Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target

Practical privacy for busy people.

Doxxing defense • data brokers • breaches • AI scams • age/ID checks.

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[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

You don’t need to go off-grid to protect your privacy.

Follow @secretsofprivac for daily privacy wins.

Get started here: 7 quick upgrades that make you a harder target 🧵

[🐶 🤠 Mr. JAY 🔥🐉 ✨️✨️ Corgi NFT Community ✨️ @DipnHodl]

Good to know

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Most people worry about hackers stealing their health data. The more immediate threat is a lawyer subpoenaing it.

-> Calm, Headspace, MyFitnessPal, and most period trackers are not covered by HIPAA
-> Headspace explicitly lists responding to subpoenas as a stated use of your retained data
-> Deleting the app doesn't delete the data, it stays on company servers, often indefinitely

The legal system hasn't changed. The data available to it has though.

Ready to go deeper? Link below. 👇

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Your Apps Are Building a Legal Case Against You

https://t.co/Jd8hLVZUhR

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Most people worry about hackers stealing their health data. The more immediate threat is a lawyer subpoenaing it.

-> Calm, Headspace, MyFitnessPal, and most period trackers are not covered by HIPAA
-> Headspace explicitly lists responding to subpoenas as a stated use of your retained data
-> Deleting the app doesn't delete the data, it stays on company servers, often indefinitely

The legal system hasn't changed. The data available to it has though.

Ready to go deeper? Link below. 👇

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Home inspection data as the new credit score?

Large private equity firms are reportedly buying up inspection companies. They're not doing it for the business, but for the data.

Your roof condition, HVAC age, foundation cracks all gets packaged and sold to insurers and lenders who use it to price gouge you.

You don't get to see the report of course, and there's no way to dispute it.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Home inspection data as the new credit score?

Large private equity firms are reportedly buying up inspection companies. They're not doing it for the business, but for the data.

Your roof condition, HVAC age, foundation cracks all gets packaged and sold to insurers and lenders who use it to price gouge you.

You don't get to see the report of course, and there's no way to dispute it.

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

There is a new scam going on in this home inspection industry

- Large corporations are buying up all the small home inspection companies
- They don’t care about making money off inspecting homes, they want the data

Why? This is where it gets borderline criminal

Home inspections are supposed to be confidential, but what they’re doing is buying all the companies to own the data

Then they are going to sell that data to insurance companies and lenders

Now with this new information the insurance company finds out, they're going to start charging you $3,000 (or whatever) extra a year to insure that house

Here’s what I’ve found

Large corporations and private equity firms are aggressively consolidating the home inspection industry primarily by buying inspection software platforms like Spectora, HomeGauge and larger inspection companies

A home inspection report contains highly detailed property specific information like roof age and condition, electrical and plumbing issues, foundation problems, HVAC status, environmental hazards

This is extremely valuable for:

- Insurance companies (risk assessment and underwriting).
- Lenders (property valuation and loan risk).
- Home warranty providers, contractors, and data brokers

Home inspections are supposed to be confidential between the buyer, inspector, and sometimes the real estate parties.

However, many inspection software companies’ terms of service allow data aggregation and sharing

That’s the loophole they found. That’s the scam

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

The stated goal is protecting 9-year-olds from Instagram.

The mechanism ends anonymous internet access for every adult who owns a phone, tablet or computer.

The chokepoint strategy explained. 👇

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@BaconLettuceTmo NGL, that's a completely reasonable reaction

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Nightmare scenario here 👇

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@JunoNameon @DuckDuckGo They also have a terrible track record of providing biased results.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

The stated goal is protecting 9-year-olds from Instagram.

The mechanism ends anonymous internet access for every adult who owns a phone, tablet or computer.

The chokepoint strategy explained. 👇

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

https://t.co/fDHY9xKbxd

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@PatronusBen What's worse - that they didn't have them or they did and they were terrible?

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

Meta gave their AI support bot the ability to modify your Instagram account.

If you're thinking that sounds risky, you'd be correct.

Here's what happened next:
• Attacker grabs your public profile photo
• Runs it through an AI video generator to make the face pass a "liveness" check
• Meta's AI accepts the deepfake as identity proof
• Your password gets reset, your account stolen, and sold on Telegram.

The exploit is supposedly patched. The problem is the underlying IT design that made it possible isn't.

[André @oracles]

Today Instagram had this massive exploit where hackers were just stealing rare handles left and right. Hundreds of accounts gone.

People losing handles they’ve owned since 2010, some worth hundreds of thousands.

I own a few rare ones so I was actually stressed watching this happen in real time, which I haven’t been in years.

Obama White House account got hit.

These aren’t some random new accounts, these are verified, locked down accounts and they still got compromised.

The thing is the exploit is so simple it’s almost funny. Attacker goes to Forgot Password, says their account is hacked, turns on a VPN to match the target’s location (which now you can find on the about section of the page).

Instagram’s AI support flow asks them to verify with a selfie.

They grab a photo from the target’s profile, run it through an AI video generator to make an animation of the person’s face moving around, upload that to Meta’s AI as proof.

And Meta’s AI just accepts it because it can’t tell the difference between a real selfie and an AI-generated video of someone’s face
.
Once verified they change the email to theirs. Password reset link goes to their email. They own it now. 2FA gets bypassed somehow in the process but honestly I don’t know exactly how, just that it did.

Point is even locked down accounts went down.

Then you try to recover your account and you’re talking to a chatbot that has zero ability to help.

You can’t escalate to a human. You’re just stuck. Your asset is gone and there’s no one to call.

The whole thing just highlighted how stupid it is to automate account security without any human in the loop.

One AI fooling another AI while there’s literally no person anywhere to catch it.

Meta took hours to even acknowledge it while accounts were getting stolen every minute.

Now thankfully it’s patched but I don’t think it will be the last one. Stay safe!

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@ReclaimTheNetHQ Only a matter of time...

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

I’m expecting a big push for passkeys after the Meta/facebook/instagram AI agent debacle.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

🚨 Blair: Use Digital ID + AI to spot future criminals before birth.

Here he is laying out the scheme in 2006.

“Predicting criminals” = biometric surveillance and social scoring with AI.

Resist the creep and protect your anonymity.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@IntCyberDigest Metas AI governance program is a hot mess. Completely removing human oversight is not a best practice.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@Polymarket The hype and fearmongering about mythos was clearly a marketing strategy. Likely worked.

Good for them.

But hopefully people won’t be fooled next time.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

The goal is to control your devices.

Wrote about the endgame here https://t.co/5dNRqQfGjc

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

California to ban open source 3D printers joining New York.

The slippery slope of centralized permission to make anything is the last grasp of the end of the old king.

[Secrets of Privacy | Make Yourself a Harder Target @secretsofprivac]

@ReclaimTheNetHQ Apple, Google and Samsung are part of the chokepoint strategy.