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The Privacy Paradox
Dekortage writes
"The NYTimes has a piece up about the paradox of privacy: 'Normally sane people have inconsistent and contradictory impulses and opinions when it comes to their safeguarding their own private information.' More specifically, it's all how you ask: if you don't talk about privacy, people won't worry about it. In one survey, 'When the issue of confidentiality was raised, participants clammed up. For example, 25 percent of the students who were given a strong assurance of confidentiality admitted to having copied someone else's homework. Among those given no assurance of confidentiality, more than half admitted to it.'"
From that little extract in the summary about students, is that proof of people not caring about privacy unless someone mentions it, or proof that students these days are a bit thick and don't really think ahead or about what they're saying?
(NOTE: I'm actually a student myself and I'm inclined to believe the latter).
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
People just naturally want to stir up shit!
Talk to people about dieting or brushing teeth and they might do it in immediate future. Privacy is a chore that can cause quite a bit of inconvenience. Damage from it being breeched only happens rarely and takes a lot of time to manifest itself.
this means that if your conscience compels you to mention confidentiality, you're probably up to no good, so i should watch out. of course, this doesn't help against those with no conscience.
KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
There's no paradox at all. If you ask a girl out on a date she might say yes. Promising that you are not going to cut her up into little pieces and eat her raw over the next 2 weeks does not improve your chances. People are rightly suspicious when they hear someone state explicitly that they are not planning on doing something evil. Economists are always coming out with nonsense like this.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Surely if you've done nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Most people don't remember to be paranoid. Give them a reminder that they should be , and *BAMMO* they shut up. Cops have known about this forever.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
... so the correlationisnotcausation tag is misleading. I assume they ran an experiment and randomly assigned half the students to the "mention confidentiality" treatment, half to the control. So there's no way (except an extraordinary fluke) for anything but the treatment to explain the big difference in honesty.
We all cherish our privacy. Then we go and divulge everything about ourselves on Facebook, sprinkle our Social Security number like pixie dust across the Web and happily load up on tracking devices like GPS navigators and cellphones.
I do have a Facebook page, I do submit my social security card on-line, and I do use a GPS navigator and cell phone. I have a good idea who gets each of those items of data and why, and I have a good idea of the risks and implications.
I'm sorry the researchers don't understand the privacy implications of these different uses of private information, but the stupidity is theirs, not mine.
Their findings: Our privacy principles are wobbly. We are more or less likely to open up depending on who is asking, how they ask and in what context.
There's nothing "wobbly" about that, that's the way privacy is supposed to work, and it's the way it has worked for, oh, many millennia.
Most people forget that rule most of the time, to their eventual detriment. On July 3rd, a judge ordered Google to hand over log records containing user-identifiable data on every YouTube video ever downloaded. Did you ever think your YouTube habits would become publicly available? Read Rule #1 above. 'Nuf said.
Is anyone terribly surprised? How we answer questions depends on how the question is asked. Specifically, we try to read social cues as to how the information will be received. Ask someone a personal question in a context that makes them think their answer will garner praise, and they'll answer much more readily than in a situation where it's implied the answer will lead people to condemn them.
I remember in college a bunch of people were taking purity tests, and one girl took the test and scored on the relatively pure end of the spectrum, and seemed proud of that. When everyone was much more impressed with people who scored incredibly impure, she took the test again and managed to get a much different score.
If not given the assurance people think only about the bad outcome caused by their confession, when given the assurance they actually compound two fears, the fear of bad outcome and the fear of having the promise broken.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
At least in Italy, for the sake of privacy, you cannot know from your telco the exact phone numbers that have been dialed from YOUR own phone.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Why bother if you can just copy the test itself?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Indeed. Not only does he purposely use it incorrectly, but then he purposely calls attention to it.
It's not as if "this prompts the question" would have been harder to understand.
The easiest conclusion is that the GP is trolling, and should be modded accordingly.
There was a study or two a little while ago that mentioned that the mind has trouble with negative constructions over time.
"Your data is safe with me. That's right, I am not going to *broadcast your data all over the internet where all the world can see it, reverse engineer your life, and tag it in the southeastern dialect of Klingon attached to a mashup of Steve Ballmer and Jack Thompson. Nosirree, I promise to take good care of you and not *rip your life to shreds and offer your data as bait to the CIA, or Viacom."
The mind melts and forgets it is in "reversal mode", and becomes exhausted from the scare words.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If not given the assurance people think only about the bad outcome caused by their confession, when given the assurance they actually compound two fears, the fear of bad outcome and the fear of having the promise broken.
