Slashdot Mirror
Weighing the Value of Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "A new study from HP Labs shows that the reluctance of individuals to reveal private information (or how much money they would demand to do so), depends on how far they perceive themselves to be from the norm. For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight. From the article: 'How and why people decide to transition their information from the private to the public sphere is poorly understood. To address this puzzle, we conducted a reverse second-price auction to identify the monetary value of private information to individuals and how that value is set. Our results demonstrate that deviance, whether perceived or actual, from the group's average asymmetrically impacts the price demanded to reveal private information.'"
All Open source coders are average or do they just have a high opinion of closed source ones? I think it's more likely they fall into the showing off category. If you've got it, flaunt it.
People are conditioned by society to feel that they need to be "normal" (read: exactly the same as everyone else) to such an extent that they're embarassed to reveal anything about themselves that shows how far from this false ideal they are.
And this is news now?
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
Why? It's not like your friends can't see that you are fat.
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight. :
I guess it's not the same for underweight.
It all depends on how bad this would be perceived
Obese people will less likely be understood by "normal" people whereas skeletic people will actually be overprotected as the ill people they represent.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Does this mean that based on this study anti-privacy activists (how else to call them) will start saying that "as shown by studies, if you don't want to share your private information, thoughts, etc, it IS because you have something that you think you should hide"? I can totally see this study being used to hassle people who just want some privacy. Whether true or not, this study is damaging to individuals and their privacy.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
To achieve valuable personal integration, people typically need a significant measure of security from invasions of their private space as well as their private records and information. In fact, they need more than immunity from invasion: they need time for reflection, time when they are not in co-operation with others or distracted by other commitments. In this sense, the right to privacy really is concerned with valuable (i.e. morally upright) individual self-development.
Whenever I visit a tourist attraction that has a guest register, I always sign it. After all, you never know when you'll need an alibi.
I've been doing this since I was a kid, but these days you don't have to take any positive action to leave a trail behind. Almost everything we do is recorded. Closed-circuit cameras watch us in most public places. Our credit-card purchases, japanese schoolgirl tentacle porn, telephone calls and Web surfing are all tracked these days.
Editorialists have decried these losses of privacy, as if it were the most sacred of human rights. But just what is the value of privacy? Do we really need it? And, indeed, can we afford it? After all, everything from your son's shoplifting to the destruction of the towers at the World Trade Center could have been prevented if we had less of an ability to do things in secret.
Actually this is not that offtopic : I didn't reveal my identity in order not to be associated with the poor karma this post had gotten : so, we have a typical example of what the article describe... IMHO ;) :)
PS: Do not upmod the parent otherwise you'll prove me false
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The second bid auction, or in this case, the reverse second bid acution is a brillian idea. I wonder why it isn't used more in real life.
Everyone gets to leave a bid for something. The person giving the highest bid gets to buy for the second highest bid.
This forces the bidders to bid the highest price they would be willing to pay. It's impossible to cheat, as bidding 1 billion for a 100$ object would leave you in a lot of trouble is someone else had the same idea but bid 1 million!
Would people get this if it was an option on ebay?
The more we deviate from normality, the more value we place on privacy.
The more we deviate from normality, the more information value there exists within our deviation.
In other words, the greater our individual entropy, the more value we attach to it.
This is an interesting result; a first step towards quantification of something I had not really conceived of as quantifiable.
--Dan
I find it sad that such things like privacy, love and even life itself are being compared to money. It tells a long way about a society's values.
Some things will never have a "replacement value" (that's what it is), but some believe they can change that. How much more materialistic can you get?
Decadence, here we come!
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
(c) Playschool, BBCTV, MCMLXXIV
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
At one point in time it was "blindingly obvious" that the world was flat. At one point it was "blindingly obvious" that white skinned people were better than all other skin colours.
Just because something is "blindingly obvious" doesn't mean there shouldn't be proof to back it up.
This report may be crap, but just because something is "obvious" doesn't mean it shouldn't be researched and proofed
...Science Tells Us What We Already Know.
I just read the article (skimmed bits). They managed to determine that people don't like to release embarrasing information or break societal taboos.
No Shit.
The survey is misleading. It is not only the deviance factor. I might ask a higher price if I knew if the person was to profit from it some way - deviance or no deviance. That means the price would vary depending upon to whom you are revealing private information and what use it is to him.
I would not give my weight along with my age and name to open a free email account. I would happily reveal the same information to a medical study (only if they promise to keep it private). So it is important also to know what the person is going to do with ur private information.
