Privacy

25^th May 2012: New Cookie Law Makes Europe Safest Place to be Online | New York Times

Wayne Dvorjak, June 1st 2012

Went online today. Chaos. All my favourite sites are forcing me to accept some kind of cookie policy. I’m not even sure what a cookie is. I certainly don’t want one. Everywhere I go, pop-ups in my face, telling me if I don’t accept their cookies I can’t enter. This is a nightmare. I think I preferred it when it was just pop up ads asking me to buy Viagra.

5^th June 2012: Tracking the trackers: What are cookies? An introduction to web tracking | Guardian, UK

Wayne Dvorjak, June 8^th 2012

Okay, so I’ve been looking things up. Apparently, these cookies are some kind of file they put on your computer that allows them to track you and all of your behaviour online. What kind of Orwellian nightmare have we entered? At first, I blamed this new cookie law thing, but it turns out the cookies aren’t new. They’ve always been there, just no-one had to tell us about them before. I don’t like this. I don’t need people knowing what I’m doing on-line. Not that I’m doing anything bad, I just…

I don’t like this. I’m going to do something.

July 4^th 2012: How (and why) to surf the web in secret | PCWorld

Wayne Dvorjak, July 12^th 2012

It turns out I don’t have to sign up to these cookie things. But no-one has to let me onto their site if I don’t, and that’s a lot of sites I’d be giving up. I did find one site which claimed to tell me how to browse the web anonymously. I couldn’t read the article. It was covered by a big pop up asking me to accept their cookies.

I’ve looked into petitions. I’ve looked into legal actions. There’s no way round it. If I truly want to be anonymous online, I’m going to have to learn to program.

21^st Aug 2012: 5 ways to learn to code from the comfort of you own browser | Tech Crunch

Wayne Dvorjak, Sep 15^th 2012

Well, I’ve made my first program. It’s not pretty but it works. I can now spend hours beating my browser at tic tac toe. The wonders of modern technology. Still, mighty oaks and all that. I’ve been trying to read articles about proxies, and communications protocols too. It still seems like gobbledigook to me, but vaguely intelligible gobbledigook. Some of the sentences are even beginning to look readable. More like information and less like noise.

22^nd Jan 2013: Hubbub: A new player in the war against cookies | Wired

Wayne Dvorjak, Jan 23rd 2013

I’ve done it. I’ve come up with a solution. I don’t have to block the cookies. All I have to do is make sure they can’t track me. The whole point of the cookies is that they’re personalized to me. If I simply replace every request for cookies to a request to a central server, and serve up the same cookie for everybody who uses my plugin, the data will be so anonymised it will be useless. They’ll have the information on what I did, but mixed in with the information on what everyone else did. It will be like trying to listen in on a single conversation in the middle of Grand Central Station.

I’m a genius. As long as at least a few other people sign up to the app.

19^th March 2013: Privacy newcomer, Hubbub, becomes most downloaded app | Computing, UK

Wayne Dvorjak, Mar 20th 2013

Okay, this is weird. I’ve just seen my name in the papers. I’ve never been a celebrity before. More and more people are using the app as world. This is awesome. We’ve defeated the online snoopers. Cookies are a thing of the past. We’ve won.

25^th March 2013: The rise of the script kiddie: hackers in short pants | NetStandard.com

Wayne Dvorjak, Apr 1st 2013

I got a weird phone call today. It sounded like a couple of children. There was definitely giggling in the background. They said all kinds of crap. I don’t know where they got my number. My best guess is some kind of online hack. I’m going to have to look into changing my number, just in case. Christ, I wonder what other kind of shit is out there.

8^th April 2013: It’s pretty much impossible to protect online privacy | Radio Free Europe

Wayne Dvorjak, Apr 27th 2013

The phone calls have become an almost constant occurrence now. Changing the number didn’t help. Nor did going unlisted. It’s not like it’s the same people each time either. Every script kiddy with a laptop seems to know how to get hold of my information. Some of them even blame me for making the world a less secure place. I’ve invested in a VPN, but to be honest I’m not sure I trust them not to steal my information either, so I’m writing my own. Should be done in a couple of weeks.

