Yes and no.

A lot of privacy threads focus on fantastical what-if scenarios that just never really come up. For the majority of Internet users, the biggest threat they would face comes from the adtech sector. Now most people aren’t going to understand what is collected in realtime as that’s usually company specific and usually encoded on the site/app, but standards are all open for anyone to read. Mostly this is going to come in the form of OpenRTB 2.6 (https://iabtechlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/OpenRTB-2-6_FINAL.pdf) or the Prebid library and its User ID Module (https://docs.prebid.org/dev-docs/modules/userId.html) with maybe some custom fields and VERY granular audience mapping.

Specific to that standard, 3.2.20 Object: User and 3.2.27 Object: EID and 3.2.28 Object: UID are the important ones, but honestly all of the information can be used in conjunction with other pieces. Now if you look through that info, you’ll notice you don’t really see that much. You’re real name isn’t present. Your email isn’t present. Your physical address isn’t present (although its likely your geo location info is accurate from the device object). The thing is that so many little bread crumbs exists and so many actors are mapping those bread crumbs that once human psychology is overlaid on top of it crazy amounts of information that was not collected can be inferred. People think info like “His name is John Smith” is important when really “This is device ID EA7583CD-A667-48BC-B806-42ECB2B48606” and the numerous IDs built from that or a dozen other things is what matters.

Just from that standard with enough data/time, its possible to determine your demographic/sociographic information. One could determine who you will vote for and political leanings, how much money you make, what your job is, your sexual orientation, etc. This is great if someone is trying to sell you Tide detergent, but its also really useful if you’re wanting to start a “grassroots” campaign to add/remove rights for specific citizens. It allows you to know where you can get a foothold for your legislation (Cambridge Analytica comes to mind). And these things are all easily verifiable from your browser. Without an adblocker, go browse the internet and keep track of how many 1x1 tracking pixels get dropped on you. Checkout what’s in your cookie store and what’s sitting in sessionStorage and localStorage.

So, I think groups like r/privacy focus a lot on sci-fi inspired dystopia, when instead they could be focused on more real world dystopia.

I must be one of those. This shit is not okay, yall. Whole psychological profiles, humiliation tactics, and dystopian forms of control are right around the corner. Why would they keep Epstein alive when Palantir automated the job of the blackmail broker?

I have been thinking about this a lot recently. I live a life where OPSEC is relevant. Its something that I have had to consider always, and has been for 2 decades. Even so, I wasn’t as concerned this whole time as I am these days. The fact is that technology is making it such that its no longer “im not a person of interest they wont spend resources on me” because data crunching is happening to such an extreme, on such a grand scale, that person of interest doesn’t even matter. Do you exist, yes. Do you have a digital foot print, yes you do. Even if you dont do a lot online. Your metrics are being captured and being inferenced, and systems are using predictive analysis to determine what you “may” do in a given situation. Depending on who controls those systems they may decide not to give you a chance to make that choice.

Ill I can say is that there are a large number of groups that want your data, for a lot of different reasons, and none of them are for your benefit. So, are you going to let them have it, or are you going to take steps to reign in the amount of info you leave about?

A year ago: yes.

Today: nope.

Of course some people go too far. I think a lot of folks on here grossly overestimate / overstate their threat model, but I think the discussions are good for the limited few who really do need to cover their asses.

Me personally, I hate the idea of companies bidding for my attention without my consent, so I try and make it as hard as possible for them to get it. This just so happens to overlap nicely with the goals of the privacy community much of the time.

I dunno, considering that Facebook data has been used to go after people, we’ve got fascists using every method possible to target their current hated group, and police everywhere ignoring or bypassing due process by just buying data, I don’t think it all paranoid to think that privacy concerns are already huge, and could get worse

As long as everyone is having fun, I see no problem.

If you’re not having fun switching mail providers, researching Gecko forks, or being a part-time sysadmin for your Fairphone, you should probably stop doing those things.

There are probably some people that go too far, but that is true in any community. There are also people with a very legitimate threat model, for example if they are from insert your favourite dictatorship here and they have insert opinion against said regime

It’s just a conscious approach to tech.