I'm old school and I made accounts for various social media I think several years ago back before they even had phone verification on a lot of these sites and some of it is just flat out broken unless you attach a phone number to them now and I simply wasn't prepared for how much cancer was involved lol. Just about managed to get it working but these sites really do break without a working phone number.
I wanted to scrub my big tech presence for the most part and just leave my youtube channel there to prevent any potential hostile takeover and clean up the history so everything is more consistent for my alt-tech stuff in the searches. To think as well they're going to make everything even worse now, we're going to have to give safety lectures to the next generations about internet security and what really happens with social media history. Got to think carefully about where you post your stuff because some of them don't even have delete options to at least take your stuff off the sites. We all know the fuckers will likely keep secret backups for the glowies to peruse even if you can delete stuff off the front end.
I think advising people use burner phones for any social media is going to be sound security advice at this point and always post up fake data.
The US recently started asking for a list of your social media posts and emails used before they will allow you to get a visa/green card. (unless you come in illegally ofc)
Its only a matter of time before third world countries copy this step => you will be at risk of Blasphemy laws/sorcery laws if your plane transits through Dubai/the Middle East…
Quite a dystopian future thanks to all the data collected by the “trust and safety” departments.
It's not an exaggeration that you probably have better freedom of movement in Russia now.
Russia? Try fucking Afghanistan.
You have clearly never been to Russia. They are still arresting people for saying "war" instead of "special military operation".
No I haven't, but here you can get arrested for posting there are only two genders on social media, so what's the difference exactly?
I'm not sure where "here" is, but it's about 90% chance the prisons are better than the Russian ones.
At least in the West you can claim to be a woman and go to the cushy women's prison!
UK and lol you don't know how fucked things can get here if you get noticed by the state, just ask Tommy Robinson. This is why I'm all like "Yeah, Russia looking quite good to me now" which might seem crazy to other people.
Certainly true for political prisoners, but as an average Joe you don't want to be in Russia.
Tommy really should come out as trans.
I'm an ex-UKIP member and was fairly active in politics a few years ago during the EU referendum, so it's not just necessarily me being paranoid. Look don't get me wrong, I'm not naïve about Russia being a dictatorship, it's just that's how badly the west treat's political opposition they don't approve of now. On top of that there's the whole recent debanking situation with Nigel Farage which is going to get more common. I'd rather get shot than have to deal with the shit people deal with in the west now.
The Philippines just forced everyone to register their phone SIM cards in their name or they deactivated them. There are now no burner phones in that country.
They suffer from extreme poverty, but for God's sake, they had to fucking clamp down on that pressing anonymous phone problem.
Germany has this since 2017 or so. At least you can get burner-SIMs through other EU-countries (roaming inside the EU is relatively cheap)
Ha if only it were that logical
I think we will be looking at this being leveled for accessing (not liking not sharing) the wrong articles or websites
What are they doing if you don't have an account? Would be a good idea to just have a dummy Facebook account or something where you post nothing, looks super normie etc.
I keep a cheap voip number for most sites. I'm not very integrated into big tech though. I was never a big user anyway, but I totally disconnected from all of them. Almost everything I've said controversial would be limited to here and I suppose a tiny bit on Reddit that's been nuked for almost 3 years now. I don't think Reddit was ever on my actual e-mail address. This site doesn't have my e-mail. They'd have to use my IP to match me up, which might work ok for a hostile takeover of the site and possibly my ISP or middle-men like Cloudflare.
Still, I'm not naive enough to think I'm not constantly tracked despite my measures. I just try to not be the easiest in an algorithm and keep from being a product to big tech as much as I can. If the government wants to get me, well my name is kinda unique and it's not like they can't just look up my address in some tax records. It's not going to take much. I tried to tell some January 6 people that was a trap for the very same reasons. If you're going for something like that, either have to win or have an incredibly solid plan of ingress/egress that involves leaving cell phones behind, not flying to DC, not renting a car to drive there, perhaps not using your own car, measures to evade surveillance. Even then, you're likely to fail at it.
The US government is unbelievably good at surveillance when they want to be, they just choose not to target retail theft rings or antifa cells.
They have that monster data center in the desert out in Utah. Supposedly it has the capacity to back up the entire internet at set intervals. So they can rewind the whole thing and see what was posted at a certain date even if it was later deleted.
SNDL (Store Now - Decrypt Later). Would not be surprised if the US has more Data centers like that.
They have gotten worse at that, sure. Still helps me a ton. I also use for many of the two-factor authentication things that don't seem to care. If they want my actual cell I decide if it's worth it or not. Often that leans it to not.
Unless you buy that burner in cash from the next town over, private party, without sending an email or making a call to the seller, it's a false sense of protection. Even then, could be a fed handing out pre-flagged IMEIs.
Not trying to scare anyone, but if you want to play the normie social media game, be aware that this alone will not protect you.
Also be careful WHERE you use the burner. If you use it around your location it's pretty much a dead giveaway. They can triangulate your location at a couple meters, if the phone only turns on where you live it'll just point to you. General advice: don't use social media with phone number verification.
The Facebook culture shift of hyper-exposure on the internet was a cynical ploy to extract data from consumers but it resulted in something far worse.
But with AI on the horizon, verified identities might be the only thing preventing things from escalating.
The creepfest is just going to get worse, either way.
You can keep a cheap prepaid number active for like $100/year if you need consistent access to it, and there are websites where you can buy one time SMS verifications for almost any website for no more than $1.
It's never one time. Log in from a different IP and they'll harass you until the end of times about it.
No one told me I would never be able to change my Gmail account name. Gonna need that burner
Why are you using Gmail though? I would advice against using Google where ever possible.
We need to see where the Online Safety Bill goes, due up for the third reading in the Lords in early September but it's looking likely that Government ID verification to abolish anonymity for all websites accessible in the UK and a ban on VPN's for residential use (and likely Tor too) to close that loophole is going to be pushed through in amendments.
Whether they get that far, we'll have to see but Labour, likely to win the next election, have said they would ban VPNs if in power so if it doesn't happen now, you've got a couple of years before they're likely to be banned.