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Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

blog.thenewoil.org

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Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#41

Post by nocturnial »

narush wrote: post #7

This is a cool article. I like the narrative of "Change to a life where you are in control of your direction." I am probably the most privacy conscious person of my friends (not that I do a particularly good job of it), so I spent lots of time thinking about how to communicate about privacy in a way that is effective. [We're all mid-twenties, for context.] The main issue, I find, is that people just mostly don't care…

> the folks who were hurt because of a lack of privacy weren't us (young professionals), but rather the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Vietnam anti-war movement

In the second world war, the germans went into the municipal buildings, raided the census data and eliminated everyone who wrote the "wrong" religion in the census data.

I think this is why Europeans care more about privacy than Americans. It's not only about why it should matter, but also it shouldn't be weaponized.

(Don't take this seriously): Suppose your country was under attack and foreign troops invaded. They take you and say: "Well, well, it seems you're a javascript programmer according to your linkedin profile... We don't like javascript"

That was WWII, privacy is also weaponized today. Rogue regimes will use whatever is put online to harass or even assassinate people in other countries.

Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#44

Post by philjohn »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #8
FreeHugs wrote: post #3

Thought experiment: What if we just continue like we did in the last two decades? Would there be any real harm if we simply returned to the pre "cookie banner world" of the internet?

Why do you think there is so much outrage on the internet these days ? It's a consequence of 2 decades of optimizing for engagement, because they make money not by providing a product people pay once and use at their will, but a product that gets a minuscule amount of cash any time someone does something with it. And this ad based system only works if you spy a lot on people. Everything is affected by this: the vacci…

I'd argue that the outrage began far before the internet, it goes back to moral panics of yesteryear, and outrage being peddled on talk radio.

Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#45

Post by xenonite »

nocturnial wrote: post #41
narush wrote: post #7

This is a cool article. I like the narrative of "Change to a life where you are in control of your direction." I am probably the most privacy conscious person of my friends (not that I do a particularly good job of it), so I spent lots of time thinking about how to communicate about privacy in a way that is effective. [We're all mid-twenties, for context.] The main issue, I find, is that people just mostly don't care…

> the folks who were hurt because of a lack of privacy weren't us (young professionals), but rather the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Vietnam anti-war movement In the second world war, the germans went into the municipal buildings, raided the census data and eliminated everyone who wrote the "wrong" religion in the census data. I think this is why Europeans care more about privacy than Americans. It's no…

And then it will be strange if someone suddenly cares about privacy. “There must be some reason.”

Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#46

Post by anothersullivan »

freebuju wrote: post #22
wolverine876 wrote: post #21

The value of data declines over time, often rapidly. Think about what a business would pay for current user data, data one year old, data five years old, etc.; who buys five year old data? I suppose it depends on the application. Imagine how your life changes over time, an accumulation of small and large changes. Data on your health, finances, social network, interests, politics, activities, etc. was different 1 year…

You are just wrong. Some of your data such as health data stays constant throughout your life. Especially for guys living with chronic conditions. Your key identifiers stay the same too. E.g your phone number etc. These are then used to re-establish your advertising identity. This theory that old data declines in value couldn't be more wrong given that the "old" data is never deleted. Just waiting to find its origina…

You can change your phone number though. What if you change it so frequently that it's no longer a key identifier? Why not have a system where you can receive phone calls without a phone number? I believe some of the solution here is to stop having globally unique identifiers.

Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#47

Post by iamdamian »

philjohn wrote: post #43

The thing is, "big tech" aren't really the really scary data collectors, the data brokers are. They buy details from your supermarket, health insurer etc. And yet people here don't often bring them up.

I agree that data brokers are underscrutinized and probably the least ethical of the companies who make money from user data.

I didn't realize that they could buy my data from a health insurer—where can I read more about this?

Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#48

Post by nicolas_t »

bdominy wrote: post #37
dylan604 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Person 2: I don't care about privacy, because I don't have anything to hide. Because of this person's lack of caring, they don't realize that it's not just their privacy that they are sacrificing. By sharing their contacts, they just gave up all of the privacy of those people as well without so much as a hesitation of thought. The person who does care about privacy has 0 chance because of the careless actions of oth…

This is why I never give permission to apps to access my contacts. I wish Apple would have better protections than just a simple permission ask, when once granted, apps can do whatever they want with all of that data.

It's what I hate about whatsapp, I have to use it so I have it installed on my phone but I have to jump through so many hoops to properly isolate it from my contacts.

Unfortunately, I can't not have it, it's too entrenched because most people do not care about privacy.

Re: Why to care about privacy after years of sharing data

#49

Post by BlueTemplar »

bdominy wrote: post #16

Identity theft, scams, robocalls, spam, etc. all get started by harvesting people’s personal information. It’s a commodity hackers trade for big bucks. The question is how to protect yourself? I use end-to-end encryption wherever possible, so WhatsApp for chats and Neucards for contact sharing. It makes collecting my data much tougher.

I don't see how you can trust WhatsApp when it's closed source and owned by Facebook ?

(Who, furthermore, already violated their promise made when buying WhatsApp to not use the phone numbers and contact books they got from them for their other services.)

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