I have neither time, resources nor know-how to like go all out on data privacy. But I try doing things like using Proton for Mail, browsing with DuckDuckGo or Ecosia, messaging on Signal instead of WhatsApp, etc.
But I’m having a hard time responding to people who say “why do you do that, it’s completely pointless since companies like Google have all of our data anyways unless we go all out, and nobody has time for all the effort that takes”.
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I don’t really have this conversation with people.
This stuff is important to me, it’s not really accessible to people without lots of time and the same interest.
Okay, let me see your browser history.
And while I’m at it, can I sit in that corner over there and watch you have sex with your wife?
Oh are we getting a little uncomfortable now? May I take a dump while you shower?
Wait, wait! What do you mean you suddenly care about privacy?
Sounds fun! Wanna get together this weekend?
I’m currently fighting my city over flock cameras and I’m hearing this a lot. More people should care about privacy.
Ask to see their bank account transactions.
If the data is out there then they should have no problem showing you.
The police have a pretty low hanging bar to getting banking information and the police often seem to ignore the laws for the privileges of using their badges as leverage over private industry and companies. And they use that banking access to fuck with people that don’t like them.
That shit is not “private.”
But banks/credit unions/companies would rather sell you twice than tell you that.
Well, knowing banking information is different from getting their password. One is info like balance and details while the other allows me to transfer all your money.
Or ask their phone and browse through all the photos.
Not that I disagree with the general mindset but, this isn’t a valid comparison because its unequal. It’s misinterpreting what those people are saying. There is a difference between giving your landlord a spare key and hanging that spare key on the community bulletin board.
What people really mean when they say “it’s already out there” is that people with the skillset or job to obtain the data have the ability to, not that the everyday person has the ability to. It’s not unknown the information is already out there, but that doesn’t mean that you would want to just publicly disclose the info.
I’m pretty late but hopefully this helps someone:
Privacy is in the moment. It isn’t just about your SSN, or the email address you had ten years ago even you signed up for Pegging by Peggy newsletters. It’s a moving target and the highest value for the people that want your data is as close to right now as possible.
If you digitally disappeared in this moment the value of all the shit they have on you would rapidly decline.
It also is about as complete a picture as possible. Privacy violating data points are valuable in aggregation. An address and name are only valuable when you can tie it to viewing preferences, voting records, etc. The more data points you can hide, the better.
Also, many (most?) people will be more upset with the person who rocks the boat or is the messenger of bad news than the perpetrator of the real problem. “We’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas” applies to people you might care about just as much as it does to Schummer.
If you don’t want people to see it maybe you shouldn’t be doing it anyways.
“…If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place…” Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO.
There are plenty of potential embarrassing, but completely legal activities, that people have a right to do.
People have a right to do this but should they is the better question.
100% they should. Live your dream, Science Team.
Tell them about surveillance pricing. It’s a good example because the information “already out there” is used to influence how much the stuff they buy costs. Another example would be unsecure home security/doorbell cameras that anyone on the internet can watch (if you know where to find them). Their camera feeds are “already out there”, so ask them if that’s ok.
Even as a tech savvy person I’ll admit it’s a bit of a problem to “take your toys and go home”. Google purposefully made themselves an integral part of most of our lives so it really is about as involved as moving homes when it comes to migrating away from Google.
I would just say that moving one service is better than moving none of them. It’s a slow process but it is doable. I’d say email is easiest to start with. I haven’t converted any accounts yet (i.e. using my new email as the username) but for any new accounts I’ve been using my new email and occasionally closing accounts associated to Gmail. There’s probably a ton of services you’ve signed up for but never use so closing is way easier than migrating.
When they have doorbell cloud cameras and they’re this type, I ask if they’d put one in their shower. To match your topic, I’d ask them to live stream their next email/search/web session.
When I do react, I may ask them about the last time they had sex and how it was.
But most of the time I don’t bother reacting. It’s a waste of time.
“Then I guess there shouldn’t be laws against murder since people do that anyway.”
I don’t use Google or Microsoft. Also it takes no effort, you’re lazy or you don’t care.
Take their bathroom door away since everyone has the same wiggly bits anyway.
Then property ownership doesn’t matter, because the land is ‘all out there’ so anyone can go/live anywhere regardless of who owns the property, right?
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