Give Up the Fight For Personal Privacy?

KlaymenDK writes "Over the last decade or so, I have strived to maintain my privacy. I have uninstalled Windows, told my friends 'sorry' when they wanted me to join Facebook, had a fight with my brother when he wanted to move the family email hosting to Gmail, and generally held back on my personal information online. But since, amongst all of my friends, I am the only one doing this, it may well be that my battle is lost already. Worse, I'm really putting myself out of the loop, and it is starting to look like self-flagellation. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that my wife or friends will strike up a conversation based on something from their Facebook 'wall' (whatever that is). Becoming ever more unconnected with my friends, live or online, is ultimately harming my social relations. I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and signing up for Gmail, Facebook, the lot. If 'they' have my soul already, I might as well reap the benefits of this newfangled, privacy-less, AJAX-2.0 world. It doesn't really matter if it was me or my friends selling me out. Or does it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. How many Windows-eschewing users are not also eschewing the social networking services and all the other 2.0 supersites with their dubious end-user license agreements?"

Comments

Is it worth it?

[jibjibjib]

Obviously, taken to the extreme, privacy means not communicating with anyone.

At some point, you have to find the balance between protecting your personal information and actually being able to interact with other people.

Consider the chance that your life will be somehow ruined by some comment you post on Facebook. It's very low, I think. Now consider how bad you're making life for yourself by refusing to communicate in order to avoid this risk. Is it really worth it?

I, for one, think the benefit I gain from Web 2.0 sites is generally worth the risk.

Lost in the crowd

[harl]

Short Version: No one is going to pay attention to you unless to invite that attention.

Computers are stupid. The volume of data you're worried about is mind boggling huge. Your google search history is tucked in there with billions on billions of other web requests. If you don't keep cookies between sessions then your thousands of individual search histories are tucked in there with billions of other web requests. This is far too complex for a computer to solve. Someone would have to specifically focus on you to assemble anything useful.

This is the case with just about everything. The volume of data is so large that unless you're doing something to stand out the fact that they have some of your information is meaningless.

If you're doing something to stand out then people will focus on you. That's when things get dicey. Until then you just get lost in the crowd.

Here's what you should ask yourself. Why the fuck would anyone bother with you? I'm not being mean. Seriously who would give a fuck about your web history? Most privacy concerns are simply ego. You're really not as important as you think you are.

You also fail to mention a lot of things. Do you have cable? Do you have your own internet? Do you only use cash? Do you drive on toll roads? The fact that you focus online and not on some of the worse real world things makes worry about you.

If you don't pay for literally _everything_ in cash you're giving away infinitely more intimate information than you'll ever find on facebook.

Do you have a cable box? If so you're entire viewing history ever may be available.

Your entire web history goes through your ISPs servers. Trivial to log. Are you using an encrypted pipe to a proxy? Do you control that proxy? Physically?

if you drive on toll roads there may be a record of all your travels. If you use a transponder to auto pay tolls then there must be.

Re:Take the opposite approach.

[hbush]

> it's like saying writing your password on a post-it stuck to your monitor is a good security practice because security by obscurity doesn't work.

However writing _incorrect_ password on a post-it note stuck to your monitor works quite well :)

Re:Or you could just take legal action

[dangitman]

I almost wish a few people who still value privacy would start filing formal complaints with the appropriate courts/regulatory authorities, so social networking sites get the message that they only get to collect data with people's informed consent.

That just brings us right back to the questions posted in this writeup. Taking legal action is just going to alienate your Facebook using friends even more.

What I find the most ironic, is that in the earlyish days of the web (and before that, USENET), I was an active participant in online communities. For that, I would often be labeled as an anti-social dork. But today, I'm labeled an anti-social dork because I don't participate in most online communities. Sigh.