personal data. Does the client do some unsavory shit?

[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Seeing steam at the top makes me question the list. Likely a hate of DRM rather than privacy

[–] lb_o@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Yeap, and Brave in the middle. They only pretend they are for privacy, but they are the very opposite.

[–] dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah i hate when I see people using Brave, because they have been brainwashed.

Does anyone remember when they were injecting their own referral links into links for online stores (99% certain they did this pls prove wrong if you know better)? This alone leaves them with 0 trust in my books.

[–] const_void@lemmy.ml 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Brave is and always has been gross. Never understood how they’ve been so successful at tricking people into installing it.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)
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[–] tisktisk@piefed.social 12 points 11 months ago (7 children)

TIL I'm a privacy activist--who can help me get to the ghost mode?
(Do I even want to get there or is that limited to journalists who have entire states trying to unalive them?)

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Do I even want to get there

Only you can answer that.

or is that limited to journalists who have entire states trying to unalive them?

Pretty much, but if you want to give up all technology, work for yourself, and fake your death, then more power to you!

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seems like faking your death would cause more privacy problems than it solves. Why not just “stay alive” with a completely innocuous identity? Then adopt some new identity which cannot be traced back to the original?

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 7 points 11 months ago

If you're alive, you are asked for documents such as property records, taxes, etc. and if you refuse then bad things happen. If you fake your death, no more questions are asked and you can take on fake identities. In essence, faking your death takes your identity out of "the system"

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[–] LeTak@lemm.ee 11 points 11 months ago (10 children)

Tried the Privacy Activist and Enthusiast section. Was not really fun and you loose connection to most of your friends and family. Now I have a balanced setup with something out of each layer. Perfect balanced, as things should be

[–] Hellmo_Luciferrari@lemm.ee 15 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I have taken my own approach; there are things from each layer that I use. Some begrudgingly but others gladly.

The problem I faced when starting this journey is it does cut out a lot of people. And it becomes isolsting. So I did reel back a bit.

[–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 11 months ago (5 children)

It's equally frustrating to talk to people who're completely entrenched in the Enthusiast / Activist section. The utter disconnect when it comes to what's viable for most people is annoying to deal with sometimes. Statements like "Everyone who is able to read can easily learn to use Arch Linux" or "Everyone can flash their phone" do give me headaches. Was there, did both, wouldn't recommend to my less nerdy family.

[–] Hellmo_Luciferrari@lemm.ee 10 points 11 months ago (8 children)

I can totally understand where you are coming from.

I eochold the view that if you can read, you too can install GrapheneOS, or try Linux; but that doesn't make it right for everyone. It's a self imposed journey. I can't expect everyone to make the same choices I do.

That is where I will educate people as to why I chose what I chose; however I will not try to force someone down the same road.

So totally understood.

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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 10 points 11 months ago (13 children)
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[–] Corduroy_Pillows_Making_Headlines@hexbear.net 9 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I love this! May I share on my blog and with my newsletter subscribers at Punching Up Press? We're probably in boxes #2 and #3, with a lot of readers starting off in box #1.

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[–] PaulSmackage@hexbear.net 9 points 11 months ago
[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 8 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Using basic things like Graphene OS and keepass shouldn't be considered privacy activist

[–] Redex68@lemmy.world 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Calling GrapheneOS a "basic thing" when 99% of people will never touch their OS is a bit of a stretch.

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