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A Day In the Life of Privacy
wiredmikey writes "Here's an interesting read on the state of privacy and how technology, along with government and social media have changed the idea, and reality of privacy forever. The article takes the reader through a typical day, and highlights many of the privacy issues that we face, from our mobile phones, Internet at local coffee shops, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, all the way down to cars equipped with OnStar, public cameras, facial recognition technology and more. The author concludes everyday we make compromises in the face of Privacy, and none of us will ever have as much privacy as we want."
If social networks would just fall under the same laws as telecom companies, then those companies would simply be prohibited to inspect the messages that their users send around (even if their services are "free", and even if those messages are intended for a group of people instead of just one person a time).
Why aren't we just approaching the problem from this angle?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
What happened to privacy? *waves hands*
I think privacy is a pretty cool guy. He __________ and doesn't afraid of government.
"My point is that everyday, all day, we make compromises in the face of privacy, and that, in reality, probably none of us have as much privacy as we want."
Speak for yourself. I have a satisfying, fulfilling life without giving away my privacy for no apparent reason. The author chooses to make those compromises. Not everybody needs a MegaPixel2000AndroidiPhone. Not everybody feels the need to announce their current location to the world. Not everybody chooses to contribute to the banks by using credit for trivial purchases. The guy's just another lemming.
I don't respond to AC's.
Even without the internet, you already have no privacy.
Everything you do in public with relation to transactions is recorded and inspected somewhere. (even if it is automatic)
Even non-transactions can be recorded, such as CCTV.
I remember a TV production was done about "disappearing" and there was someone who requested all the information held on him from pretty much every organization in existence.
Packs of pages, probably 2000+ pages in each.
Stuff from credit card purchases, dental records, hospital records, licences, so much stuff.
If you really, really want to vanish from society, learn how to live off the land and drop your whole life.
Maybe find a job in a random diner or bar, typically somewhere in the remote parts of town where you get cash by hand.
Ditch the vehicle, you are now a biker or walker.
Stay out of busy parts of towns since they almost always have CCTV somewhere. In fact, any main road sections.
Of course, I am speaking of a situation where you are completely paranoid and not just wanting to get away from all the tracking, ignore the camera parts if you wish, most data isn't even cared about that they spit out every second.
Your house is now a caravan / hotel / motel / rented apartment. Cash up front, no name required, if you want to stay away from banking of any sort.
No need to pay utilities either with this, that is a bonus.
Either that or be awesome and build a treehouse.
Best be in perfect health too. No medical (probably) and I believe that almost all medical institutions around the world require addressing information. I also believe that it is illegal to provide incorrect information.
Of course, if you are a rational individual and realize that this recording in almost all cases helps people, you'd be thankful that they are recording it.
Even if it is only indirectly, you are still helped by it. Be it advertising, payment history, or your dental health.
There are a minority of people on the internet who would happily pay for services if they were ad-free, I still have no idea why websites do not implement such premium services in to their websites.
They'd actually make a more money in most cases, probably more from advertising from that single person. Advertising is typically in the thousands of clicks/impressions for a relatively small amount.
Even a small amount such as $1-5, that'd be quite a bit of input to the company. All for additional services such as previews, betas, priority feedback, even decision making, mention on some random page, whatever. Why aren't they doing this?! It takes such a little amount of effort to implement through paypal or even directly through banks these days, such little effort for a potential larger income.
They'd also feel a little less paranoid since advertising seems to be hated these days by the types who tend to pay for sites as it is.
People were going crazy at the whole paywall to some news site I forgot about the other year I think it was. I believe it was a pretty great success, even though it lost them a considerable number of their readers.
It's a mad world out there.
I used to make this arguement with friends: you are giving away your privacy by using all these services.
But in the end I realized that it doesn't matter. For the vast majority of them, the 99.999%, nothing bad will ever happen to them because of this. So some ad firm knows what web page they visited or who their facebook friends list are - so what? It makes no difference! Theres no bad effects on them do to it.
If people cared about this stuff, they wouldn't use facebook, they wouldn't do any of the things they do which give away their private info. But you can't make them care because by and large it doesn't actually hurt htem. They just go about their lives and nothing changes for them except maybe they get slightly better targeted ads on web pages they visit. What's the harm in that?
