So you’re thinking of buying a surprisingly inexpensive XR headset from a notorious social networking company, but you worry about being tracked?

因此，您正在考虑从一家臭名昭著的社交网络公司购买价格低廉的XR耳机，但您担心被跟踪吗？

You are not crazy. But maybe you have some questions?

你不疯 但是也许您有一些疑问？

As you may know, the business model of social networks involves extracting your most personal information, your needs and emotional biases, and then using this information to target ads and keep you coming back. It’s no joke that you’re not the real customer here. Instead of you paying directly for a service like Netflix, you’re paying indirectly, in the form of higher prices for the products you buy. The sellers spend that money to advertise right back at you and they try to spend it where it will do them the most good.

如您所知，社交网络的业务模型涉及提取您的最个人信息，需求和情感偏见，然后使用这些信息来定位广告并让您回头客。 你不是这里的真正顾客不是开玩笑的。 您不是直接为Netflix之类的服务付费，而是以更高价格购买的产品间接支付。 卖家将这笔钱花在了您身上，然后再花钱在他们最擅长的地方花钱。

Nothing is free. And if you really want maximize your personal freedom, the safest approach is to never have any social network accounts from “free” websites (the second safest method is to delete your accounts now).

没有什么是免费的。 而且，如果您真的想最大化个人自由，最安全的方法是永远不要从“免费”网站获得任何社交网络帐户(第二个最安全的方法是立即删除您的帐户)。

After all, it’s not that these companies know or in some sense sell my info that matters most to me. It’s that they may use it to manipulate me to act in ways that serve them over me. That’s the real danger to personal freedom. We won’t even know when they do it.

毕竟，对我而言最重要的不是这些公司知道或以某种方式出售我的信息。 这是他们可以用它来操纵我在为他们服务过我的方式行事。 那是个人自由的真正危险。 我们甚至都不知道他们什么时候做。

But I know that falls flat for many of you. You get real value from these social connections and you don’t see any viable alternatives. You get habituated.

但是我知道这对你们许多人来说都是平淡的。 您从这些社交关系中获得了真正的价值，并且看不到任何可行的选择。 你习惯了 。

So if you really want to buy that new cheap new VR headset, here’s what you can do and why it might help, at least temporarily.

所以，如果你真的想买新低价新VR耳机，这里是你可以做什么，以及为什么它可能会帮助，在 至少是暂时的。

• Don’t use your real identity (warning: this may violate a company’s terms of service). You usually need at least an external email account to verify. Be mindful that your anonymous email provider (e.g., ISP or other large corporation) may inadvertently share a few identifying details.

  不要使用您的真实身份 (警告： 这可能违反公司的服务条款 )。 通常，您至少需要一个外部电子邮件帐户才能进行验证。 请注意，您的匿名电子邮件提供商(例如ISP或其他大型公司)可能会无意间共享一些识别信息。

• Don’t use a credit card. Your credit history may be used to re-identify you. Cash works in person. You can try using cash to buy pre-paid debit cards for anonymous on-line shopping.

  不要使用信用卡。 您的信用记录可用于重新识别您的身份。 现金亲自工作。 您可以尝试使用现金购买预付费借记卡以进行匿名在线购物。

• Don’t use the same computer or mobile devices for multiple accounts. Computers can often be fingerprinted and uniquely identified. That can link your real and dummy accounts quite easily. On installing any apps, your contacts or location history could also be cross-referenced.

  请勿将同一台计算机或移动设备用于多个帐户。 通常可以对计算机进行指纹识别和唯一标识。 这样可以很容易地链接您的真实账户和虚拟账户。 在安装任何应用程序时，您的联系人或位置记录也可以被交叉引用。

• Don’t use the same IP address or browser-vendor for both dummy and real accounts. A cheap VPN service can help you somewhat randomize your IP address. Using different browsers can help avoid sharing your browsing history or form-filling information across computers (some “private browsing” modes are better than others. I trust Firefox most to forget.)

  虚拟帐户和真实帐户都不要使用相同的IP地址或浏览器供应商 。 廉价的VPN服务可以帮助您在某种程度上随机化IP地址。 使用不同的浏览器可以避免在计算机之间共享您的浏览历史记录或填写表格的信息(某些“私人浏览”模式比其他模式更好。我相信Firefox最容易忘记)。

• Don’t “friend” any real accounts from your dummy account. The circles of who knows whom or who talks to whom could be used to re-identify you. You could link to a small circle of other dummy accounts. But then you’re counting on everyone else being just as paranoid.

