You will be delighted to hear that e.g. Euro bank notes have had RFIDs since around 2005. The only remarkable thing about Euros is that the EU made this public knowledge, other nations did the same, they only didn't tell everyone.

Any bill you have in your wallet makes you trackable, and every bill spent can be tracked back to you. No secrets.

As for cell phones, they need not be "smart" for your service provider and/or secret services to trivially and routinely track your position, and to eavesdrop not only on communications but also to use the phone as a remote microphone. That kind of stuff has been done since the 1990s.

If you don't have a passport, you sure do have some form of ID card or drivers license, there's hardly a way around them. They all have ISO 14443 RFIDs nowadays too. Contrary to common propaganda, these chips do not have an active range of 5-10cm but upwards of 3 meters. They also are not exclusively readable with the PIN.

Which means no more and no less than you're trackable and identifiable pretty much everywhere in every city. Why do you think they don't want to see your ID when you enter an airplane now? Because they've already seen it when you're still 3 meters away.

If you want to worry about something, worry about this shit, not about the NSA trying to hack your computer. If they do want your computer's contents, they'll break into your house and ask you for the password while you're wearing a black sack over your head and are being beaten with a hose. That's cheaper and faster.

If it was not unsafe they would not sell a new Windows version or what ?

Of course! Its common knowledge that once Microsoft develops a secure enough OS they'll sell only that one until everybody has it, then the company will just cease to exist, biding farewell to all our computers and money.

Hi, at least some people agree.

Living up to my profile name is nothing wrong with, makes programming lots better.

I dit not know about RFIDs in euro bills, thanks, will microwave them.

greetings

Hold the bills up to the light. A cheap RF chip thin enough to fit between a sheet of "paper" would show up about the size of your thumb nail ... expensive ones would show up about 1/8 the size of a US penny.

Edit: they are in US nootes also [LINK]

If it was not unsafe they would not sell a new Windows version or what ?

Not to talk about NSA stuff ( Microsoft is American company ).

So for me its clear, cannot be trusted with your stuff.

China and every other major country is also trying to read your information and the information of major corporations.

The difference between China breaking into Google and the NSA breaking into Petrobras, is that China steals the trade secrets and gives them to their businesses, and the NSA doesn't re-distribute trade secrets. If you're worried about the NSA having what Google already collects on you, then you should be worried about the amount Google collects and focus on cutting of the source of the NSA's information.

NSA doesn't steal your source code and give it to your competitors. China and Russia does.

Really, Israel is the only one who's had a realistic response to the whole NSA spying on them thing.

They basically said, "Oh, the NSA was spying on us? That's what we expected. We expect every first world nation is, just as they correctly suspect we are." (I'm totally paraphrasing here)

Any other reaction is delusional, in my opinion. "Gasp! The spy agency has been spying on people?! Crucify them for doing their job!"

The only real shock here is that they did their job fifty times better than anyone expected (kudos for them, that shows their skill) - and that they were skillful enough to hide it (kudos for them, that shows their skill).

Israel, and dozens of other first world nations, share-in and process loads of NSA-collected information, and share with the NSA loads of information their own spy agencies collected.

The other-country outrage of places like Brazil is not that the NSA were spying (because Brazil spies on us also), but that the NSA succeeded, and worst still, without their knowing. It harmed their national pride, and made them feel weak and vulnerable, because they now knew they were exposed, didn't know what was stolen, and didn't know how badly they were exposed or where, but knew it was bad.

When it was found out the USA had spied on Israel Prime Minister, it was also revealed by Snowden that Israel had spied on the French President just last year (that is to say, the French discovered it last year, but I don't know how long Israel was spying before being discovered). Many countries, NSA shares some of its spying information with. They aren't ignorant that other countries (other allied countries) are spying. While the USA is sharing loads of spying information with countries like Australia, do you think they aren't sharing similar or different information with France and Germany?

When visiting other (friendly, allied) countries, our diplomats are taught to assume they are being spied on. Because they are. They have to go inside their eavesdrop-protection tents that they bring with them, if they want to have a secure conversation. The host nations of our allies like Britain, bug the hotel rooms that they assign to our visiting diplomats.

Heck, someone I know real well went to Cuba on a church mission-trip a few years back, and Cuba wiretapped the hotel rooms just because they were American.

