Are internet security and internet privacy incompatible goals?
Yes. They are completely incompatible goals when anything relating to identity/being is linked to it. Examples of this could be anything from your name, to your behavioral patterns, to your phone number
Disregarding the entire possibility that ANY site is hack-able/breach-able, the issue stands that the reasons that most sites request PII is valid, for security reasons. There does not exist any valid method of ensuring users identity that does not violate users privacy. CAPTCHAS are proven inefficient, email domains are easy as a 1-2 click. Once the setup is done server side changing to a new address is as easy as changing your server settings and registering a new domain, then just pointing your MX records there. Heck depending on your postfix setup you might not even have to change server settings, if your account lookup is setup to ignore the domain and it all uses the same database. Even phone numbers have proven troublesome but its the least troublesome method available
The entire reason PII style setups are used, is because its an easy verification site side, but a hard to spoof verification customer side. Like the article says, phone numbers are hard to change for verification, many only let you change so many times in X period, and usually require some form of physical identity to register, and the ones who don’t are forced such as VOIP style numbers get blocked.
We lack currently a good system aside from that, because at the end of the day, how do you prove you are who you say you are, without disclosing your identity. I personally think it should be fine to give up some PII for security purposes, but this NEEDS to be restricted only to security and should never be shared with any entity, and this includes government overreach. Alas this will never happen.
Yes. They are completely incompatible goals when anything relating to identity/being is linked to it. Examples of this could be anything from your name, to your behavioral patterns, to your phone number
Disregarding the entire possibility that ANY site is hack-able/breach-able, the issue stands that the reasons that most sites request PII is valid, for security reasons. There does not exist any valid method of ensuring users identity that does not violate users privacy. CAPTCHAS are proven inefficient, email domains are easy as a 1-2 click. Once the setup is done server side changing to a new address is as easy as changing your server settings and registering a new domain, then just pointing your MX records there. Heck depending on your postfix setup you might not even have to change server settings, if your account lookup is setup to ignore the domain and it all uses the same database. Even phone numbers have proven troublesome but its the least troublesome method available
The entire reason PII style setups are used, is because its an easy verification site side, but a hard to spoof verification customer side. Like the article says, phone numbers are hard to change for verification, many only let you change so many times in X period, and usually require some form of physical identity to register, and the ones who don’t are forced such as VOIP style numbers get blocked.
We lack currently a good system aside from that, because at the end of the day, how do you prove you are who you say you are, without disclosing your identity. I personally think it should be fine to give up some PII for security purposes, but this NEEDS to be restricted only to security and should never be shared with any entity, and this includes government overreach. Alas this will never happen.