  不要将您的虚拟帐户中的任何真实帐户作为“好友”。 谁知道谁或谁与谁交谈的圈子可以用来重新识别您。 您可以链接到一小圈其他虚拟帐户。 但是，然后您指望其他所有人都一样偏执。

• Assume you’re being recorded. Use one class of devices (e.g., VR headsets) with only one account. But even then, you have to imagine that you will do something consistently in both accounts. We’re only human.

  假设您正在被记录。 仅使用一个帐户即可使用一类设备(例如，VR耳机)。 但是即使那样，您也必须想象自己将在两个帐户中都执行一致的操作。 我们只是人类。

What kinds of things can be recorded and compared over time?

随着时间的推移，可以记录和比较哪些东西？

1. Biometrics (e.g., Face-ID or other encoded photos used to tag you). A privacy-respecting company will encrypt your biometric information on your local device and only use it for secure log-in, never uploading to cloud. The ones that do upload will say they’re making it easy to identify you from any device, as a convenience…

   生物识别 (例如，Face-ID或其他用于标记您的编码照片)。 尊重隐私的公司将在本地设备上加密您的生物识别信息，仅将其用于安全登录，而不会上传到云中。 确实上传的人会说， 为了方便起见 ，他们可以从任何设备轻松识别您的身份 ……

2. Comments in chat are used today to identify serial trolls. But the same tech could help weed out the scourge of unprofitable fake accounts.

   今天，聊天中的评论可用于识别连续的巨魔。 但是，同样的技术可以帮助消除无利可图的假账户的祸害。

3. Researchers have shown that your body motions in VR can be used to uniquely identify you. Same will be true of eye motions for devices with eye tracking. And Iris-ID is explicitly designed to uniquely identify you.

   研究人员表明，您在VR中的身体动作可以用来唯一地识别您。 具有眼动追踪的设备的眼动也是如此。 Iris-ID明确设计为可以唯一标识您。

   Researchers have shown that your body motions in VR can be used to uniquely identify you. Same will be true of eye motions for devices with eye tracking. And Iris-ID is explicitly designed to uniquely identify you.(* AFAIK, Hololens2 does the right thing per #1 — but the eye-tracking API is still available for any developer to use and upload your data to the cloud…)

   研究人员表明，您在VR中的身体动作可以用来唯一地识别您。 具有眼动追踪的设备的眼动也是如此。 Iris-ID明确设计为可以唯一标识您。 (* AFAIK，Hololens2在每＃1上做正确的事情-但任何开发人员都可以使用眼睛跟踪API，并将其数据上传到云中...)

4. As above, your friend choices, what games you play together, what you like to do in VR can help conflate your multiple accounts and de-anonymize your dummy account — unless you’re very careful.如上所述，除非您非常小心，否则您的朋友选择，一起玩什么游戏，在VR中喜欢做什么都可以帮助混淆多个帐户并取消对虚拟帐户的匿名处理。

您可以通过成为alt-来欺骗系统吗？ (Can you trick the system by being alt-you?)

Perhaps you can. You’d need to actively add misinformation, aka noise, to defeat any matching algorithms. But computers are good at detecting non-random patterns too, so they can throw out the occasional blip that doesn’t match the major patterns. I doubt I could disguise my writing style over any substantial period of time. I don’t know if I could move my body differently enough. I know I can’t change my face. I can do some good vocal impressions, but only of cartoons and muppets, so that’s of limited value here.

也许可以。 您需要积极添加错误信息，也就是噪音，以击败任何匹配算法。 但是计算机也擅长检测非随机模式，因此它们可以偶尔抛出与主要模式不匹配的短消息。 我怀疑我会在相当长的一段时间内掩饰我的写作风格。 我不知道我能否以不同的方式移动我的身体。 我知道我不能改变自己的脸。 我可以给人留下很好的声音印象，但只能给动画片和木偶留下深刻的印象，因此在这里价值有限。

Now, I don’t actually think companies will devote this much time and effort to re-identifying you or me, at least not today or tomorrow. A dedicated private detective can find almost all of this information (except maybe what comes from eye-tracking or new brain-computer interfaces). The question is: how much does it cost the companies to obtain and is it worth it to them?

