Ever thought, “Why should I care about online privacy? I have nothing to hide.” Read this https://www.socialcooling.com/
credit: [deleted] user on Reddit.
original link: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/savz9u/i_have_nothing_to_hide_why_should_i_care_about/
u/magicmulder
The main issue isn’t that someone would be interested in you personally but that data mining may put you in categories you don’t want to be in. 99.9% correlation of your „likes“ and follows to those of terror suspects - whoops you’re a terror suspect yourself. You follow heavy metal bands and Harley Davidson? Whoops, you have a 98% likelihood of drinking and smoking, up goes your insurance rate. And so on.
u/Mayayana
Indeed. But most people here seem to have misunderstood your post. One of my favorite examples is from Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, whoo said in an interview (on youtube) that if you think you have something to hide then maybe you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. (Like maybe the Jews on Kristallnacht shouldn’t have been living in their houses?) Schmidt was later reported to have got an apartment in NYC without a doorman, to avoid gossip about his promiscuous lifestyle. :)
u/SandboxedCapybara
I always thought the like “no bathroom door,” “no curtains,” or “no free speech” arguments always fell flat when talking about privacy. Sure, as people who already care about privacy they make sense, but for people who don’t they are just such hollow arguments. I think a better argument is real life issues that people always face. The fact that things like their home address, social security number, face, email, phone number, passwords, their emails and texts, etc could be out there for anyone to see soon or may already be is almost always more concerning for people. People trust companies. People don’t trust people.
u/Striking-Implement52
Another good read: https://thenewoil.org/why.html ‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
etc
In Germany there’s a private company called SCHUFA that aggregates data about people, mangles them in a proprietary (i.e. secret) way and produces a “score” indicating how creditworthy an individual is. Companies buy these scores from SCHUFA, that’s how they make a profit.
One of the data points influencing the score is a person’s address. If you live near people of whom SCHUFA thinks they’re not creditworthy, your own score will drop, too. So by simply sharing their your address, you may already suffer detrimental consequences against which they have no recourse.
This is another instance of the “being put in categories you don’t want to be in” point in favor of privacy.
And if that wasn’t enough, their new app violates the law, collecting and sending analytics data without user consent. But no court ever gives a fuck, they all swallow the whole legitimate interest bullshit, that has no actual basis.
Sorry, had to rant a little.
Removed by mod
We call that redlining in the US and it’s often tied up with race over here, which can quickly get a credit company into lawsuits https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
(Though that said, it’s probably way worse in the States than in Germany…)
Insurance companies the world over already do this. If you live in a high crime area based on insurance claims your insurance will be higher. Has nothing to do with privacy.
IMHO insurance is another thing. If the insurance company has reliable (statistical) proof that I live in a neighborhood where, for instance, my property is more likely to get damaged, then it’s only right (and fair towards the other insurants) that my fees are higher.
Living in a poor neighborhood, on the other hand, does not imply that I, personally, am less likely to pay back loans.
Maybe they have reliable statistical proof that it does.
Seems like such proof would be easy to put together. If you live in a poor neighborhood you’re more likely to be poor. (If that wasn’t true it wouldn’t be a “poor neighborhood”, would it?) If you’re poor you’re more likely to not pay back loans (due to simply not having money if nothing else). Therefore, if you’re living in a poor neighborhood you’re more likely to not pay back loans.
All you have to do is put that together statistically and you’re set.
Now… that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s correct, but it probably is easy to prove.
Living in a poor neighborhood, on the other hand, does not imply that I, personally, am less likely to pay back loans.
Statistically it absolutely would, just like it does for insurance.
Thanks for the great share. I try to convince my loved ones of the value of even small, low effort ways to control their data slug trail. They don’t get it. Not even a little bit. And the vast majority of people won’t care until we’re all living in a black mirror episode.
Are we already living in a black mirror episode? Fuck.
Anything you say CAN and WILL be used against you.
TL;DR: without privacy you can (and will) be discriminated against, because that’s what people do and there is financial incentive to do so on-top of that.
A basic examples being higher insurance premiums because of known factors that are out of your control.
But it’s pervasive. Other people have already posted more thorough examples.
Insurance being higher has nothing to do with privacy though. If you live in an area that the insurance company has a higher number of claims from, you’re statistically more likely to make a claim, so they charge more to factor that risk in.
That’s not anything to do with privacy though. How do you think someone’s privacy is breached in that situation?
To quote the girl in Anon:
It’s not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want you to see.
Whenever someone says: “I have nothing to hide”
I say: “You’re not the one who decides that”
So true!
