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Such a Thing as too Paranoid About Privacy?
jackoahoy! writes "As we become more connected, we have the right to be paranoid. But the question is: where do we draw the line between sane and insane privacy? CoolTechZone's Gundeep Hora tackles this issue and uses a recent blog entry on Infoworld to illustrate his point. From the article: 'Whether it's OnRebate.com or any other rebate managing company, asking for the industry you work in and your job function aren't the most personal questions they could possibly ask. However, they must carefully define the conditions for collecting such information. Targeted advertising by user opt-in newsletters and e-mail campaigns (unlike spamming) or internal market research to get a grasp on its customer base isn't unethical, in my opinion. And people making a big deal out of two vaguely placed questions is insensible and out of proportion. If you really are that paranoid about privacy, then do what this reader did and put in wrong information under those questions.'"
...to do the right thing.
If that's their reasoning, then let them ask for the demographic info WHEN the user opts in.
Otherwise they have it sitting there, calling thier name like a chocolate cake in the fridge at 3am. Yeah, they'll never give in to the temptation... and that cake is still sitting there, too.
If the information is so trivial and useless, why do they collect it?
If the information has value, why don't they pay me for it?
Is there any validity to the theories (and software) of social networking?
sPh
Industry: RIAA.
Job Function: Extorting the unlucky.
I'm still waiting for my rebate.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
To paraphrase the famous quote: Those who would give up essential privacy to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither privacy nor safety.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I got an iPod for christmas. I installed the software, which required my name and email address, and was forced to opt out for spam. Then I had to update the iPod software. I was forced to enter my name and email address and opt-out for spam. Then I had to update the iTunes software, where I was yet again forced to enter my email address and opt-out for spam. Thats 3 times in 15 minutes that a single company attempted to get my information and permission for spam. At this point, I was so pissed off that I entered a really long, expletive-laced fake email address to download iTunes.
It doesn't matter to me if a company has a reasonable privacy policy when they do everything in their power to get your permission for spam anyway. Like all advertising, it is invasive, persistent, underhanded, and extremely annoying. As far as I'm concerned, it has nothing to do with privacy. It is unreasonable marketing practices that piss me off. I think it pisses a lot of people off, and the backlash from that is a demand for more privacy.
No sig now
As we become more connected, we have the right to be paranoid.
Bullshit. You don't have the right to be paranoid... no one can stop you from being paranoid... but that doesn't somehow impart a right to you in the same sense that you have the right to free speech or to practice your religion. Sure, you might want to be paranoid, or be inclined to be more paranoid... but that's a behavior and action a choice on your part, not some sort of right. If anything our "rights" are being assaulted by careless use of the term "right"... everything is a right so that truly important rights become lost in the sea of rights to paranoia, and right to wear a tinfoil hat in public, and my right to run Linux on every single thing that might sustain an electric current.
Please just disregard this idiotic thread.
that scares me. Sure, this is only a question about the industry in which you work. This other site asks you if you're married or not. Another if you have babies. Slowly but surely outfits like these are building a profile of you that would put the FBI and most stalkers to shame.
Maybe we are overreacting but what happens with this data in the long run? Who controls it? If the company that holds it goes bankrupt or is bought by another, where does the data go?
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
Joe Dogooder is not a criminal, in fact Joe is your average, well do-gooder. Pays his taxes, supports his family, visits his community church, where mind you, he's visited since his days as an altar boy. Normally Joe wakes up around 5:00am in hopes of making some decaffeinated coffee, followed by a quick glimpse at the New York Times Online, while his television is tuned to the news. Today however, Joe woke up at 5:30am - and although he won't be late, he decided not to watch television. Instead he is going to work early in order to catch up with some work.
After his shower, getting dressed, kissing his family goodbye he grabs his trusted cellphone, and heads for his car. "Welcome to OnStar" flares for a quick second before he turns the service off. He'd know his way to work driving blindfolded, he's been there plenty of times. After stopping for some coffee and paying with his credit card at the local 7Eleven at 6:15am, he makes a right on Main Street leading to the turnpike. Joe always has money on his EZ-Pass, and although it has been hacked in the past, his information is now safe. He continues to work and breezes right through the toll-booths it is now 6:21am and he's right on time.