And I have my family to think of. However, if I was offered a large sum of money to do a TV (no pun intended) documentary about me then I'd probably do a cost/benefit analysis and show myself to the world...
Didn't somebody famous, like a couple hundred years ago, say that the quest for freedom is nothing but the fear of tyranny?
Of course you're going to want not to divulge information about yourself if you perceive yourself to be abnormal. Doesn't sound very intriguing.
The consequences of this though, on a study ofwill mean that "perceived" normality will tend to be the one that gets the highest stats. This COULD mean that actual normality is less normal than perceived according to a questionnaire - reinforcing the perceived norms/abnorms.
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
I once turned in a paper after spending all night with the Thesaurus, it was just as useless by the time I was done.
DOn't get me wrong, I credit them for using the words correctly, but any time someone goes this far out of their way to make a study _sound_ scientific or acedemic I have to question the reality.
127 individuals may be enough for a somewhat statistical display, but at the same time (not that I don't believe the results) I wonder what the results would look like graphed geographically, or by hair length.
And infinite prices? Infinite was defined as more than $100, and then given a randomly (riiiight) chosen weight between $100 and $2000.
This seems like nothing more than a group of people being able to say the time they spent down at the bar was worth it, that they have real need to be allowed through the firewall to online auctions during work hours, and that HP truly cares about privacy. As far as actual content it's next to useless as a real study.
Whee signature.
Nevermind.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Researchers should get out more.
a 5 minute observation of real world is apparently worth 10 research papers on obvious conclusions.
Seriously, from a sales perspective, information that people ask for is ALWAYS WORTH MORE than useless information.
Hence, at some point, some person asked for this study, and the researches said, sure I'll take the contract. Why? Because it was WORTH something to somebody.
When people who are disadvanged are asked for something they actually have dear to them, they value it more.
Ask how many programers would take as much money as they can get for a program like:
10 Print "Sucker"
20 Goto 10
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
That may be true, but I think it's only a one-way logic. I doubt you can reverse-deduce the weight of people by asking them how much they'd pay to reveal it. The best proof is that these guys aren't necessarily all obese, and these guys definitely aren't on the skinny side.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I suspect that privacy is an artifact of a mass-urbanized society. Prior to the 1800s, people did not have that much privacy because they did not have anonymity. In small village, everyone knows everyone's business for better or for worse. Its only after people moved to a big city that they really could have privacy and learn to value it. At the same time, mass-media culture creates a monotypic image of the norm -- every day we are bombarded with messages of how we should be young, thin, driving a hot car and have cool dry underarms.
Culture plays a big role too. I remember reading about the Netherlands and the tendency for the Dutch to leave their curtains open. Closing your curtains (seeking privacy) was actually frowned upon because it was seen as suspicious.
It would be interesting to repeat this privacy study among different people: people in other countries, in small villages, in tribal indigenous cultures, etc. That way we could assess if the desire for privacy is universal or only an artifact of the current mass-media, mass-urban civilization.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This shows that to be normal, people must conform to the 'thumb in bum, mind in neutral' culture of modern consumerism, while those who stand outside (mostly private, thoughtful people of good intentions) are assessed as strange loners for not dumbing down with the masses. When will people wake up to the fact that step 1 is realising that we are not on the same staircase?
I stole this
I have researched privacy quite heavily, mostly privacy and IKT (especially Internet). I even wrote a thesis that touched on this kind of thing, at least in one of the chapters, part of which I will share with you below. Some of the most important aspects of privacy is that it tends to be dependent on context and environment, and based on own activities and needs. People are also willing to give up privacy for some kind of (financial) gain, usually in the form of discounts, prizes, etc. And "convenience" of course.
(From Chapter 2 - "Privacy in the Internet age")
In order to discuss privacy protection on the Internet, I must first determine what privacy means. Privacy is a hotly debated issue on a very broad concept. Privacy can be thought of as among other things:
The above shows that the concept of privacy is non-singular, and that definitions vary widely according to context and environment. Privacy interests have several dimensions including privacy of the person or personality, privacy of personal behavior and personal associations, privacy of personal communications, and privacy of personal data (Clarke, 1999(a)). A common consensus, however, is that privacy is something every human needs at some level and in some degree (Bennett, 2001). Privacy protection is "a process of finding appropriate balances between privacy and multiple competing interests" (Clarke, 1999(a)). This balancing process is political in nature, involving the exercise of power deriving from authority, markets or any other available source (Clarke, 1998(b)).
