Ask HN: I'm not motivated enough to take privacy seriously

Take this for example: there is currently a trend in the insurance industry to require an activity tracking device in order to activate certain life insurance plan discounts and other benefits. The data pulled from the activity trackers is almost certainly going to be used to enhance profitability for insurance providers, which is something that eventually will have a negative impact on some portion of people who buy life insurance.

This data might not affect first generation subscribers, so many people are comfortable to surrender it. Somewhere down the line people are going to have increased premiums or will be denied insurance altogether based on what is currently being collected. There is also the chance that the children of the people who are willingly providing this data will have higher insurance costs based on data collected from their parents, or grandparents.

The bottom line is that every company that is engaging in data collection is, or soon will be, using it to gain an unfair advantage against consumers. The consequences may seem abstract or far off, but every data point surrendered is a will have a cost at some point in the future. I'd rather not help large corporations take advantage of me.

While hopefully it's fairly likely that the profiles which are being constructed based on our online habits won't negatively affect our day to day life, there's a chance that they will and that risk is worth managing.

One scenario to look at is the past behaviour of other big companies during war time or during periods of authoritarian regime when the incentives align between the govt and private entities. There are too many examples from WW2, but also look at how willing many companies were to get their hands on (and share) information regarding figures in the various labour movements throughout English (and American) history, even the ones which weren't explicitly communist. Another example is the big (european car?) manufacturers' cooperation with the regime in Argentina in the '70s who weren't really hiding the fact that they were disappearing the people who these companies were doxxing for identifying with certain social / political movements.

It's just worth keeping in mind that anything you do now which might identify you with a certain group could come back to haunt you if that group becomes the new Reds Under The Bed in 1, 2 or 5 election cycles. And that at this stage you are doing what you are doing with the full knowledge that everything is being retained for use at the discretion of these tech companies.

So I disagree with the idea that it only matters of you ever 'make it'. It also matters if you have shown patterns of behaviour which suggest that you identify with a group that makes it.

That said, I definitely don't do enough either. I only really take the simple steps that others have outlined here.

Do you trust that these companies will never be hacked? In a world where, this year, we discovered that a fundamental optimization in the literal silicon of processors, which went unnoticed for a decade, and affected every modern processor on the planet, allowed for some level of unintentional data leak, do well-meaning intentions even matter?

Just a few days ago, Twitter announced that an unintentional bug leaked private DMs to third-party app developers. Oh darn, we're sorry, we didn't mean for that to happen, it just did.

So, do you trust any of your personal information being obtained by any random person on the planet?

This is our world, its just taking everyone a bit of time to realize it: If you have information stored on the internet, it will get leaked eventually. Then at that point, its just a matter of having enough attention for one person who wants to do you harm find it. Do you have no enemies at all?

Oh you don't? Are you alright with your credit card and social security numbers being available for anyone to grab? Look at that, you do have enemies, they just don't care about you personally, all they care about is themselves, and they'll hurt you to accomplish that. Let's say you're a woman. Are you alright with your address being publicly available? How about your Google Calendar? Snapchat real-time location? Feed from your Nest security camera? Didn't think so.

"Privacy" is not when a company says they care about your privacy. Its when they fucking implement End-To-End Encryption and physically deny themselves even the ability to see your data. Any company who says they care about privacy but isn't doing this is fucking lying to you, full stop, no exceptions, because if they really cared then they (A) wouldn't put concessions on their position like "well we need to be able to see this data for X", and (B) would have the humility to recognize that the world is more vulnerable than its ever been before, and they will be hacked, its just a matter of when.

The first kind I think you care about. You don't want your computer being part of a botnet. You don't want a hacker running the camera on your phone. You don't want a hacker watching as you type your password for your bank account.

The second kind, privacy against Google, I can't convince you that you care about. I might even be able to make a case that you don't. Let's say I'm on a business trip, and I need to eat dinner. I ask Google for restaurants. I'm going to get better answers if Google knows where I am (which is a privacy intrusion). I'm going to get even better answers if Google knows what kind of foods I like (which is also a privacy intrusion). Those privacy intrusions actually provide me value (at least in some situations). Maybe I don't want to stop them.

Privacy against the government... that ship has sailed. They have the capability to find out everything if they decide to. The battle is political, to keep them from deciding that they want to without adequate (that is, criminal) cause, and without due process.

But we need another one where they use the data to exploit you.