Can they listen to me?

Answers to anxious questions caused by the "Spring Package"

The Federation Council approved the “Spring Pack” . If Russian President Vladimir Putin sign it, two extremely stringent bills will become laws. New amendments, among other things, threaten the right of Russians to the secret of personal correspondence and telephone conversations: the authorities obliged the telecom operators and some Internet resources to keep the content of all conversations and messages for six months and to issue to operatives upon request. At the same time, the authorities decided to fight encryption - now services that cannot help the FSB in deciphering the desired message risk receiving a fine of a million rubles. The discussion of the “Package of Yarova” raised questions about how the privacy in Russia is arranged and whether the special services have a technical opportunity to monitor the private life of ordinary citizens. "Medusa" answered the main ones.

The authorities can find out that I am reading this text now?

Yes, theoretically they can, but it is not very simple. Medusa, like many other sites, uses the HTTPS protocol that provides traffic encryption. In this case, traffic is information that users and sites exchange on the Internet. When you read Medusa, your computer or smartphone exchange information with our servers, data about this exchange are saved by your provider. But since we use https, these data are stored in encrypted form. So the authorities or attackers can find out when and how much you were on the Medusa website; But what kind of texts they read, it will be much more difficult for them; To do this, you need to carry out a special hacker operation (attack "Man in the middle" ). Sites using the HTTPS protocol are easy to identify - you see this abbreviation at the beginning of the address in the browser line.

There is also a HTTP protocol that does not encrypt traffic. You can find out much more about the inseparable traffic that the provider saves about what you did on the site: what texts have read, what videos you watched, what you downloaded and what you wrote to another user in the chat.

I sometimes watch porn. Do they learn about it?

Can. Here is the same story about protocols - if the porn site uses https, you can find out which resource you go to and how much time you spend there, but what kind of videos you are not. If the protocol is http, you can find out what exactly you are watching.

How to hide that I watch porn?

You need to use VPN. This is a virtual network that allows you to encrypt traffic so that the provider cannot understand anything. Even if it is traffic of ordinary HTTP sites. Many companies offer such services - pass your traffic through their encrypted channel.

SMS can read?

Yes, they can. Communication operators store user text messages.

How to use SMS so that they are not read?

There are special encrypting programs, but using them is quite inconvenient, and in any case, providers will know when and with whom you exchanged messages. So it is better to use messengers supporting encryption.

Can I read my correspondence on the Internet?

Yes. Electronic letters and messages from messengers are stored, as a rule, in encrypted form on providers' servers. If you are afraid that the company can help special services to decipher them (and the “Spring Pack” obliges them to do this), you need to use additional protection methods.

How to correspond so that no one can understand?

For email, you need to use asymmetric encryption. To do this, you have to download some programs. The idea is: you have an open key to encryption. You give it to your correspondents or simply publish it on your social network. Your correspondents are encrypted with its help and send it. There is a separate key to decrypt, it is known only to you. Here we wrote more about this. The personal key cannot be sent to anyone, it is necessary to store it in a safe place.

Messengers need to choose those that use End-to-End encryption-it allows you to see messages in readable form only the interlocutors themselves (in WhatsApp this happens by default, and in Telegram there is a function of “secret chats”).

If you do not trust the systems for protecting popular messengers, you can use the cryptographic protocol Off-The-Record. It is easier to use it than encrypting e -mail (but more difficult than “secret chats”). You and your interlocutor must install a special program on a computer, tablet or smartphone that supports this protocol (there are a lot of them) - then the whole correspondence will be encrypted. Another advantage of the protocol is that he allows the user to make sure that his interlocutor is the one for whom he gives himself.

Skype, Viber and WhatsApp can listen?

Theoretically - yes. After all, any conversation is the bats of information that the provider remains in an encrypted form. You can imagine that the special services, if they want, demand from the provider to give them the necessary entries, and the company has encryption keys.

But the fact is that these keys will not always be able to give out companies. Because, for example, Viber and WhatsApp use End-to-End encryption. This means that encrypting programs are on user devices and neither the company nor the provider know the keys. It is important that these services, like instant messengers with Off-The-Reed, have a control system that allows you to quickly understand whether someone’s channel was wedged between users; In other words, they listen to you or not. Not only conversations are encrypted, but also video communication.

Everyone is talking about some kind of SORM. What is it at all?

System of operational-search measures. This is a system that allows Russian special services to listen to telephone conversations and intercept Internet traffic. By law, any communication operator in Russia must put special equipment on its channels, which ensures the operation of SORM. The constitution protects the secret of private life and correspondence with one exception - operatives can violate it by court decision. At the same time, the law allows special services to receive this permission already post -fact - in urgent cases.

How to avoid samm surveillance?

Do not use the phone and the Internet.

Can they watch me through a laptop camera?

Yes, they can. There are viruses that allow attackers to obtain remote control over the computer and turn on anything - including the camera. So if you worry, sealed the camera. But then confuse with something and a hole for the microphone.