Cynically, since privacy is such a vague and "stretchy" concept, people often apply it for their own purposes (Schartum, 2001(b)). One of the cynical attitudes is that privacy is only useful for creating "a level playing field," as in the case of privacy conflicts with business interests that see personal data as a resource (Bennett, 1996). The way individuals actually view privacy tends to be dependent on their own personal activities and needs - why do I need (or not need) privacy, and to what degree? Furthermore, while identity is a public and symbolic phenomenon, historical, cultural, and social structure factors also play a role in how far an individual goes in giving out whom he or she is (Agre, 1999). A common argument is "I have nothing to hide," yet Bacard (2000) points out "show me a human being who has no secrets from her family, her neighbors, or her colleagues, and I'll show you someone who is either an extraordinary exhibitionist or an incredible dullard. Show me a business that has no trade secrets or confidential records, and I'll show you a business that is not very successful."
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
In my perception, one of the differences between the US (where I have now been almost 10 times for 2-4 weeks) and German society (where I live) is that the pressure to conform is noticeably higher in the American society. Of course, you can always find niches where pretty much anything is accepted. And yes, intolerance does exist in Germany, too :) But as a small tendency, I would say this difference clearly exists. So my prediction would be that the correlation would be considerable smaller among German participants.
Btw, I am not sure whether I should find this study interesting or distasteful. The idea of someone trying to find out how much I value my privacy in monetary terms makes me feel pretty uneasy, to say the least.
Definitely interesting material, and it gives a new insight into things, but it doesn't seem like it explains the full range of motivations for keeping things secret.
For example, I don't think my social security number is especially deviant. I wouldn't even know what the norm would be for a social security number. And yet, I have this odd urge to keep it private. Same goes for my credit card number. I don't think there's anything substandard or abnormal about my MasterCard number, but I still want to keep it private.
I haven't done a study to back it up, but to me it seems that people would want to keep information private to the extent that they believe making it public could cause them harm. If they (like many people) have the urge to be normal or appear normal, then they are going to perceive a penalty in deviating from the norm. But likewise, if making my phone number public is going to cause me to get prank phone calls, I am going to be quite reluctant. In both cases, it's because of a belief that there will be negative effects.
By the way, I know someone who is obese who used to love to make his weight public. It went like this: he'd go up to one of those "guess your weight or age" places at a fair or amusement park, the kind where they have to get within 10 pounds of your weight or they must give you a prize. He weighed over 300 pounds at the time. The person guessing his weight would feel uncomfortable and spit out a seriously low-ball number so as not to offend him, figuring he'd be touchy about it. Then, he'd hop onto the scale which would indicate they were off by 75 pounds, and presto, free prize, every time.
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
What if someone's embarassing private information was that they were broke?
it leads to the conclusion that everybody who fights for privacy rights is a pervert.
If this goes to a border public then it will be blow for the privacy movement.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Actually this is not that offtopic : I didn't reveal my identity in order not to be associated with the poor karma this post had gotten
Well let's see : you posted anonymously at 6:54AM, then replied to yourself non-anonymously at 7:06AM.
If the article is right then, I deduce you stopped being overweight in a mere 12 minutes. This is by far and away the best weight loss program I've ever heard of. Beat that Weight Watchers!!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Now, since HP is a commercial company, the report has to be done by economists that reduce every human interaction or belief to a question about money. And for good measure, throw in some free market associations like "auction" and "price":
To address this puzzle, we conducted a reverse second-price auction to identify the monetary value of private information to individuals and how that value is set.
This method of "identifying monetary value" is clearly bogus since private information is just that : Private i.e. not public. So let's throw in some terms to make it sound "academic" and "serious". The buzzword is "asymmetrically", refering to a term that a Nobel prize in Economics was given for : (simplified) Not every actor in a free market system has the same information :
Our results demonstrate that deviance, whether perceived or actual, from the group's average asymmetrically impacts the price demanded to reveal private information.
This is just another report from economists (intended for HP management, I guess) that are inappropiately applying tools on problems. Well, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like nail.
