Trying to practice good opsec while doing research. Let me know if I’m dumb, but: a) will this track me? b) is this information reliable?
Trying to practice good opsec while doing research. Let me know if I’m dumb, but: a) will this track me? b) is this information reliable?
a) for sure the cia tracks who clicks on their links but i doubt they look too hard at people clicking on the world factbook because it's a famous and widely used site they maintain.
b) the information is what the CIA wants you to know, so take from that what you will.
Literally every website you go to logs your ip address which gives a very good estimate of where you live. Your ISP knows the domain of every website you visit and can analyze your traffic using Google analytics and friends. Your phone tracks where you are at all times.
You don't need to practice opsec further than: use the latest version of firefox/chromium and install ublock origin and a password manager, either bitwarden (online) keepassxc (local). Maybe install GNU/Linux (like Fedora Atomic Desktop) as well and configure a VPN (vpn is pushing it though unless you want to do port forwarding and torrenting)
If you have more web security/computer security questions you can dm me.
The CIA factbook is reputable in that it literally is the CIA factbook: history told by the CIA. Use the same scrutiny of historical sources as you normally do.
Some of the best sources are actually the ones with clear ideological bents because you can filter the whole story knowing where they're coming from.
Most of the sources used by communist theorists are capitalist rags (Economist has been around for well over a century and has a very clear bias) and industrial magazines (banking, mining, light industry) to understand the positions of the bourgeoisie and then direct interviews and union meeting minutes to understand the positions of the workers.
if the CIA wanted to track you they wouldn't wait for you to visit their website
(they'd just ask zuck for the info)
If your threat modeling involves a need to not be tracked at all by the US government, you shouldn’t be posting here in the first place. Otherwise, you’re probably fine.
Edit: if you haven’t threat modeled at all, then there’s your problem
This is a pretty good resource: https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Threat_Modeling_Cheat_Sheet.html
The CIA doesn’t really host anything sensitive on their front facing website. I’m read a bunch of their declassified reports and archived newspapers accusing/exposing the agency of things. Haven’t been shot, yet.
If it’s on the cia website, chances are they no longer care about the content. They could’ve dropped a nuke in Alabama, but if it’s on the website then they’ve determined the American people won’t care enough to do anything about it.
If you're interested in doing anything Cool, you should really never post to this website at all. I've resigned myself to a life of being boring and not doing anything particularly controversial, so I blather on all day, but the powers that be can track your social media accounts a lot more easily than your web browser.
I would probably drop off the internet for a while and get a dumb phone before I plan to do anything cool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
Information in the world fact book may or may not be correct. I would cross reference it with other information. Sometimes the CIA admits bad things that they did inside the fact book.
In this 1983 report by the CIA, the CIA admits "American and Soviet citizen eat around the same food each day but the Soviet diet may be more nutritious."
Yeah, all things considered you could certainly do worse than the Factbook for broad facts. It's a pretty well established resource.