Getting off at the Broadway exit, Joe is running pretty early, 6:41am. Pulling into the Shell gas station at 6:45am, he fills up his car and swipes his credit card again through the machine so he doesn't have to walk an extra 20 feet to pay the cashier. Stops at the local Megasupershopper store and buys some chewing gum, a soda, and some shaving cream. Back in his car, he finally pulls into the corporate garage at 7:00am, swipes his identification card, and continues on his way. This is pretty much a daily routine for Joe, and millions like him.
So who is this average Joe and why should you care? Joe is noone really important, what's important is that you understand how Joe's movements were tracked and how dangerous can be at some point. TiVo recently shoved their foot in their mouths when they announced that Janet Jackson's breast of mass destruction was the most rewound video capture. Meaning? Watch a TiVo, they'll know it, what time, what it was, and who did it - you do after all have your information attached to it.
Joe also decided to check the news via the New York Times, and he had to sign into his account in order to do so, meaning his information was gathered there too. What time he logged in, and from where. Sure he could have registered with false information, after all it's free, but unless he decided to manually change his IP address somehow - whether via proxy or other means - the New York Times has his information. This is not to say in any way the New York Times is selling your information or using it against you, I don't know their policies, I'm simply trying to make you aware of the signs of the 'Times'
We can also average out a time where Joe starts his car every single day for as long as we'd like using his OnStar information, we can determine a definitive pattern of his daily life with ease. What about the chewing gum?, simple, RFID tags gave us that info. Now this may not be a big deal considering Joe Dogooder is an upstanding citizen so he would have nothing to hide. John Cheatman is an altogether different story.
John has been having an affair on his wife of 30 years, and he happens to be a millionaire. Wonder what he'd do if someone threw together a video portrait of his weekly (T
MoFscker
Saying something isn't unethical "in my opinion" borders on redundancy. Ethics are simply a set of defined rules, and by definition are subjective. But that's not my real point.
Targeting advertising email is spam. The thing that distinguishes spam is the sender's attitude toward non-respondents. A spammer doesn't care what his non-respondents think of him -- he's only interested in the response rate. An advertiser with an ounce of sense realizes that he's going to drive away people by spamming, and doesn't want that. A spammer doesn't care.
A targeted email campaign may be more effective than simple spam, but it's still spam. Cleaning up your list will improve your response rate, but it still is going to drive people away.
I'm not generally in favor of the death penalty, but in the case of people who use my inbox for their foul spam, I'm on the fence.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
This article COMPLETELY misses the point. I don't care if spammers know if I'm a university student or a fast food worker. What I do care about, is being hassled to tell them. When I buy something, I don't want to have to bother telling them my postcode, phone number, or which industry I work in. Now if it served some purpose to the item/service I was purchasing, fine. But when it's just to sell my info (or to perform their l33t marketing tools on) I'm going to get annoyed.
As advertisers work to get into my home more and more, I'm becoming less and less tolerant of them. Unobtrusive ads that don't collect or use peronal information on me, I'm fine with. But when they start serving me ads based on what country I live in, or pester me about what my age is or are louder then the shows I'm watching, I become annoyed. It isn't about privacy, it's about comfort. I'm not going to provide them with my personal information, unless they offer me a damn good reason for them to have it. They should use what information I naturally give them, and be happy they get that. The idea that it's perfectly fine for shops to expect me to answer any questions they want, is ridiculous (IMO). I'm going shopping to buy items, I'm not going shopping to provide them with demographic information for them to utilize/sell. They should remember what the purpose of their stores are, and to stop trying to be advertising firms. I'm not going to lie to them, I'm simply going to refuse to tell them. If they're going to annoy me with asking for my personal information, I'm going to annoy them by not playing along.
The rebate in question is affiliated with Tigerdirect, which anyone who trolls for incredible internet pricing will tell you is notorious for not actually issuing rebates, or when they do it's 6-9 months later. So it's not as if we're talking about a particularly ethical company to begin with.