Let's see, they just spent some money to figure out that if something embarrasses people (i.e. not the norm), they'll charge more to let you know what it is. Sounds more like someone had some extra budget left over that they needed to clear out before the next fiscal year.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
The development of the rotation printing press, a machine that made it possible to print large quantities of printed material and thus spread information to a larger group of people, ultimately led to the newspaper industry. This was eventually combined with the use of instantaneous photographs as well as the improvement of transportation, which also contributed to the ability to spread information faster than ever before. These developments led to the article "The Right to Privacy" by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis in 1890 that was the catalyst in sparking the modern debate on privacy. Warren and Brandeis pointed out that while the technological developments were not necessarily an evil in itself, the new technologies employed by the newspaper industry were being used as modes of gossip and deliberate privacy invasions. Some of the people being affected were members of the British royal family, who had previously enjoyed a certain degree of anonymity. They were now experiencing every intimate detail of their personal lives, along with their pictures, being put into print and distributed to the greater public.
The debate on privacy consequently focused on the protection of the person, meaning the protection of the personality or integrity, based on the individual's right to limit these kinds of personal intrusions into their lives. This traditional view of privacy encompasses ideal (non-economic) interests, among other things the right to a private life, the right to have personal secrets, and the right to anonymity. By traditional, I mean privacy and privacy theory before the use of computers and information systems (referred to as information privacy). This view stems from the relationship between people and the press, but it also has roots in relationships between people and governments and people and people as well.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I like to think of myself as the difinitive version of Adonais.
...
Obviously not the definite version of english scholar however
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Is this information reversable? Meaning if I tell them what I want for the information of my weight, will they know how much I am away from the norm?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
and never registered a Slashdot account because I don't like giving personal information away!
doh there goes that theory
Ah this reminds me of a company I used to work for which paid a consulting group for an online study (survey and analysis) to gauge what our audience was. This gave us a nice set of statistics and pretty report which really just told us the demographics of people with the time and inclination to fill out long online survey forms and devulge personal information for the chance to win a small prize. No telling marketing that ofcourse.
Well, if you assume people bid rationally, then 2nd bid auction is the same as a standard auction with small increments, as explained in another post. The only advantage is that it leads to the same result faster.
But part of the point of auctions is that people don't act completely rationally. Let's say there is a really cool _____ that you would like to get. You think it's so great that you would pay 500$ for it. You bid that. Now someone else bids 510$. Don't you think you would go on? And maybe still go on over 530$? And there you are, the seller getting 10% more than in the 2nd bid auction.
there is something i would ask much money for before disclosing, yet (almost) everbody has one, and i can assure you its "the norm".
its my credit card numbers.
so i guess this study is again mixing up concurrence and causality.
and the scientist is probably fat.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
I don't care if what anyone knows about me, the more they know, the more they understand what the score is.
Look ye mortals an dispare!!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Does 'asymmetric' imply there's a higher cost if you're overweight than underweight, for example? In which case distance from the norm isn't really the right measure...
No, I didn't RTFA, I'm lazy and want someone to explain the summary for me
a) Do people care more when the info they reveal is disclosed to people they don't know when it can make its way back to people they do know ?
b) Is revealing the info in person (face to face) more resisted than revealing it to a terminal which can (or cannot) be accessed later by the group/acquaintances ?
c) If a system can assure that no one will know someone else's info without contributing his/her own info first, does this reciprocity make a significant difference ?
d) If a given acquaintance never met you personally (e.g. you met online), but over time started to know a lot of private info about you, are you less reluctant to share more private stuff than with people you meet face-to-face, or complete stragers ? If said relationship evolves to a face-to-face relationship does that change ?
Just rambling. I surely wouldn't know if any of this questions was already researched to exhaustion.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
"For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight."
Seriously?? No WAY!! And here was me expecting it to be, like, where overweight people would demean themselves in public for free!
Whoever is spending money on researching this, is probably preventing someone really good from researching something really useful - maybe we should remember that when posting such utter non-news..
The second auction was for age, not height. (See page 3, paragraph 2.)
When you get the simple facts wrong, people will tend to doubt that you've made valid conclusions.
This may be redundant - I could not be bothered reading the comments. But, I would also imagine that your average /.er would do the total opposite (at least to other geeks anyway) and try and deviate from the norm, because we tend to have a different (opposite) ideological belief -- well I do anyway ;-). That is that diversity (and by extension, tolerance) is good, because it increases the usefulness, productivity, life-span and efficiency of the human species (or any other group of abstract, concrete (animate or non-animate) entities or things).