June 4^th 2013: Edward Snowden: NSA has been spying on us all | New York Times

Wayne Dvorjak, Jul 27th 2013

I saw someone hanging around outside the house today. I’m sure they were spying on me. I saw them look over when I twitched aside the curtains to look at them and they haven’t moved all day.

I think I’m going to have to move house. Somehow, my address must be out there from before I set up the VPN. I’ve added form fillers as well, so it can’t be that. I fill in random genuine information everytime it asks me a confirmation of address, or email, just not mine. It doesn’t work for deliveries, obviously. I’ve got that covered too. I have it delivered to a local shop for pickup, with a random name as the recipient. There’s no way anyone’s tracking me.

Of course, if I was trying to track someone, I’d just cross correlate the purchase history with the credit card information and look for a recognisable purchase pattern. Then, all I’d have to do is…

Shit. I’m going to have to get rid of my credit cards.

19^th August 2013: Google credit card online hack how to | Toptal

Wayne Dvorjak, Sep 15th 2013

The credit cards are gone. I’m paying for everything in cash now. Obviously online purchases are out. Plus anything big. It’s okay paying in cash at the local supermarket, but paying cash for a laptop, or a fridge or a car just attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Of course, that’s fine going forward, but I’ve got to assume my address is already out there. I can try and send out a worm to delete my address wherever its encountered digitally, but there’s a simpler way. I can afford it. Time to go off the grid.

12^th November 2013: Hubbub founder, Wayne Dvorjak, retreats to secret hideaway | Associated Press

Wayne Dvorjak, Dec 27th 2013

Alright, the move is complete. The house is beautiful. It ought to be, I certainly spent enough on it. The contractors weren’t happy with being paid that amount of money in cash, which is not the stereotype I was led to believe. I thought they were all fiddling the taxes and would be glad to have something off the books. Not this lot. You’d think they’d never seen eight hundred thousand in notes before. And the bitching about signing the non-disclosure agreements. Still, it’s all signed and legally binding. No one can find me. Not that I can imaging why anyone would be looking for me, but you’ve got to protect yourself, don’t you? After all, any of these apps could be out to get you.

5^th January 2014: Online activists claim privacy app Hubbub steals personal data | BBC online

Wayne Dvorjak, Feb 1^st 2014

I can’t believe the paranoid idiots out there. Why on earth would I be gathering their information through my anti-tracking software. I mean, what would be the point? They’re all nobodies anyway. It’s not like they have strangers trying to track them down via WHOIS in order to send them a box of Maryland cookies. Such a hilarious attempt at humour. Such a failed attempt to get past my security protocols. I spotted them straight away, with a few backdoors I added into nslookup. You have to get up pretty early to get anything past me.

17^th April 2014: 13 things you should know about online privacy | Readers Digest

Wayne Dvorjak, Apr 19th 2014

They’ve found me. I’ll keep my sentences short. They could be using key tracking software. Can’t be via digital fingerprinting. I don’t have one. Keep. Changing. Signatures. To confuse the trackers.

Credit cards are gone. Mobile phone too. Nothing with any personal details. Can’t even go out, in case cameras see me. NSA. Facial recognition. Can’t take chance. Have to stockpile food in basement. Could last here for years.

24^th May 2014: Reclusive billionaire feared missing. Not seen for weeks, say local residents | Google News

Wayne Dvorjak, May 25^th 2014

I’ve done it. I’ve gone dark. No one will find me. No one will even know I exist. I’ve finally found what I crave. Privacy. Complete and utter privacy.

1^st July 2014: Reclusive billionaires address revealed by drunk builder in pub. Thousands gather to catch a glimpse | National Enquirer

Wayne Dvorjak, July 4^th 2014

Shit.