But on another issue, I find the linked article itself to be a troll. The framework of the question starts out right off that bat as "is this sane or insane privacy". By polarzing the issue into a "sane or insane" we lose perspective on this issue and start fighting for one of the two particular sides the author has chosen. This sounds more like a Crossfire! type discussion than a real look at the issues.
Stepping back from the linked article perspective, I'd like to present a different one. Is not providing all the rebate details upfront a breach of contract? If I advertise a $20 rebate for a product, but fail to disclose that you'll have also have to buy $200 in magazine subscriptions until after you've already bought the product, that's not a valid contract.
My major problem (and I think the original posters major problem) is the lack of upfront details on the rebate. Had they told him you'd have to provide job function, company size, etc before they'd issue the rebate then you can make an informed decision if those specific details are worth the rebate price. When they don't tell you the full details of the contract then I think that's at least an ethical violation, and possibly an invalid contract. If you dig deep enough you can eventually find the form to fill out without first buying the product, but who expects a rebate form to ask anything but where to send the check, and who to make the check out to? I certainly don't.
But as I said previously, tigerdirect isn't exactly well known for holding up their end of the bargain.
AccountKiller
Tinfoil and aluminum foil are NOT the same thing.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
As I own my own domain, I give a new email alias (e.g. stuff_amazon@happystuffplace.com for an Amazon account) to each entity that asks me for one. Of course, none of these is the one I use for correspondence with people I know. This way, I know exactly who it was that sold my address to a spam list, and can block it with no detriment to my "real" addresses.
I find this as a compromise between real address and dead-end junk, because, for a good deal of sites, I do want them to send me the email... I just want the option to ignore all their email later, should conditions change.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I think we're finding out who among are true conservative and who are Party Religionists. The GOP is no longer conservative (unless you consider a Theocracy conservative rather than reactionary). No, the GOP has become Socialist, as in National Socialist.
Oh, shit! Run! Here comes Steve Godwin!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I think the important question that would solve all this is "What is the chocolate cake?" What exactly can they do with this information? Granted I don't want them to have it, but what can they do with it that really would hurt me? Our country is pretty far away from Hong Kong (on the Orwellian map), where you get 10 years prison for spitting gum out on the sidewalk. I don't see collecting information to be a chocolate cake. Maybe one my mom baked, but certainly nothing appetizing at all. It might look nice on the outside, having all those names and numbers and addresses, but it would take a lot of digestion energy to do something useful with it.
I freaked out the people at my local Albertson's a few years back (side note: If it's "My store" why is it called "Albertson's"? My name isn't Albertson) when they started doing the valued customers card or what ever it was they called it. Every time I went in, they kept asking me if I had my card yet, if I wanted to get a card, and so forth. And they kept going on about how much I would save.
Every time, I said no.
Finally, I made a form asking for basically the same information they wanted, and offered to pay 10% more every time I shopped if they would just fill out the form and give little cards with bar codes of my choosing on them to all the checkers, so I could scan them with my cuecat each time I checked out. Easy as pie, and it would probably double their profit on my purchases.
This resulted in very amusing conversations with the supervisor, and assistant manager, and a manager--throughout which, I'm proud to say, I kept a straight face. The upshot was, they said no.
I said that was fine, but they really were passing up a good thing, and I'd be sure to make them the same offer the next time I came in. And the time after that.
Oddly, I don't think they ever tried to sign me up for their stupid program again.
--MarkusQ
I once subscribed to a national magazine, to remained unnamed, that had a disclaimer at the bottom of there subscription form stating that all data supplied would be kept confidential. Out of curiosity I supplied a fictitious middle initial with my name. It didn't take long before I started to receive junk mail with that very obvious marker showing up.
Needless to say, the letter I wrote the magazine wasn't very nice and to this day I still occasionally employ that trick that to maintain honesty.
...using the money argument when a cashier asks for too much. Face it - typical information collection at a cash register (as an example) is big bucks - and when someone crosses a line, I answer that I'll be happy to sell them the information.
The result is the typical baffled look, since it isn't the typical "paranoid" response. I then ask them how much their company paid for the "collection module" for their POS software - I know it isn't cheap. I then ask what they paid to have it setup, and have the results of this current campaign implemented. That isn't cheap either.
