Slashdot Mirror
Privacy: the 21st Century's Newest Luxury Item
chicksdaddy writes: There is a report today on the 21st century's newest luxury item: online privacy The Christian Science Monitor writes about the growing market for premium privacy protection tools available to tech-savvy consumers with the desire for online anonymity — and the means to pay for it.
The piece profiles new tools from companies like Abine that deliver everything from self-destructing e-mail messages to the 21st century's equivalent of Kleenex: one-off "throwaway" online identities to keep advertisers, merchants and government snoops at bay. Privacy experts, however, doubt that the new tools will tip the scales of online privacy in favor of consumers and away from governments and advertisers. "Consumers really don't have a fighting chance," says Andrea Matwyshyn of Princeton University. "Technology moves entirely too fast."
She and others see the need for both bigger fixes and the level of Internet infrastructure and law. "As a consumer protection matter, there needs to be a floor," she said. "Just as there are laws protecting renters from substandard housing, or car buyers from 'lemons,' there need to be regulations that create a buffer between consumers and companies."
The piece profiles new tools from companies like Abine that deliver everything from self-destructing e-mail messages to the 21st century's equivalent of Kleenex: one-off "throwaway" online identities to keep advertisers, merchants and government snoops at bay. Privacy experts, however, doubt that the new tools will tip the scales of online privacy in favor of consumers and away from governments and advertisers. "Consumers really don't have a fighting chance," says Andrea Matwyshyn of Princeton University. "Technology moves entirely too fast."
She and others see the need for both bigger fixes and the level of Internet infrastructure and law. "As a consumer protection matter, there needs to be a floor," she said. "Just as there are laws protecting renters from substandard housing, or car buyers from 'lemons,' there need to be regulations that create a buffer between consumers and companies."
As long as the government's privacy policies and legislation remain as badly broken as they are, what happens in the commercial sector isn't of much significance.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
People seem rather keen to rush towards a future where you pay - either in money or time or experience - for more freedom. Either freedom of privacy, or simply ability (like paying more to avoid internet content blocks).
Happily for most here we have both the technical ability and the funds needed to have "real" digital freedom. But it would be nicer if more of us were more self-aware we have freedoms others do not, and support more efforts to ensure more non-technical users can enjoy the same freedom. Because we understand better what is being lost, we have a duty to call out when we see digital freedoms being taken away from those who do not realize what they are losing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The US needs real consumer protection and data privacy laws, and enforcement actions to back them up. It's been left up to the free market to sort out, and the situation has gotten entirely out of fucking control.
Check out all these slimeballs scrambling to profit every time you click on a web page. Gathering your data, selling it amongst themselves and to the highest bidders, handing it to the NSA under the table. Your insurance company knows you visited marlboro.com to request a free deck of cards even though you've never smoked in your life. Target knows your daughter is pregnant before she tells anyone. Companies like ChoicePoint and Axciom, who you've never even done any business with, have enormous amounts of data about you, it's the only reason those companies exist. It goes on.
We've left this situation unregulated for long enough, we need real consumer protection legislation with teeth.
IT'S TIME FOR REAL PRIVACY LAWS IN AMERICA.
This site uses five or more tracking cookies. What the heck? Why pretend to be friendly to users and still use methods to spy on ones visitors?
Think about it: if you have accounts on any website that offers it for "free", and that includes Slashdot, ANYTHING you post on them, any email you send through GMail, or Yahoo, or MSN/Hotmail, any photo you post on Facebook, any tweet you send, from the moment it hits the site and regardless of "privacy" settings, belongs to the company that owns the service. You're not a valued client to them for the simple reason that you're not paying out of your pocket for the service. What you're *giving* these companies is something far more valuable: your personal data. This they use to target ads, to collect statistical data, and yes, to track you as an individual through trackable crumbs left on your computer and through your online accounts.
Don't take my word for it, have a proper read through the terms and conditions on these sites. Somewhere in there, in not so many words, hidden in among the boilerplate, is the phrase, "WE OWN YOUR DATA".
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You don't need your TV to monitor your conversation so that you get even less exercise than pressing a button.
You don't need a smartphone if all you do is listen to music and get bus times and stock quotes and news briefs.
Embrace Dumbness. Reject Smart Technology.
Besides, we're already recording you and using your cell and phone and Net providers to track you. Don't help us even more.
This includes answering those stupid FB polls that just let us collect more data on you.
Rip FB out of your phone.
Your advice makes perfect sense, which is exactly why dumb devices will soon be illegal to own.
Oh, think you'll be smart and just not configure networking to ensure your privacy? Cute, but nice try. They'll soon tie the license and EULA directly to networking, to ensure it is enabled 100% of the time, to all but guarantee the advertising capability behind that marketing-supplemented price tag.
You're right. You don't need any of these features. Then again, you didn't ask for them, which also explains just how much control you have in this situation. Now, or in the future.
Thank you for the advice. Too bad we can't do a damn thing about it.
fuck all that shit, if you want privacy online, DO SHIT OFFLINE.
Anyone else remember way back when we actually had to go face to face for human interaction because international calls cost a fucking fortune? Facebook has killed not only the art of conversation, but it has also seriously harmed the human psyche in terms of our ABILITY to socialise in what scant twenty years ago would have been considered normal modes of interaction.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Anyone else remember way back when we actually had to go face to face for human interaction because international calls cost a fucking fortune?
Yeah, because international face to face meetings were so much cheaper than a phone call.
"Privacy" as formulated in 2015 is frankly a fairly modern concept. As much as people seem to assert "we used to have privacy" I suspect it was about as real as the 'Father Knows Best' prototypical TV family - ie not really.
For the bulk of human existence, we have lived in small family or clan groups. This meant that everyone not only knew everything about you, but (usually) everything about everyone you were related to, and your ancestors. Had a crazy g'great grandfather that got caught cheating on his wife? Everyone knows, and likely expects that you're not terribly faithful either. Mother was a drunk? Everyone knows, and expects you're probably a drunk too. You said bad things about the clan chief, odds are eventually he knew. You were not only responsible for what you said or believed, you were frequently called to account for it (fairly or not).
Privacy - the very concept of anonymity - was extraordinarily limited until literacy was widespread, and even then the idea that you'd write something and nobody knew who wrote it was ridiculous really until the printing press, and even then the number of people involved meant your risk of discovery probably was a steeper curve than your audience breadth until the modern era, and small-shop copy machines/mimeographs.
-Styopa
Calling for the apocalypse are we? You know, the people you are fighting have used nuclear weapons before. They won't hesitate if they feel truly threatened in any way to do it again. They will even do it to enforce copyright if the resistance were able to protect itself from anything less. We are way beyond politics and far into pathology. They will bring it, no problem. You have yet to see the face of your monster.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”