Now, somebody with closer connections to spy agencies could answer this much better than me, but I can give you some really important basics. When you go to a website on the internet, it's not like you're just looking at the website as if it were an object in front of you. The website content passes through a mass of systems and filters, and each junction something can go wrong. Which junction is likely to be the cause of something wrong has been changing over the years and decades. Important junctions look something like this: You => Your Computer & Hardware => You Local Network and Neighbors => Your ISP => Your Government & The Government of the Website => The ISP Of The Website => The Web Host of the Website => {Wires and Airwaves} => The Datacenter The Website is Hosted At => The Website Content Now, there are actually a number of problems that can happen at _each_ juncture, above. At every single juncture, some malicious party can make something go wrong. [Cypherpunks and hacktivists have been trying to implement cryptographic networking to reduce the number of junctures above, but the efforts have not been successful enough to enter the mainstream. TOR, for example, reduces the number of junctures above.] # You We consider this trustworthy for now. # Your Computer & Hardware There are networks of trojans in the wild that have not been squelled. A trojan is a computer virus that gives somebody else control of a system. It is becoming normal for there to be a dark market where somebody can, at a distance, mutate people's systems so that they display the wrong web content. # Your Local Network and Neighbors This is the space where you can crack other people. When you perform a web request, it goes through physical cables and home routers, and often wifi, that are as a norm generally very poorly secured, and it is possible for you to access the networks of your neighbors and change what they see on the web. There are also trojans that can live inside home routers, and mutate the web and one's internet experience while sitting there. # Your ISP In recent decades, it's come to light that, due to the incredible utility of all the information flowing through them, different bodies have been coercing the providers of internet service, so as to acquire detailed information on what people are doing, provide an alternate view of the internet, or make things harder or easier to access than they would otherwise. # Your Government & The Government of the Website Similarly, it is well known that governments run programs that log and filter web traffic extensively. Not only this, it is well known that governments have many, many employees, and that these employees can change hands. For example, in our government in the USA, we recently had huge political swings where the affiliations of our government employees radically changed, and there has been ongoing conflict in the aftermath. Our government _already_ has a long track record of misusing its power to oppress groups of people its influences dislike, and discussion of that has been suppressed as a norm, more recently. When talking about governments, it is also good to remember that they do not understand this shit. With regard to this list and prominent hacktivists, they have instead been attacking the people who do. They obviously hope that if they harm the hackers, they won't have to worry about the details they don't understand, but the unfortunate result is that they actually get attacked by other governments and groups. So "a government" or "an ISP", is not a simple thing where you could get a sense of whether or not they are logging you or mutating your internet: it is a complex situation where many international parties may have their hands in the mix, trying to assert control of your internet. # Your Website's ISP This is basically the same situation as your ISP, except that here the website's ISP is more likely to be focused around the needs of large corporations or whatever situation the site is hosted in, for example Amazon's cloud. So, you may yourself live in a small neighborhood with very boring network activity, but this website is the center of many, many things. It is much more lucrative for somebody to influence the network traffic around a major host, than a random visitor. # The Web Host of the Website There are a lot of different kinds of web hosts, but the same as the ISP applies: this is a much more lucrative point for a cracker to attack, because many people visit it, and many things happen. A web host usually has some kind of shared infrastructure: many websites, for many different organisations, are usually hosted side-by-side, generally in the same actual systems. When this is the case, it often means that compromise of one website can lead to compromise of all the other websites on the same system. This has been common since the dawn of shared webhosting. A blackhat entity is generally far more interested in gaining more power, than in gaining less. # Wires and Airwaves I want to take some time here to mention the physical layer of communication on the web. When you send and receive traffic on the web, it needs to travel, _physically_ from your machine to the web host and back again. This happens incredibly fast, most parts at a fraction of the speed of light, but it happens over physical media that anybody who can get near the physical media, can log, mutate, etc etc. Ethernet cables for a long time have a been a normal physical medium for endpoints, and it is well-known how to attack them so as to view or mutate all the traffic. WIFI has also been a normal physical medium for much more recent times, and again it is well-known how to attack WIFI, so as to view or mutate all the traffic. The people who implement the cryptographic standards of these things are generally influenced by anti-security influences that want to increase surveillability for people, believing that attacking the people who expose the problems will give them power rather than vulnerability. Deeper into the routing systems, I haven't learned as much about the details, but I can assure you that the situation is comparable, because it is just another physical medium run by a specification that people can look up. When one of these vulnerable physical mediums is used, it doesn't mean that an adversary has to stand next to it and log it: they can hide a small device near it, and remotely access the device, to log all the traffic and even mutate it. I can assure you that this has been done commonly: because you can buy such devices on the internet, and there is discussion about them being used. Regarding airwaves, also note that things are electromagnetic (i.e. almost all technology except fiberoptic cables: that is, router equipment, computers, and copper cables) emits radiowaves that broadcast fine details on its operations. There are also advanced ways to direct radio waves toward them and mutate their operations surreptitiously and without contact. # The Datacenter the Website is Hosted At This is a physical location, run by human beings, who can be coerced and subpoenad to change operations or place hacking devices near. It also has its own wires and airwaves. # The Website Content What I mean here, is a human being who placed the content on the website. This would sound somewhat trustworthy, but unfortunately it appears to be a norm for people who run high-value websites to be coerced or replaced. This is highly visible for websites taken over by out FBI, where they replace it with a fake website after a sting, but it happens in other ways as well. The phrase "mind control" can seem strange to many: but it is quite normal for people of high value to be placed under so much _confusing stress_ and _painful lobbying_ that they actually mutate their websites thinking that it may be a good thing to do so. For a long time it was the norm for reliable websites to place a "canary" message on their site, to share whether or not they were being coerced by a federal body, to change their operations. Apparently when this happens they are ordered not to talk about it. Nowadays, many of these canaries have now performed their function and shared this information, and people are not sure what to do. - In summary, if you see something weird on the internet, please check by physical in-person conversation with a person you already know associated with the strange message. And please check multiple times so they can answer from a relaxed place, explaining what's up, rather than give a knee-jerk reply that could have been primed by an influence. Generally, if there is something clearly wrong with a site, people are actually excited to recover the material and resolve the problem. Because they made the site, and care about it.