I then ask how long it takes the average cashier to gather the desired information. 15 seconds? How long does the average cash transaction take without this? 30 seconds? By gathering this info, we've effectively cut the cashier throughput - meaning to maintain that throughput, the store needs to increase its cashier staff by that amount... a full third in this example. That is NOT cheap.
Clearly my zipcode is worth an assload of money, I conclude... and if they are willing to spend THAT kind of money to get it, then I'm an idiot to just GIVE AWAY something they deem so valuable.
That's the general concept, at least... and it is quite effective as it cannot be argued against. This information clearly has significant value; Paranoid has nothing to do with it.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
The inverse is true. The advertisers/marketers don't care about you they care about your kind. If they were that interested in you, they would just target you and steal from you, they want X number of people similar to you. There are things like "target demographics", "males between 25 and 35", "housewives" or "stay at home moms" if they have kids, etc.
Certain products, goods, or services may appeal to statistical outliers, but any marketer or advertiser never appeals to them, they appeal to the middle 2 standard deviations. Niche products even do this thing. About 1 in 5 women are into anal sex, butt 4 out of 5 are not into it and would not be into seeing advertisements for a better anal lube on TV even though it might even change their opinion of that kind of sex. Herpes medication is accepted though, because everybody knows somebody that has it.
I'm not paranoid about privacy in marketing. Nothing I buy that is legal to buy is that interesting. The good stuff is not advertised, nor needs to be. I've heard that Nukes go for something like $10 mil. Buying those might be of interest to some people, but being that the US government is too stupid to figure out which 3rd world country's government owns them or not, I can buy them in relative comfort.
National Socialism and Socialism ARE VERY DIFFERENT.
is that "having nothing to hide" is not semantically equivalent to "having nothing to lose". In fact, if you do have something to lose, then by definition you have something worth hiding.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
They won't send paper in the mail as that is too expensive...and too easy for me to throw away.
Clearly you haven't moved out of your parents basement yet -- when you get your own place, you'll find out it is NOT too expensive. In fact, 100% of mail I recieve is unsolicited advertisements. I have opted for paperless billing with every company I legitimately do business with. I go to the mailbox 2-3 times a week just to throw the junk mail away because the Post Office will slap me with a fine if I ignore it.
They won't call my cell phone because I'm on the do not call list and will file a claim if they do.
The only fine ever levied as a result of the "Do Not Call" list was recently to DirecTV. DirecTV was the number 1 offender with over X complaints, and was fined $5.4 million for 1.4 million complaints -- or less than $4 per complaint, not per illegal call. Incidentially the maximum fine is $11,000 per complaint, so they got off cheap. All of the other offenders haven't been touched at all.
They can send email but Thunderbird's got a great spam filter.
This costs me real money in bandwidth charges, as well as hard drive space (either locally or on my mail server), and a sysadmin (me or my ISPs) to maintain that spam filter.
The problem, besides "a little bit of inconvenience", is that it costs me both money and time to deal with this problem. Normally when you deal with someone elses problems you get paid for doing work for them. Normally when someone makes a career out of making problems for other people, they go to jail for Organized Crime.
~Rebecca
Stallman is mainly concerned with Freedom, not privacy. The two do happen to overlap, of course, but there's no reason to insult the man for caring, and for being aware of the issues. That's why most of us are here talking about it. Also, what Stallman seems "paranoid" about generally turns out to be the reality of the situation just a few years down the line. The man is a visionary, not a quack. The success of the Free Software movement, Open Source, and Linux, and the attempted corporate dominance of Internet Explorer, Microsoft, and others are all here as evidence of Stallman's deep understanding. Probably best not to deride the guy who's kept your online world sane, huh? ;)
Setting that aside and addressing the article itself, I would point out that privacy is always a trade-off with ease of use. Regardless of what the ideal level of privacy is, we do need good privacy, which few of us have achieved. Real security and privacy is hard, and you're far more likely to run into usability issues before you run into overkill issues.
So, I think it basically boils down to this: implement the best security and privacy you can reasonably expect yourself to keep up without getting lazy.