So there's some tape in the back of a store from their security system that shows you buying a pack of toilet paper - so what? Nobody will ever watch it unless there was a crime involved.
This stuff just doesn't matter like people seem to be afraid that it does. Thats what i ahve realized after many years. You can spend your life paranoid and living in a dark room with a tin foil hat, or you can just live your life and be a lot happier for it.
The people who are the most paranoid about this stuff well they don't generally look to be very happy people. The people living it up on facebook and connecting with others and not worrying that some database knows who their friend are, they seem better adjusted and happier people.
I understand the point of the article perfectly. But I think the author is also missing a generational issue. A lot of people of younger generations simply don't really care. Personally I don't care that much. Sure, information about me can be used against me, but I have better things to do than being paranoid.
I'm not trying to say what's wrong or right. But my guess is that all this tracking is not just an issue of ignorance. It's also that there are a lot of people out there who simply don't have a problem with it.
.: Max Romantschuk
Good idea .. turn them in pay services , noone wil go then and the privacy of people who dont know better will be better protected.I vote for a resolution that says FB has got to be turned in a pay service.
The problem is that personal information is just too valuable for companies not to get a hard-on over how much their advertiser customers will pay for it, and they push and trick and deceive and play all sorts of games with TOS so that people don't realize they're being fleeced.
So exploiting personal information becomes lucrative and profitable, and not much is sacred except the almighty dollar.
With everyone universally doing it, everyone that doesn't is put at a competitive disadvantage, so the good guys get squeezed out of the market because they won't pay the piper.
This, in turn, creates a climate where being exploited is normal, and socially it becomes unpopular to resist the onslaught of data greed. Already I've heard stories of employers refusing to hire people that don't have facebook profiles for them to snoop through. Being a principled person that stands his ground and refuses to play games with his personal information is getting to be more and more disadvantageous, and they are getting squeezed out of society by less scrupulous or caring people that don't make a fuss about whoring themselves out to the same companies that squeezed out the same principled companies that would have left their information alone.
In the world of business, the only rule is survival of the fittest.
Doubly so when even the referees, umpires, and rulebook publishers are for sale.
One may as well try to keep bees away from flowers, as protect their personal information from companies that have every incentive to obtain it using whatever tactics they see fit.
And one may as well be a farmer sitting on an oil strike, and not selling out. Sooner or later someone who wants that oil badly enough is going to lie, cheat, steal, trick, or even flat out use violence to get it by hook or crook.
The only defense to being robbed that truly works is to not have anything worth stealing.
Sometime between 2015 and 2020 - or whenever the general public wakes up about privacy issues and casual privacy intrusions - every business model built around little more than gathering lots and lots of intrusive data about people will crash at the same time. I call this the POPPING OF THE UNPRIVACY BUBBLE... Ordinary people wake up and start protesting all the little privacy intrusions that hundreds of companies have - gradually, slowboiling-style - slipped into our lives. Ordinary people start to partake in mass privacy and personal data protection lawsuits aimed at the worst offenders (like Facebook, which somehow - no joke - knows who your friends are, even if you've never had a facebook account or visited facebook.com in your life). Ordinary people start to shut down internet and smartphone accounts that they initially thought weren't too bad, and walk away from these services en masse. Ordinary people create tremendous demand for new replacement services with rock-tight privacy protections (including each service submitting itself voluntarily to once-three-monthly privacy audits carried out by independent privacy experts). Ordinary people wise up and stop buying devices that, for example, have no plastic lid to cover the face camera with, or no hardware switch that kills wireless/bluetooth, or no LED light or other indicator showing that data is being transmitted about you. It will happen sometime this decade. The great 'Privacy Awakening'. When it does happen, services and devices built around toying with your private data and sucking as much of it away into the ether will fail completely within a matter of weeks. Stock prices will go into nosedives. CEOs and board members will be forced to resign. Entire management layers will be vaporized. Popular tech blogs and magazines will have to start rating the 'Privacy Friendliness' or 'Privacy Protection Level' of things they review. Lawmakers will have to implement Strong and Proactive Privacy Protection Laws if they want to get re-elected. It will happen sometime between now and 2020. Kind of like the Arab Spring.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
How amusing that this article help to erode your privacy via the Facebook widget, which passes your information to Facebook to help them track you.
because I don't want to socialize. So yes, I can block FB and all of their data collection simply by adding all of their known services into the hosts file.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
So when do these technological advances trickle down to regular users?
