A security researcher has found it’s possible to reveal a Skype app user’s IP address without the target needing to even click a link. Microsoft said the vulnerability does not need immediate attention.
On a serious note, most of those people (activists, journalists, etc.) aren’t exactly the computer savvy types, nor have the time or resource to spend learning about matters they seldom know about, and yet they are the ones that desperately need this knowledge. They might have an important message to be sent. What would you use to spread the message in their shoes?
Sure, we the tech guys, especially subscribed to privacy related communities, can talk about Tor browser or threat modeling all day. But have you tried bring that up in social circles, if any?
Non tech minded activists will simply use the tools at their disposal: messaging apps? sure; social media apps, if looking for message amplification, whatever it runs on their cheap android phone. Metadata? IP? Profiling? Browser fingerprinting? Some are aware of it, as they also had to endure internet censorship growing up. It’s a trade they make knowingly or unknowingly between the cause and their physical and mental health.
We can laugh at their ignorance all we want, but this is how we become the Ivory tower that fuels resentment.
