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A Site for Privacy and Data Protection Enthusiasts
Privacy is important. Especially in the time of the Internet.
Hence there are software solutions to improve your personal privacy (most commonly known: TOR). And there are laws, which mandate a certain level of privacy (most commonly known, likely: GDPR).
However, in my real life experience, few people know of what those laws mean and even fewer know of the tools. That's bad, because privacy is a human right. Furthermore, many laws are written in a confusing way, which most people don't understand. Therefore there may be companies, that want to fulfill the legal requirements, but need help with that.
What if there were a Codidact community for such Privacy enthusiasts?
Some things I'd suggest to consider on-topic:
- Questions about the usage and functionality of privacy tools (TOR, VPNs, ...)
- Questions about how to better protect your data while being online
- Questions about privacy laws, including abstract case support (but of course no specific legal advise)
- Questions about how to implement certain privacy law rules (for example: which type of cookie banner should I choose?) (possibly too subjective??)
Some things I'd suggest to consider off-topic:
- specific legal advise
- check-my-site-or-approach questions
- questions asking for assistance with something clearly illegal (example: how do I buy illegal drug X on TOR)
Anything else? What do you think? Would you be interested?
Technical considerations (all suggestions by me; feel free to suggest something different):
- Site Name: "Privacy"
- Site URL: privacy.codidact.com
- Special Features Needed: likely none, possibly MathJax for encryption stuff if that's on-topic
As for two of the suggested on-topic scope points, > Questions about the usage and functionality of privacy tools (T …
1y ago
This is certainly a topic I'm interested in (I suppose I could be described as a "Privacy Enthusiast"), but I'm trying t …
2y ago
The name "privacy" is too broad. My first mental images have nothing to do with what your proposed site is about. I th …
2y ago
Inspired by the help page for the parallel Somewhere Else here's a few other test scenarios not already covered by your …
2y ago
Record your interest here If you are interested in helping to build this site, please leave a comment describing your …
2y ago
I suggest we divide Q&A into these two categories, Q&A - General Q&A about what users can do to protect their privac …
2y ago
6 answers
The following users marked this post as Works for me:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| luap42 | (no comment) | Nov 6, 2021 at 18:04 |
As for two of the suggested on-topic scope points,
- Questions about the usage and functionality of privacy tools (TOR, VPNs, ...)
- Questions about how to better protect your data while being online
I would argue that those should be on topic on Power Users, and thus don't need a separate site, at least for the time being. If we get a lot of those questions, then it might be worth revisiting the discussion of separating them onto a site of their own.
The other two:
- Questions about privacy laws, including abstract case support (but of course no specific legal advise)
- Questions about how to implement certain privacy law rules (for example: which type of cookie banner should I choose?) (possibly too subjective??)
seem to me to overlap pretty well with the (later) proposal for a Law site, just with a somewhat narrower scope; therefore, they can probably be folded into any reasonable Law site proposal.
0 comment threads
This is certainly a topic I'm interested in (I suppose I could be described as a "Privacy Enthusiast"), but I'm trying to understand exactly what kinds of questions and answers (and answerers, most importantly) this is going to try to attract. Is this primarily about online privacy, or also about being tracked through automated license plate readers or someone looking into my house through my living room window? Would questions about implementing better privacy for one's company or web site be on topic (like "How do I configure Apache to use TLS with Perfect Forward Secrecy?" or "What information can I ask of my employees when they request time off?") or just personal privacy?
I'm also wary of how one will draw the line at refusing to answer questions that are "clearly illegal", when laws and legality vary between jurisdictions. I mean, I suspect there are countries where the use of Tor at all could be illegal, though maybe a better example would be the use of Tor to circumvent "geo-blocking" may be against a site's terms of use which may or may not be illegal depending on the jurisdictions (or prosecutors) involved. While I think a resource for "How to use Tor" and similar tools would be a Good Thing, it can very quickly get into some murky waters that Codidact (as a young organization) may have second thoughts about dipping its toes into.
It also seems like it could be really broad. For example, I run my own mail server, in part because I like the privacy implications of owning my own data rather than it being hosted by a free "web mail" provider. So would that make any question about hosting one's own email on-topic? Or would it just be something like, "As a best practice you want your data to not be owned by other companies, but we can't help you actually implement doing so."?
And I think my main concern mostly comes down to this: Who will be the people answering questions here, since it seems like you'd need a wide variety to be able to give good comprehensive answers to anything privacy-related. Again I really like the high-level concept, I'm just having trouble picturing how it could end up really working in practice.
The name "privacy" is too broad. My first mental images have nothing to do with what your proposed site is about. I think of how much the public can see me when I'm out and about doing things, how anonymous I am at the grocery store, stalking, what others know about how I vote, what I read, etc.
It seems you are really talking about internet or maybe on-line privacy. That's fine if that's what you want your site to be about, but recognize that is a small subset of overall "privacy".
broadening the scope to general "Security"?
That has the same problem as "privacy", in that I don't think you mean to include the lock on my front door, how to keep my car from getting stolen, a whole pile of doomsday prepper issues, how much the country should spend on its military, etc.
Names like "e-privacy", "online privacy", "data privacy", and "data security" seem to describe better what you intend the site to be.
The site name is the one thing that needs to be considered from everyone else's point of view. Once inside the site, you can use whatever domain-specific jargon the users agree on. But the site name has to make sense to everyone else out there.
Inspired by the help page for the parallel Somewhere Else here's a few other test scenarios not already covered by your list:
- Security and privacy start before you sign on to the Internet. What hardware are you using, and in what physical environment? There's plenty to talk about offline in respect to online privacy as well; should such topics as social engineering (ex. phishing) and physical security of data centers and computers be on-topic?
- Cryptography is an incredibly broad field. Should the math piece of it be left to Math Codidact and the implementation to Software Codidact, or would we allow such questions on Privacy Codidact?
Record your interest here
If you are interested in helping to build this site, please leave a comment describing your level of interest (casual visitor, enthusiast, expert in this topic within the site's scope, something else?), or edit the post directly. I'll edit comments into the post later.
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My level of interest in this would be between "casual visitor" and "enthusiast". — ghost-in-the-zsh
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I would be a casual asker. I have almost no expertise to offer. - Monica Cellio
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I'm an self-proclaimed expert with GDPR and would also be interested in asking and answering other questions - luap42
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Count me in. I'm trying to get into the field more seriously, and I feel I have what to offer for true beginners as well. — DonielF
I suggest we divide Q&A into these two categories,
Q&A - General Q&A about what users can do to protect their privacy
- Questions about the usage and functionality of privacy tools
- Tor, VPNs, Adblockers, etc.
- Questions about how to better protect your data while being online
- E.g. browser configuration
- Questions about how companies track you (and how to avoid being tracked)
- "What is fingerprinting?"
- "What are third-party cookies?"
Legal - Q&A about privacy laws (IF this is in scope)
- Questions about privacy laws, including abstract case support (but of course no specific legal advise)
- Questions about how to implement certain privacy law rules
- "Which type of cookie banner should I choose?"
1 comment thread