BINGO!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As ever, I'd like to know the scope of the survey cause if the sample where something like 1000 students for one survey and 1000 for the other then maybe the fist 1000 copied far less than the latter.
Statistics is just about distribution and probability not about well known facts and extrapolating conclusions from an insufficiently wide sample can lead to terribly wrong conclusions.
We live in a world today where pretty much anything that a government or a private entity tells you is more or less the opposite of reality.
People are accustomed to seeing legislation such as the "Defense of Marriage Act", which attacks and limits people's right to marry... the "Patriot Act", which exploits patriotism toward ends which no patriot could support... etc. How many Congressional bills DON'T have a name that is 180-degrees opposite from the bill's contents?
People are accustomed to private sector speech meaning its exact opposite as well. You never see a food company describe its product as "gourmet" unless it isn't. "Employee Rights" policies are generally about limiting employee rights. More relevant here, anyone who has even glanced at a "Privacy Policy" from their bank or other business institution knows that it really deals with how little privacy you have, and the hoops they make you jump through even to protect that.
Where's the "paradox" here? We have grown accustomed to any language about our "rights" actually being a bait-and-switch. So, yes... when we hear assurances that our privacy is safeguarded, we assume that you wouldn't even have brought it up unless it wasn't.
Quite.
The survey simply proves that, people who copy others' homework, find it difficult to follow a chain of logic. I'm fairly sure we all knew that before the survey.
To summarise: "Stupid is as stupid does"
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I was absolutely appalled to hear about that, and really felt for the terror that the citizens of East Germany had to face under Communism: say the wrong thing on the phone, and the heavy bootheels of the state police might come kicking down your door, to drag you away to a dungeon, work camp or firing squad.
Absolutely appalled, indeed.
Well, we've got that now, in the US: the entire US telcom system can be tapped from a single location, and not just that, by remote control!
And not just phone conversations: Internet traffic and financial transactions as well.
Get ready to send some heavy bootheels my way: George W. Bush is a war criminal. My greatest hope is that he shall be tried for his crimes by the next administration - or turned over to the UN Tribunal in The Hague - and that he be imprisoned for the rest of his days for what he has done, not only to his country, but to so many innocent people all around the world.
How many Iraqis had to die, or be horribly maimed, so we could take control of their oil? It was never about terrorism; if it ever had been, the military would have focussed on Afghanistan, the Taliban and bin Laden. By not having done so, the Taliban has become resurgent.
Yo! Homeland Security, lissen up: when you subpoena Slashdot's logs, I have Stephouse IDSL and live in Sunnyvale, California.
Cowering in fear, -- Mike
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Most students probably didn't know what "confidentiality" means and played safe...
"Don't ask for whom the ^G tolls."
If you have nothing to hide, then surely you don't mind giving up your privacy to government agencies and private corporations with whom you have not trust-relationship whatsoever.
You've demonstrated the point without even noticing. In other words, you were trolled but not how you might think: he *explicitly* stated it, so you replied.
Well trolled, sir.
You're absolutely right about this. It's the "don't think of an elephant" argument (which I learned about from a book of the same name by cognitive linguist George Lakoff).
Negative constructions reinforce the positive mental frame that contains them. When Nixon said "I am not a crook", he guaranteed that everyone would think of him as a crook. Saying "we will not violate your privacy" makes people think that you might violate their privacy.
No jokes, please
Either:
a) your a troll
b) you didn't read the recent thread on this site discussing the "nothing to hide" argument
No government, king, or dictator should be allowed to spy on American citizens in the US.
If you want to be spied on then go back to England, otherwise enjoy your stay in the LAND OF THE FREE!
You want fries with that?
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
I wonder how much this applies to E-commerce sites in regards to the ever prominent "Conversion Rate" metric. Many conversion rate analysts will say that plastering your privacy policies, showing security badges and offering a constant affirmation of your trustworthiness is paramount to convincing people they can and should buy from you. Could this actually, in some cases, be hurting your overall goal of getting people to open up their wallets to you? Raises my eyebrow for sure.
and do your homework [background research] before you confide in people. Giving misleading information that is useless is always safer until you can be shown trust that people are worth entrusting.
If people know that someone made a whole load of money selling information about them to anybody, they will start thinking that information means something, and there are several good reason to keep information private. For people who say that they have nothing to hide I challenge them to put their information online and see what happen to their liives.