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
The 'why' of it I would submit is trivial, despite what a pompus french charater in a tech-noir movie might think. But there is something useful here. They can trick people into giving a little more useful information. If you can devise questions of a "How much would you charge me if I wanted ..." variety that interlocked with other questions which you cared about the answers to you might be able to put the data together in such a way that you could not only tell whether they were lying, but how much. You just need the questions you really want the answers to, questions about what they consider normal, and questions about how much would they charge for presumably related truths. The idea being that they wouldn't have as much incentive to lie about what they'd charge as what the objective truth really is, and if they did, it's not likely they'd know how to lie effectively. With the added bonus of being able to factor out responses of the "ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS!!" variety.
Surveys about drug usage, depression, aggression, or quite plainly anything that might have a componant of shame could become more accurate.
My privacy protection is a matter of principle and it thus not affected by money. I don't give a whup if someone offers me money for certain, key private information tidbits, I wont give it. Is it because I am "deviant"? No. I am pretty frickin' average, all told, but on PRINCIPLE my privacy is MINE, absolutely, and I will not give it out or sell it off to a government or a corporation or a group of busybodies.
Just wait. This research will no doubt lead to more privacy erosion on the principle that if you do not want to give up the information, then you must be hiding something bad (the result that the perception or fact that one is deviant from the norm making one more reluctant to release private information). This CAN and will be used as a means of eroding privacy. "You MUST be hiding something if you wont give it up freely. Take him away!". Patriot Act v3.0 would be about right to explicitly work from this angle.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
well, I'm pretty sure the definitive version of Adonis would be able to spell a little better ...
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
Beyond Concern: Understanding Net Users' Attitudes About Online Privacy
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
*Patent Pending on Business Process.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The key to privacy is 'covenience' which roughly translates to how hard it is to preserve your own privacy.
Not the other way around, you dolts.
But now we live in an online world where doing practically anything except watching an ad requires 'registration'. So you HAVE to give up some information everytime. And even where all/most of that information is bogus you still have to thrash through it.
Think of it - most online purchases require a great deal of 'registration' - -
- "Are you one of our favored accounts?"
- "Please log in and we'll retrieve your profile."
and what they've basically done is take a system that works more or less ok - shop, pay, ship, thanks - and perverted it into an exercize that more or less makes the actual purchase secondary and the mad type type type type type typing of pages and pages of information for them to store the real point of it all. And 6 months from now when you've forgotten your password, account, secret questions #1, 2 and 3 and you try to purchase another box of screws or printer ink or god knows what and you need to have them send you your password again it's clear that the real purpose of this is the information itself and buying something is merely a door prize to the event.
The participants had to reveal their personal information to people who were present, and some of whom were known to the participants. Also, the nature of the information (age, weight, and finances) is potentially stigmatic in our culture.
These results should not be generalized to, for example, online data mining attempts for such practices as direct marketing. In nearly all requests for personal information, confidentiality is maintained, the information is anonymous, and some of the information requested (zip code, subscribed magazines, etc...) is not culturally stigmatic.
I question the applicability and usefulness of this study. Its specific results could have been predicted by existing social psychological research. A study measuring willingness to divulge non-stigmatic and anonymous information would be more useful.
InstantCrisis
It is a well conducted experiment by academic standards, but I believe its conclusions cannot be extrapolated to real life just yet.
The first problem here is of anchoring with the $25 figure. An example is generally given in literature that first you ask a person when did Genghis Khan live. Say someone says 1275 AD. Next if you ask them how many movie theatres are there in Russia - you will find their answer strongly affected by the number 1275. This is called "anchoring." Anchoring may have reflected why people asked between $4 and $19. They were looking at a 20% to 80 percent increase in that session's earnings and so looks "big" to the $25 anchor.
This is even more problematic. Once you have committed to coming would you just walk out of the whole situation ? Has the time that you spent thinking about this before you came played a role in whether you stay or leave?
The problem here is of "framing." You have made it clear that till $ 100 is the maximum "reasonable" price for private info, other wise you get nothing. This framing of the issue is problematic because it definitely had an influence on what people thought was a fair price for the info. Some people chose "infinity" but that is less than 3 %. If this is extrapolated then there is only 3 % of the popluation that wants to avoid Big Brother and Animal Farm - and that is scary.
.