现在，我实际上并不认为公司会花那么多时间和精力来重新识别您自己，至少在今天或明天。 专门的私人侦探几乎可以找到所有这些信息(也许来自眼动仪或新的脑机接口的信息除外)。 问题是：公司要花多少钱，对他们来说值得吗？

Say the company can make $X off of your personal information right now, where $X is much higher than any discount or lost profit-margin on the new hardware. If it costs them double that to de-anonymize your dummy accounts, then it’s not worth it for them. You’re safe, for now.

假设公司可以立即从您的个人信息中扣除$ X，其中$ X远高于新硬件的折扣或利润损失。 如果使匿名帐户的虚拟化花费两倍，那么对他们来说就不值得了。 您现在很安全。

But what happens in the future, when costs come down and they have volumes more information and fewer and fewer new customers to monetize?

但是，当成本下降并且他们拥有更多的信息量和越来越少的新客户可以利用货币来盈利时，将来会发生什么呢？

What happens when the cost of the truly anti-social accounts (e.g., actual trolls) makes it mandatory for the company to find and expose all under-identified accounts? It seems like only a matter of time. The information is very cheap to store, seemingly forever.

当真正的反社会账户(例如，实际的巨魔)的成本使公司必须发现并暴露所有身份不明的账户时，会发生什么？ 似乎只是时间问题。 这些信息似乎永远存储起来很便宜。

In some cases, a company’s enormous scale makes it much easier to do things to re-identify you, finding patterns in social communications or sharing device information in massive planet-scale databases. A small improvement in consumer retention and engagement could mean billions in new revenue. And some smart person gets a bonus or promotion to boot.

在某些情况下，公司的庞大规模使您可以轻松地进行重新识别您的事情，在社交通讯中找到模式或在庞大的行星级数据库中共享设备信息。 消费者保留率和参与度的小幅提高可能意味着数十亿美元的新收入。 一些聪明的人会得到奖金或晋升。

This is why my best suggestion is to not take so much time and effort trying to be so secretive and therefore vulnerable. Put that same energy into telling Facebook and other companies directly if you don’t like how they’re operating. Tell them to change! Vote with your feet. And if not your feet, then your speak with your own unique voice and inspire others to do so as well.

这就是为什么我最好的建议是不要花太多时间和精力来使自己变得如此秘密并因此变得脆弱 。 如果您不喜欢Facebook和其他公司的运作方式，则将同样的精力直接告诉Facebook和其他公司。 告诉他们改变！ 用脚投票。 如果不是您的脚，那么您将以自己独特的声音说话，并激励他人也这样做。

个人观点 (A Personal Perspective)

FWIW, I decided to be rid of Facebook accounts for many years now and recently added Google to my “no fly” list on sheer principle, even if I trust them a tad more. It’s not impossible to be rid of them, but then again I never really got that much value from social networking either. YMMV.

FWIW，我决定摆脱Facebook帐户已经有很多年了，并且最近我以纯粹的原则将Google添加到我的“禁飞”名单中，即使我更信任他们。 摆脱它们并不是不可能，但是话又说回来，我也从未真正从社交网络中获得太大价值。 YMMV。

Even still, these companies may purchase data from 3rd party vendors. So I don’t expect we’re ever truly free of them until it’s just not worth it to them. I strive to be the least monetizable person and to always speak up about this.

即便如此，这些公司仍可能从第三方供应商那里购买数据。 因此，我不希望我们真正摆脱过他们，直到对他们来说不值得为止。 我努力成为最不容易获利的人，并一直对此大声疾呼。

And to be clear, I don’t actually dislike the people inside these companies. Some are even friends. But over time even good people will succumb to a corrupting business model that pays them well. It makes me sad that they don’t yet have a better way.

需要明确的是，我实际上并不喜欢这些公司内部的人。 有些甚至是朋友。 但是随着时间的流逝，即使是优秀的人才也会屈服于一种腐败的商业模式，这种模式会给他们带来丰厚的回报。 让他们感到遗憾的是他们还没有更好的方法。

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

“当一个人的薪水取决于他不了解某事时，他很难理解。”

— Upton Sinclair

—阿普顿·辛克莱尔