This story reminds me of another paradox: the anonymous paradox, where people feel like it is more "anonymous" to order online stuff that they don't want people to know about. But actually, if you really want this hardcore XXX movie but you don't want people to know about it, you should go physically to the adult store and pay cash instead of leaving an electronic paper trail. (Same rule applies to the purchase of Celine Dion's latest album!).
lucm, indeed.
To be real pedantic, it's not "do no evil", it's "don't BE evil".
You know, micro-chipping your kids can help get them home safely if they're ever lost or, God forbid, kidnaped.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Oh! I get it now... Took me a while to understand. And just in case somebody else had the same brain fart I did. The experiment was NOT the following:
"Did you plagiarize? This is confidential." Result: 25%.
"Did you plagiarize? This is not confidential." Result: 50%.
The experiment was the following:
"Did you plagiarize? This is confidential." Result: 25%.
"Did you plagiarize?" Result: 50%.
The experiment was the following:
"Did you plagiarize? This is confidential." Result: 25%.
"Did you plagiarize?" Result: 50%.
Perhaps it should have been:
"Did you plagiarize? (You'll remain anonymous)" Result: ???
We try to promote skepticism and it's a good thing that we do. Teaching people to question the things that they are told is good. However, there is a relatively small minority of Slashdot readers who have missed the point.
Scientific skepticism is about making sure you understand the details of how a conclusion was reached. You look for holes in the method. You look for faulty assumptions. What scientific skepticism is not is the practice of simply not believing anything at all.
You're absolutely right about this (I tried to mod you up, but my points had timed out). Watch any advertisement on TV and while the voice over is promising one thing, the 6 point type scrolling at the bottom is "clarifying" and negating the points-- or, in the words of Tom Waits, "the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." I've noticed even my children no longer trust the words "cheap," and worse, "free," and assume any ad using those words is for something that costs a lot. Perhaps the researchers have discovered something about the way we interpret language in an age of letter-of-the-law linguistics.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
An alternative impression occurs to me. If someone were to give me the whole disclaimer about what they would and wouldn't do, my impression of that person - or institution - would be 'this person is very proper/uptight', and it would inhibit me from admitting my less than proper conduct and thereby laying myself open to their criticism.
"Once trust has been questioned, it can no longer exist."
It becomes an exercise in conscious risk assessment.
http://www.studentsfororwell.org/
The US has always been the land of the free*.
* Subject to terms and conditions, offer not valid where inapplicable.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
I can't see the advantage because it deprives us of the original meaning, for which there is no good synonym.
Regards,
--
*Art
Surely if you've done nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide.
Why, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide Government Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom: The Case Against Expanding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Powers.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Isn't it more interesting that more than half of the students copy their homework? :)
You are exactly right. And this brings up an awkward situation: I'm gay, and sometimes after talking with someone extensively online, the person finds it necessary to tell me about his girlfriend a lot and tell me that if we meet it's not a date and he doesn't want to have sex with me, and then I have to reassure him about it. So then I feel like we're both engaging in this form of lying, because we're both thinking about the topic of sex with each other. But I guess since they initially brought it up, they're totally gay. Thanks.
This result (of people caring more about something once it's been mentioned) has been observed in economic experiments measuring people's willingness to accept, for example, the construction of a new dangerous waste management facility in their municipality.
When presented with the scenario, "The Federal and Local Governments have agreed that the construction of this facility is necessary, and should be constructed here", about 50% of people voted for the plant. When the scenario was modified to, "The Federal and Local Governments have agreed that the construction of this facility is necessary, and should be constructed here. Each resident will receive 500 Francs per year as compensation.", the rate of acceptance fell to about 20%.
Totally counter-intuitive: same scenario, better conditions, less acceptance. It wasn't a strategic decision about trying exhort more money, but rather, the fact that money was offered prompted the residents to think, "Hang on – if they're willing to compensate me for this, it MUST be dangerous. Bugger this!*"
The same effect looks to be at work in this experiment: presented with the offer of confidentiality, the subjects are prompted to reconsider how sensitive this information actually is, and come to the conclusion that if MUST be sensitive if people feel it necessary to promise not to reveal it to anyone else.
*I'm paraphrasing, obviously. I'm not sure even the French would give answers like that on surveys!
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
I get the joke, but:
One of the best short answers to this idea came from Bruce Schneier, who suggested thinking about whether you changed at all when you moved out of your parents's house into the dorms, and whether your behavior changed again when you went back home to visit.