I can pick up medical data, and point out to the fact that there are many healthy people who enroll themselves in clinical trials for $500-1500. In exchange they are monitored for days and weeks, blood samples drawn upteen times - why ? Because at that time that $1000 is a lot of money in their life. Some friends of mine went thru this procedure and I don't think their decision to give "all medical data" was based on any of the hypotheses of the current study. (As an aside, based on those clinical trial stories I later developed the concept for a comic strip Test Pharm - Cultivating a treatment for everyone)
The problem is that real life is not uni-dimensional. Cause and Effect is not singular. There can be single cause - multiple effects, multiple causes - single effect, multiple causes - multiple effects.
I can't just say that disclosure of salary is connected to a group average. There are a host of other issues related to the salary information. The salary information has multiple repercussions. In some of these "repercussions" I am average, in others deviant. In some groups I am average in others I am deviant.
This deviance concept is generally used in the Police State defense. "It shouldn't bother you because you got nothing to hide - right ?" I think it is misplaced as it does not consider the various shades of deviances in multiple dimensions - and exaggerates a singular cause rather than a bundle of causes. For example, if tomorrow carrying an almanac becomes a crime by some interpretation of the Patriot Act, then I would be against random roadblocks to "fish" out
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
The headline for this story on Fark would read something like this:
Scientists discover that fat people are self-conscious about their weight. Still no cure for cancer.
While I agree with your general point, your example of IQ testing is unfortunate. As explained to some length in Steven J Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" IQ tests were actually calibrated from the start the other way: people in "high" professions score high on the test because the test was calibrated such that they are scored highly. While I am certainly no anti-intellectual (and have benefitted greatly from such testing), I still feel that holding forth the example of the inception of IQ testing as good science is flat-out wrong.
This study is yet another example of devising an experiment that begs its own hypothesis.
Based on the results of the experiment, we could equally conclude that the person's willingness to reveal private information is a function of the deviation from the person's own self-image/self-conception, rather than the deviation from a social norm. In this case, if the over-weight person admitted to an over-weight self-image (i.e. was not intrinsically embarrassed or guilty about their weight) stepping on the scale in front of friends wouldn't be highly valued. This conclusion is consistent with our understanding of exhibitionism, a test that the HP study does not pass.
But in general, it seems that this study on its face tells us little about privacy in general, and more about body-image psychology specifically, and thus is of little general applicability in the very serious matter of "publicy," or privacy reversal in an online environment.
"Publicy" was coined, by the way, by Mark Federman of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto.
Some people are no doubt concerned that their deviancy, if revealed, might lead to some unpleasant consequences.
For instance, my neighbor might like studded leather and ball-gags, but as long as he's not kidnapping people to participate, and it's all according to Hoyle, then fine... who cares? (truthfully, I'd rather not know about it at all). Being a bit too deviant (or deviant in the wrong way) could lead to unpleasant personal, professional, or financial consequences.
I'd say it's pure self-interest and/or self-defense, rather than embarassment.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Of course it does. But it would be patently false to presume that reluctance to disclose information implies deviance. There are numerous perfectly normal reasons to want to protect one's privacy.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
My social security number is more than 450,000,000 away from the average!!! I'll never let you see it!
that is used in mission and life critical situations.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
At some point you can't hide the problem, and it consumes you, so you take the pity angle to make yourself feel better w.r.t. society.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Oddly enough, this suggests that people intuitively place a realistic valuation on their personal information. There is really little value to somebody in knowing that you are average, because average data is generally readily available, and will be the default assumption in the absence of better information about you. So the distinguishing information about you--the ways in which you deviate from the norm--are the most valuable thing that you have to sell.
Excellent thesis, Cynthia. I will not presume to link it here; I will leave that to you. I have serious doubts about the ability of Public Key Crypto to provide panaceas for PETs in the future, as I frankly expect all which are less than NP complete to be cracked within the next decade or so. I don't know what the ramifications of this will be for our internet society - but I do know that the need for privacy will not be any less than it is now. In the end, technologies are only tools which societies use when they make their choices; some technologies just make the proper choices easier.
I have also noticed a cost/benefit ratio associated with posting ones personal accomplishments on slashdot. I gave up my 'slashdot anonymity' when I posted a patent. And I didn't even get modded up for it!
That old fascist saw about "not having anything to worry about as long as you don't have anything to hide" is true?
If that's the case, our Founding Fathers must have been absolute perverted freaks.
One more reason to idolize them!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Hi Rosco, :O)
Not 12 : 3...
It took my post time to get downmodded and I was a little busy emitting opinions on the matter.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I believe there is also a powerful inverse function as well, not mentioned in the research.
For example, give a guy who has been working out for years even the slightest excuse, and his shirt will come off in public. Ask the overweight test subject to do the same, and he will be reluctant.