I’m more interested in privacy to prevent access to my data stream and PLANTING incriminating data. It’s a hell of a lot easier to frame someone when you have easy access to their devices.
TL/DR; You may have nothing to hide but you’ve got plenty to protect.
“Having something to hide” is a moving target. With good privacy practices it doesn’t matter what the definition of “something to hide” becomes.
it’s a false dichotomy; the issue is not whether you do or don’t have something to hide, the issue is you choosing what you share and with whom.
the fact that I don’t blast the quality of this morning’s stool accross all my social media outlets doesn’t mean that I’m hiding it, it means that I choose not to share it.
that’s my decision and I don’t allow my hardware, software, service provider, government, or whoever-the-fuck to make it for me.
You don’t choose what you share. Not sharing anything is now also a metric. There are so few people not sharing anything that it’s even a rather precise metric. And data brokers can easily build accurate profiles of people not sharing anything, because the governments, your ISP, and other companies you have to use, might already share your data (it’s safe to assume at least one does: it’s absolutely covert, so good luck finding which one(s), and in case they get caught, public awareness is so bad that they will likely only get a ridiculously low fine).
The whole point is: public awareness of this fact is absolutely abysmal, most people are made uncomfortable by this so they avoid this ugly truth as hard as they can, and a small very vocal minority of users has perfectly understood the problem at hand, but is so addicted to their tech, that they are willing to give and give up all they can to ensure their current level of digital comfort. Such users are often advocating in favor of big tech companies, even though it goes against their personal interest, but they have already long accepted to be slaves in exchange for fancy technology, and are trying to make that choice for the rest of us.
@7heo
What about using the tor network and not sharing. Then that can make profile of us that will be anonymous. Until they figure more behavior and compared with our old data. At the end what can we do?The point is that you exist. A record of you therefore also does (hospital database/register, government registry, schools, various institutions, various companies, etc).
No traces of you existing online don’t mean that data brokers don’t have your (other) data: identity, sex, age, etc.
Those records, associated with no traces of you being online, can mean different things, but depending on your age, and potential social situation (both known or very reliably inferred from previously mentioned records), are pretty telling.
And, as you say, at the end, there’s not much we can do. We need a wide, deep, and radical social awakening, leading to a complete change of most people’s relationship to “technology” (or, at least, what they call technology), for us to have any chance at reclaiming our data sovereignty. So, not to be pessimistic, but I don’t see this coming any time soon… 😩
The statement about people trust corporations, not people is valid; that’s why I stopped using the “don’t have doors” and “let me see your phone” argument because people will think it’s different in that you personally know them, instead of some faceless corporation collecting your data.
It got me thinking of a better example, and the one I came up with is baby monitors and home/door cctv cameras. A lot of companies providing those services lack any kind of security in that anyone can potentially see your camera live feed on the internet. Not that anyone’s watching, but someone could if they wanted. So if you’re not hiding anything, would you be fine that your baby monitor can potentially be used for whatever reason even though no one in your social circle can’t “see” it?
Not that anyone’s watching, but someone could if they wanted
For the record, browsing and sharing open camera feeds was popular on 4chan’s /b/ for a while (like over a decade ago iirc), with commenters treating them like some sort of drama or sitcom. It was fucked up.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still those sorts of people around on better hidden forums.
I hide not because I’m ashamed of how I live. I’m happy I live this way and believe it to be extremely ethical. Try telling my country folk though that it’s ethical for me to be transgender, gay, and polyamorous and you might start an argument. And however you live might wind up controversial too
Because I’m tired of seeing ads for things I literally just purchased.
Why you should care?
Because the debate is not about whether or not you have something to hide.
It’s about your right to consent. You should have the right to say no. And you should have the right to change your mind for any reason. You should have the right to regain control of who can store, access or process your data.
Depending on where you live you may have such rights, or you may not. And the political debate is about granting, strengthening, weakening or revoking these rights. And you should care about having these rights, whether you use them or not.
And of course maybe you’ve got nothing too hide today. But what about tomorrow. What if something that is perfectly acceptable today becomes illegal tomorrow, what is a dictatorship takes over your country and wants to search for undesirables. If there are no privacy systems in place they can just look at publicly available data.
What if you are targeted by a hate group who used publicly available information to find victims?
I have nothing to hide is such a stupid attitude because it assumes that you will always agree with the government and that the government will never change or do anything directly to harm you. It smacks at a lack of imagination.
People trust companies. People don’t trust people.
They’re right, people do, but those people are missing a crucial point:
Companies are just groups of people.
But without the social norms that constrain most of us to not be complete dicks all the time. So they’re like antisocial or sociopathic people.
(Which seems to increasingly be everyone I meet these days).