Don't kid yourself.
It is very common to set boundaries within a relationship. If I have a friend who eats meat, and I'm vegetarian, and I tell them this to avoid possible future embarrassment (e.g. them inviting me over and serving me roast lamb) - by your logic this makes me carnivorous, which I am not. Consider someone telling you about his girlfriend a compliment, because it means that they are prepared to continue the friendship despite the sexual differences, and they wish to avoid any embarrassment in the future.
The fact is that you seem uncomfortable with your own sexuality. My advice, grow up a bit, and accept the friendship for what it is. Your life will be a lot more fulfilling when you stop attempting to impose your values upon other people.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
All that proves is that 25% of people are dishonest and stupid.
So, if you're out with a member of the opposite sex, same situation otherwise, what happens then?
When a chick (I'm presuming you are male, this is /. afterall) says to you that she's just "not interested" in that kind of a relationship, do you feel awkward? Is she engaging in a form of lying? If she's a lesbian, does the fact that she brought it up that make her "straight"?
Sex isn't always comfortable. I'm happily married to a awesome woman, but in my job, I spend 80% of my time dealing with successful, middle-aged women, many of whom are damned attractive. It's been a few times where we recognize a mutual attraction, and have to hem, haw, and cough a bit, before plowing back into the work at hand. It's awkward. It's also just a fact of life.
My wife has been told every time that this has happened, I make no effort to hide it, and by telling her, it lets her know that she can trust me.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'm not imposing any values on anyone. These people talk to me and they find it necessary to constantly remind me how ungay they are, out of nowhere. Sometimes they are secretly gay though, sometimes they are attractive but I'm not thinking about it, and other times they're totally ugly.
When they get like that I try to reassure them and I'm willing to be their friend just the same. But at the same time I can't promise anyone that I won't think about them sexually, and by them bringing it up subconsciously we're both thinking about it.
I say I'm gay and then they blow me. Works every time.
Girls play the whole "I don't want sex" game too, and my reassurances don't seem to help though. But I can't really say that I'm 100% disinterested in girls, just mostly.
It reminds me of when a white person tells a black person how they have black friends and they're not racist. Maybe the reason is that in our subconscious it's all a bunch of sex and wicked stuff, so we feel guilty about it and start to reassure everyone that we're not gay or racist or kinky or whatever. But society fills our heads with paranoia about being gay and all the things that would lead one to believe that someone is gay, such as having a gay friend, not liking sports etc.
Maybe these guys aren't 'gay'. The way lie detectors work is from a baseline. But if you've just met someone and they keep telling you how straight they are it makes you wonder. That's all.
I find it strange that all of this expensive research is being devoted - not to increasing peoples' privacy somehow - oh no... that would actually be a *welcome* advance! No, this work is oriented at trying to continue the wholesale destruction of privacy by reducing the perception of unprivacy in dolts like us so that privacy can be hijacked as usual.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
I hope you're reading this.
You say I say I'm gay and then they blow me. Works every time. This could mean:
I say I'm gay and then they give me oral sex. Works every time.
I say I'm gay and then they leave me. Works every time.
For curiosity's sake, which is what you meant? Or is there a third option?
People are filled with stereotypes, which are often quite accurate, but almost as often not. Blondes are dumb. Asians are smart. Blacks are well hung but untrustworthy. Women talk too much. Men would rather get lost than ask for directions.
The truth is that for each of these, there's a tendency. Blondes (at least in California) often are not interested in the intellectual. Many Asians are being sent here for schooling, so by definition, they are smart. (You don't send an oaf to college in a foreign country) Blacks are still dealing with a generations-old stigma of slavery, and are still far more likely to be poor, and poor people are more likely to steal. Women do tend to have brains more focused on communications, and men do tend to have trouble admitting to being wrong (and thus asking for directions).
No, they aren't absolutes - My very intelligent wife is blonde, and while she tends to talk as a way of thinking things out, she's just not "hung up" on the same annoying stuff that most others are. She'll get excited about the scientific theory of brain development in anthropology - did I mention she's an awesome "geek chick"?
Oh, and I'm a blonde white guy, and I really don't mind asking for directions.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
They give me oral, hahaha.
I think the problem that's occurring here is that, as they say about the "Don't think of an elephant" paradox, you can't NOT think of the elephant in the room after you've become aware of it.
As for me, I'm not a walking stereotype either; asking for directions is so gay. What does this study say about humor?