Pretty obvious, it would seem, but this stuff is IMPORTANT if you are claiming to offer a mathematical model.
What marketdroid would want information that doesn't identify "interesting" individuals?
A body of information that makes everybody look alike is useless.
The information that makes people stand out from the crowd really *IS* more valuable.
"Our results.... also suggest possible ways that could be used in order to increase the level of comfort that people experience when revealing private data."
the point of the study seems nothing more than finding better ways to extract info for the marketing dept.
Anyways, your observation is interesting. Especially in situations where non-conformity leads to some form of sanctions. Do the "right" thing and be rewarded, do the "wrong" thing and get punished. But who and what defines things like "right" and "wrong" and "good" and "bad" and "embarassing?" That can be a whole doctoral dissertation in itself!
I disagree though with the claim that making a poll anonymous doesn't help, though I don't have the data to back it up. I have seen studies that show that people are more likely to open up and reveal very personal information regarding "controversial" topics (for ex. incest) when they are given anonymity. An old project on anonymity called the Kosovo Privacy Project opened up for straightforward political discussion; the participants were able to express true thoughts and opinions anonymously, including opinions about the government, without fear of reprisals from their government.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Not everyone deserves to know me. Not everyone deserves to know about me. Not everyone wants to be or is my friend. Not everyone is intimate with me. The point? Some information people just have no business knowing. My sexuality for example is no ones business. Gay, Straight, Bi, none of your damn business. Its also none of your damn business what I do at home, or who I date. Some things people need to know, everything else just is not your damn business. If the government can have privacy why the hell cant we?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I want privacy because YOU don't have the right to know everything about me without MY permission. I decide who knows me on a personal level, who is intimate with me, and who I'm friends with.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
People with high IQs are usually not very successful at working normal jobs. You can be a complete genius and be lazy. Most geniuses are lazy because average jobs are too easy and boring.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The space these researchers are exploring is nonlinear. Sure, a person's degree of membership in the group will correlate to the value of private info in the enclosing public set (already a 2D graph, infoPrivacy vs. personPublicity). And then there's the relationship of delta-personPublicity to the actual degree to which the published information is "public" (how well known). But confounding the model completely is the dynamic, self-reflexive relations. How informed of the public sphere is the publishing person? If they're totally unselfconscious, they'll be less inhibited in publishing, as they won't even know the size of their delta-personPublicity. That feedback changes everything. We need a chaos statistician to fit a model to this interesting data.
--
make install -not war
When a person is the same in some aspect as the majority of people around them then those people collectively are likely to look on those who are different as flawed. They are likely to justify enriching themselves at other's expense based on that 'flaw' like a bunch of chickens.
When an individual is different than those around them they either see themselves as superior but are nonetheless afraid of the mob, or inferior and weak, and so even more vulnerable to the mob.
People are always writing the epic story in their minds of how they are somehow better than the mythical 'average bear'. Privacy at least lets you have some black feathers in safety.
does this mean that all that spy ware on my computer is actually stealing something from me that has a monetary value. We could all just calculate the value of our passwords and the sites we have visited and make a huge class action lawsuit. if our information does have monetary value the spyware companies owe us reimbursment(spelling).
If a society beleives in any of {copyright, patent, industrial secrets, non-public company and government meetings} it must also support privacy.
Clearly the ability to form oppinions, ideas and develop work in isolation is prerequisite to any form of creative or inventive/innovative activity.
Ultimately privacy is _more_ important to Governments and corporations than it is to individuals, which is why I hope it will be protected as an abstract 'right'.
Imagine if (without cracking) I, or anye else, could just wander through the Pentagons darkest secrets and then go through IBM and SCO personal memos, read my neighbors emails and so on.
Yes maybe we would all like that. But if that happened business and government would fall apart overnight.
But hey, maybe thats a good thing? What would be nice is if rights were equal, either NOBODY has any right to privacy, or we all have absolute right to privacy - theres really no workable middle ground when it comes to this ideology.
will give out all their info for one of two things:
.
1. A large pepperoni pizza.
2. The chance to win a trip to
BAAA!BAAA!
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Way to copy, search/replace and paste the abstract text!
When a business I'm suspicious of is collecting information, I tend to reveal information in ways which I think will maximally skew the data. I already know I'm a statistical outlier, so why not add a little noise to the data?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Damned site took down the article. Here is the Google cache
Only on
This is good! Mine starts with 978. That's pretty pretty high. I bet it's far away from the average and worth a lot!
