On Privacy, Email and Passwords

Pete wrote in with the rather touchy issue of privacy between the folks you live with and how far that extends. What happens when things go wrong between you and your roommate/live-in girlfriend/boyfriend/brother/best friend/etc when they go poking through your belongings, or even your computer and read things they weren't supposed to for whatever reason. Is it right for these people to expect your life to be an open book simply by virtue of the relationship they share with you? What can you do in situations like these? Click below for the whole submission.

Pete asks: "Due to recent events with my live-in girlfriend, she is very unhappy and untrustful of me. Why? She snooped through my computer and broke into my email 'cause she was suspicious. Well you can imagine that if you start looking for evidence, you're bound to come up with something. At the moment I'm taking a break from packing my belongings and such- I'm moving on and out. As much as I love her, I don't, won't, and refuse to share email, passwords, websites I read, and whatever's on my computer. Am I paranoid or overboard? I think not. I don't have anything to hide, but my conversations between my friends, family, and online anonymous persons are between me and them. Has anything similar happened to you? Do you think there's something wrong with NOT sharing email and passwords?"

On a personal note: I'm with Pete on this one. I don't think anyone, even my parents have rights to the details of my life simply because they are suspicious. If they have suspicious, they can come right out and ask me. Anything else is quite simply an invasion of privacy.

Comments?

Comments

Privacy and Loved Ones

[Matthew Weigel]

I frankly believe that the number of things a person doesn't know about you is proportional to how close the two of you are (think secrets=k*ceiling(distance)). But I also think that such trust is predicated on understanding, not a search for proof.

Quite simply, unless you see a person at many levels, you don't know them very well. By knowing my parents' history before I was born, what they did and where they went, etc., I know a lot more about who they are. If you shield a person from certain levels, or certain things, you are setting a boundary for intimacy. Not that that's a bad thing, it's simply something to be recognized -- there is some level of intimacy that you don't want.

Me, I have an open-book policy: my girlfriend has access to all my data when she's around (long distance relationship, and since she doesn't have access to ssh I won't give her my root password), and I answer every question she or my family asks truthfully. My family also has total access to my room and everything in it when I'm not around, but not when I'm there since I need moment-to-moment privacy.

So there's my take on it -- without specific details the (ex-?)girlfriend looks like someone with whom Pete couldn't have that level of intimacy, based on her reaction; and Pete didn't want it anyways.

Re:Privacy and Loved Ones

[Matthew Weigel]

(this is the reason that Jack straw will be getting my encryption keys sometime a few millenia after hell freezes over.

Heh. I'm speaking, however, about a lack of privacy with loved ones, and no one else. If people think I have something to hide because I don't feel they're entitled to something, so be it. If I think they are entitled to something, then I think they are entitled to see me as I am, with out me even tinting the truth.

But for everyone else, stay the Hell out of my mail :)

Responsibility

[JamesKPolk]

I'd add that parents, being responsible for their children in every way, must keep tabs.

It'd be wrong for society to hold parents responsible for raising children (in some cases holding them criminally accountable for children's behavior) without giving parents the right to check up on everything.