The only thing we've gotten out of the Snowden revelations is that, hey, at least one department of our government is actually competent and does their job efficiently and effectively. The media/public/political solution? Shut down one of the few parts of our government that actually works.

</rant> *deep breath* *goes back to programming*

The difference between China breaking into Google and the NSA breaking into Petrobras, is that China steals the trade secrets and gives them to their businesses, and the NSA doesn't re-distribute trade secrets.

What on earth makes you think that? Every big spy agency is in bed with industry, and leaks foreign trade secrets and so on onto local suppliers. In international disputes, they'll even leak evidence/strategies from foreign lawyers to the local ones...

Any other reaction is delusional, in my opinion. "Gasp! The spy agency has been spying on people?! Crucify them for doing their job!"
The only real shock here is that they did their job fifty times better than anyone expected (kudos for them, that shows their skill) - and that they were skillful enough to hide it (kudos for them, that shows their skill).
The only thing we've gotten out of the Snowden revelations is that, hey, at least one department of our government is actually competent and does their job efficiently and effectively.

The biggest scandal from the NSA leaks is the revelation that the USA is now a Stasi-esque police state. That intelligence requests for information to google/Facebook/twitter/MS/etc are just a facade because whether or not the request is complied with, the NSA already has the data before the request was even made. That most common forms of encryption are trivially craked by then, and that everything is intercepted and recorded. All this is then glued together with the revelation that they use this information not just for their job of "national security", but also to enforce petty crimes. All law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to state troopers are having NSA illegally laundered to them so that it can be used in court for petty prosecutions even though it's been obtained without a warrant.
Suddenly it makes sense as to why 25% of prisoners are in American prisons, despite only 5% of people being in that country.

China and every other major country is also trying to read your information and the information of major corporations.

Actually this is common stuff. All nations do cyber espionage at governmental levels as well as industrial/company levels and even on the private level against civilians if needed. All nations with the skills to do it do. All intelligence services in most nations are actually acting as a state in the state who do not need to answer to anyone as no one really elected them.

We can do nothing about this(beside unplug the net). Also many antiviruses firms simply get ordered to white list so called safe programs that helps you interact with the gov online. It happen in my country and got expose in the media and the politicians answer to the journalists an other politicians in the parliament was "we cannot comment on the work of the secret service's work and I have no knowledge about this as far as I now at this moment".

The safe "helper program" was used to safely log on with you personal security number and a unique key but it required you to install a Java plugin application. Some security experts then found some funny code in it that seemed to a backdoor like thing. It has been hinted that this backdoor has been used on several occasion to spy on gang leaders and possible terrorists in the media(all the articles are in Scandinavian languages... sorry).

All in all I would say that this battle was lost long time ago when many young people got recruited from the computer science departments into the secret service department. I have on several occasions seen posters hanging around from the secret service that they are looking for people who have a CS degree at the post graduated areas and in newspapers back then.

Please also try to understand that as all nations do this any nation who refuse to learn how to do this or even train in how to do this will lose the international cyber espionage battle going on in these years. Yes it is wrong to do, and yes it should be restricted if possible but it should be done and improved. No nation is staying on an isolated island. The right to protect itself from evil acts and espionage(even industrial) as a nation is the job of the government and that is why I pay my tax(did I just write that? ).

When that is said I would like to say that I find it extremely disturbing that trade secrets and industrial knowledge can now be stolen by a government and then redistributed to a company of the government's choice... At least in theory

Perhaps it is really time to invest in a machine that is always offline without any network card in it. Did anyone say Ninja Development?

How to move away from commercial email services(gmail etc. etc.) and host your own mail server is another issue. One that I soon will have to take care of as a small company owner. I prefer to keep my company's work documents and code on own servers taken all into consideration. Really sad that we have gotten to this point but I guess we have no choice anymore. We are small and vulnerable as hell with our first small inventions and way too many things can go wrong in the first years.

About the Avast thing then my Avast always used to put the game I work on in a sandbox until I marked it as an exception. Kind of annoying but the issue can be fixed.

About the Avast thing then my Avast always used to put the game I work on in a sandbox until I marked it as an exception. Kind of annoying but the issue can be fixed.

I always disable the sandbox at installation of Avast. It's only been trouble for me.