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
They want to know what financial value people place on their privacy. Why?
I'd love to beleive that this is a purely academic social science study, but I'm not that naive. The rationale behind it must be to make money. Someone, somewhere is dreaming up a business model to make you and I pay for our privacy.
Imagine... Opt-outs, where you pay a fee not to have your personal details sold.
Sure, it's extortion. But, so are a lot of very common business practices today, unfortuntely. And governments pay lip service to privacy concerns, but big business can always buy the loopholes they want.
Don't think it will happen? Consider unlisted telephone numbers: you already pay a monthly fee for you privacy!
This study is all about putting a dollar value on privacy -- to help develop new ways to extort profit by selling, or more likely renting, our privacy back to us. Just wait and see.
Fifty men have their members examined by a doctor and their length recorded.
Before I could possibly put a price on this I would need to know if this is a hot, female doctor or not.
"Our results demonstrate that deviance, whether perceived or actual, from the group's average asymmetrically impacts the price demanded to reveal private information.'"
Well nobody was ever burned at the stake for being normal...
In other news...
Dog bites man...
Bears found to be defecating in woods....
Details at 11.....
"Give a man a fire, he's warm for a day, set a man on fire, he's warm for life."
The example of someone who is over-weight can be misleading. So someone who is X lbs overweight demans the same "price" as someone who is X lbs underweight? I doubt it. I think in this case, we can say even people who are at the "norm" are more likely to to require a higher price than people who are "thin"... And I would be willing to bet that outward appearance has a lot to do with it too. I think this is more about what's "acceptable" or what society says is "desirable." Anyone who has a better "image" probably cares less about privacy (in general), not those who deviate from the norm.
Just an observation.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
I wonder how much money it would take for the average person to participate
Did you mean the smallest person?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I didn't read the article, but it sounds like an awful lot of people have concluded, e.g. based on the "weight" example, that the study suggests we are conditioned by society not to deviate from the norm. While this may be true, I think there is a simpler explanation for why people are more likely to part with "average" data vs. unusual or unique data.
This conclusion has been touched upon already (see the comment "Interesting links to entropy"). One big reason people protect their private information is because it has value--in many cases, its value (to, say, a marketer working to collect that information) is that it serves to more uniquely identify a particular person or group, allowing that group to be singled out for e.g. targeted mailings. A piece of average data, shared by a large number of people, lacks this value.
Suppose you are in a situation where you are publishing a controversial paper, but must attach your real name to it. Would you be more likely to publish the paper (knowing that friends, relatives or people you come in contact with may read it) with a name like John Smith, vs. a name that is quite unique or uncommon?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I think a lot of it depends on what the consequences are of providing information. I could honestly care less if Company A tells Company B that I bought $500 worth of computer accessories last year...unless of course that means Company B is going to start emailing or calling me to try and sell me MORE computer accessories. Market studies don't bother me. Telemarketers and spammers bother me. Tell whatever you want to whomever you like, but if they don't leave me the fuck alone they have problems.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Do you have any idea how much good the wealth you put towards internet access could do in the third world? More good that spouting platitudes you don't even personally adhere to I'll bet.
A person's worth might be expressed as the sum of the good they do less their evils (though small they might be) and that which they consume. Money doesn't actually factor into it beyond being a convienent metric. It is only the universal adapter. In fact it provides us with much time we can use to build wealth as opposed to bartering. But it has no more morality, or immorality that the nail or hammer it might purchase.
Your silly school girl wish is that there could be a world free of evil and misfortune. I can only assume you just haven't lived long enough to leave such burdensome ornimentation behind. When there isn't enough money to save a life, it's because we have all decided together that the capital (which just happens to take the form of money for the sake of simplifiying the transactions only) is better distributed elsewhere. You included. You're not working like a slave and contributing everything you own to some noble cause, or donating a kidney, or your bone marrow to just anyone who asks.
For my part, and I learned this at my father's funeral, I know the only things that are truly durable are the small kindnesses we give to people. The great ones are rare, get all the publicity, and might well be done anyway if in another fashion. But the small ones, those are what really matter. The door held, the kind word, the money lent or given, the generous tip, the lesson taught, the favor done, the trust rewarded.
Try to use love to buy a house in the suburbs
...privacy to get three meals a day
Jenna, that's your cue!
Martha, I think I hear the jury calling!