From the article:
Who cares about searching through social media? I'd just like an app that would find all the variously-named, varying-resolution dupes of the porn images on my computer. Ideally, it would then show me all the dupes via an interface that helps me categorize and move the files I want, then delete the excess copies.
Help me get that shit in order. That would be my idea of a "social good".
Level I
you want privacy, pay in cash
buy a privacy bag (about 30 bucks) for your radio enabled devices, or get some tin foil (literally - you might need "Tin" foil, as opposed to aluminum)
Level II
don't use social networks
choose small mom and pop stores less likely to have sophisticated software or databases
Level III
use only pencil, on edible paper, writing on a single sheet on a piece of glass
Vary your transit and other patterns randomly
Learn about makeup and other disguise methods, including how to vary your gate and other postural clues
Use a voice scrambler on any phone call
Level IV
Move to Iraq, Somalia, or some other place with minimal gov't authority
"and none of us will ever have as much privacy as we want." Oh yes we can, but it cant be done from a talk back on slashdot. We can take back what we lost,no business has a higher right to invade our privacy in the name of profits. Personally idon't think my fellow Americans have the balls, your too lazy,you expect everyone to get it done for you. And you just don't give a shit unless it personally affects YOU. And BTW i do write all my politicians with my complaints and wishes
Jack of all trades,master of none
So, really, what bad thing will happen?
Well, off the top of my head, when we reach the point that any commercial, professional or government contact you have can effectively dig up as much dirt on you as they feel like from any source they can find:
So sure, maybe you don't mind a bit of junk mail. You'll be fine as long as you also don't mind crazy people turning up on your door step several times per month asking you to sign up to their political party/donate to their charity/buy their dubiously sourced goods, tax inspectors inviting themselves into your life for six months and wasting dozens or hundreds of hours of your free time to comply with their demands, though at least you'll have a lot more free time in future because you won't be able to get a full-time job as a tax evasion suspect anyway, and even if you did you wouldn't be able to get paid because no bank will give you an account without a credit rating, which you no longer have, even if that account offers no loan or credit facilities anyway, and you can't complain because no phone company will let you sign up for a calling plan without a credit check and photo ID, which in turn you can't get because you couldn't afford the statutory motor insurance after three of your friends got DUI'd last year and so when go
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
But I think the author is also missing a generational issue. A lot of people of younger generations simply don't really care.
Others have observed that. About a decade ago, when phones started getting GPS capability, I asked some of the teenagers around Stanford (college students and high schoolers around the horse barn) how they'd feel if others could tell where they were. I thought they'd hate it. Most of them liked the idea. "I could see where my boyfriend is!" . "I wouldn't have to text so much to tell my friends where I am".
In 2005, Helio launched, as a phone brand aimed at the 16-25 crowd. They were the first to integrate social networking with phones - their phone could map your friends (if they had Helio phones) and worked with Myspace. They tried very hard to be cool; their Palo Alto store, across from the Apple store, had live bands. But no customers.
Then in 2007, the iPhone launched, and took phone based social networking mainstream. Now all smart phones do that.
Sorry, but legislation that is pending in various parts of the world, including the United States, can go far to remedy this situation. There are also counter-measures that can be implemented by individuals, to a certain extent.
The combination of the two has the potential to make this not a problem anymore. Whether it will is another question, but using the word "forever" is simply not warranted.
The fight is the only thing that changes, the principle remains sacresanct.
The downside, my friend, is that advertisement has one single goal: To manipulate you into spending money you wouldn't normally spend. There is no such thing as good advertising. (Sometimes ads can be slightly informative and/or entertaining but that is merely a side effect.)
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
I tend to agree that much of the location use is for advertising purposes.
That's fine. I just ensure I don't get taken in by impulse purchases. Only buy what you really need, but if there is something you really want, investigate all the options first.
Wow. I was mostly joking but those look like truly useful applications.
Seriously - many thanks.
It's so true, and nothing is sacred. Any "modern" gaming system supports completely invasive habit tracking in the form of "achievements". Do you think these stats are only used to show off to your friends? Want to play a game without the company who developed it watching over your shoulder? Too bad, there's never any way to disable it.