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If You're Not Paranoid About Your Privacy, You're Crazy (theatlantic.com)
Muad'Dave writes: Here's an interesting article at The Atlantic about the prevalence of surveillance and the recent uptick in 'deja-vu' moments where devices seemingly hear your conversations and then attempt to market to you. From the article: "One night the previous summer, I’d driven to meet a friend at an art gallery in Hollywood, my first visit to a gallery in years. The next morning, in my inbox, several spam e-mails urged me to invest in art. That was an easy one to figure out: I’d typed the name of the gallery into Google Maps. Another simple one to trace was the stream of invitations to drug and alcohol rehab centers that I’d been getting ever since I’d consulted an online calendar of Los Angeles–area Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Since membership in AA is supposed to be confidential, these emails irked me. Their presumptuous, heart-to-heart tone bugged me too. Was I tired of my misery and hopelessness? Hadn’t I caused my loved ones enough pain? Some of these disconcerting prompts were harder to explain. For example, the appearance on my Facebook page, under the heading “People You May Know,” of a California musician whom I’d bumped into six or seven times at AA meetings in a private home. In accordance with AA custom, he had never told me his last name nor inquired about mine. And as far as I knew, we had just one friend in common, a notably solitary older novelist who avoided computers altogether. I did some research in an online technology forum and learned that by entering my number into his smartphone’s address book (compiling phone lists to use in times of trouble is an AA ritual), the musician had probably triggered the program that placed his full name and photo on my page."
The basic rules:
1) Do not use "free" services that require you to identify yourself in some way. This includes most any service from Google, Facebook, etc.
2) Do not use "free" apps on your smart phone. It is next to impossible to prevent an app on your smartphone from providing ID information to outside entities.
3) Basically - learn the first rule of life - there is no such thing as a free lunch. If someone is giving you something for free, then they are taking something from you without telling you - in our modern era, that is almost always your identity in some way shape or form.
Google is not in e-mail advertising business. If you got any ads from maps visit, they would be the usual ones in your search results or banners on 3rd party sites (which do not get access to your e-mail or other identity info). Either you shared your e-mail in some other context related to the event, or your browser and/or mobile device are infected by keylogging/location logging malware.
You should get even more paranoid about your privacy!
What exactly is there to be worried about?
*probable cause*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Many of us have been warning about that trend for decades, to be ignored by the vast majority who do not mind a world with not a single shred of privacy. "What do you have to hide?" they ask.
Those of us who don't want to live in that world sadly have little choice. It's increasingly hard to avoid it, try as you might. You can wall yourself off, refuse to use the privacy-invading tech that everyone else favors, but at the cost of being increasingly cut off from mainstream society and even your own friends who no longer use any non-corporatized online communication. "Why use email when there's Facebook? Dude, get with the times! Nobody's on email man!"
People appear to hate the idea of the original internet: open standards with communications that were not monitized or centrally controlled. They much prefer that it be replaced with proprietary services, closed non-interacting protocols, and corporate-censored for-profit services that monitize everything they do. Thereby, the rest of us are forced to watch the internet we knew and loved be dragged in a direction we hate to see. It feels like destroying everything that made it great. In fact, destroying the very things that allowed it to become as world-changing as it did.
And I say that as somebody who was not young when it was arpanet and Vaxen. Rips out my heart to see what's happened to the place since then. Improvement, good. Development without wisdom, not so much.
I wonder if the author has malware installed on his computer or is cherry picking coincidences to create a story. Google, Bing, et al do not provide email addresses and query histories to spammers. Similarly, there is no way that visiting a web page should provide your e-mail address to a spammer.
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. But in this case, the author kinda is paranoid. He could use a course on web browsers and email.
The next morning, in my inbox, several spam e-mails urged me to invest in art. That was an easy one to figure out: I’d typed the name of the gallery into Google Maps.
It sounds like the author is alleging that Google gave his email address and marketing information to spammers. Is that true? Considering I have a gmail account that receives no spam at all, I think a more believable explanation is that he dropped his business card into a box somewhere, or signed-up on a list. In reality, 100% of my spam comes to the email address I have registered to my domain. My personal email gets nothing because I don't give it out.
Some people receive almost no spam. Other people get a 200:1 ratio of spam to real emails. Having done tech support, I can tell you by talking to someone for 5 minutes how much spam they get. Do they click on ads? Do they sign-up for stuff and give out their email? Do they play the lottery? Then they are in the high spam category. I bet a reporter is one of those people who gives out his contact information to absolutely everyone.
Another simple one to trace was the stream of invitations to drug and alcohol rehab centers that I’d been getting ever since I’d consulted an online calendar of Los Angeles–area Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Since membership in AA is supposed to be confidential, these emails irked me.
Unless he created a dedicated email address specifically for the AA membership, he has no evidence of this. Again, more likely, he enaged in networking.
I don't even want to consider his example where his bluetooth somethingorother was transcribing his words and turning that into spam. That one is technically possible, but we just aren't there... yet.
With those complaints registered, many of the anecdotes in the story do make sense. A Google search triggered targeted ads on YouTube. Well yeah, Google owns both sites. This is one of the reasons people feared Google Plus: it was just *too* well integrated. I am just surprised that this is news to people at all. What do you think is in that 35 page license you clicked "accept" to in order to play that free Facebook game? Why do you think that flashlight app needs access to your contact list and the internet?
What exactly is there to be worried about?
The main takeaway, to me at least, is that very personal information of yours is not as personal as you think it is anymore. Do your google searches indicate that you've been diagnosed with an STD? Do they infer that you're a frequent marijuana user? Do your posts reveal that you're paranoid about your lover cheating on you? Do they flag you for an NSA interesting persons list?
Your searches reveal information about your interests, and they are most definitely recorded in order to advertise to you. As we have learned with the OPM, or with Ashley Madison, or with one of the many other thousands of instances of data theft, much of your information is unprotected. It can be used to blackmail you, to out you as a minority or stereotype, and to reveal your (mildly or severely) illegal activities.
You may think that you're a moral person, but most people have character traits that give them shame.
What exactly is there to be worried about?
Depends on what you own or are trying to hide... For most of us it's "Not much" and "Not Much" which gives you the answer you seek.
I have zero to hide from anyone.Yet, I value my privacy very much. Your statement is fail.
Or soiled reputation. What happens when instead of getting help at an AA meeting, you are sponsoring someone you know and become a second line for someone else in the group and all this makes it look like you are the alcoholic when a job does a security and background check before they hire you. Or what about the same and your new girlfriend checks to see what kind of creep you might be and dumps you.
It can be problematic in several ways. If the info is being sold to advertisers, there is nothing stopping it from being sold to the investigation company or even law enforcement (who would likely had otherwise needed a warrant )
if you use closed source software then there is no way of knowing what your handheld computer is actually doing without going to extreme measures.
will they ever learn? nope.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That's like keeping your front door wide-open and putting a sign in your yard that reads 'Steal my shit' then getting mad when you're robbed.
It's not simply about shame. Less than a century ago the world tore itself apart because a single trait was vilified, hunted, and slaughtered. We like to think that we've moved forward and are past such things but they are never far off. Donald Trump has more in common with Hitler than the founding fathers, yet he's the fore runner in the US Republican nomination. All it takes is a failing economy & desperate people to begin the cycle of hate. It might be gays in the US, Muslims in the EU, the poor in Canada, etc. Maybe it doesn't go to the lengths that Hitler did, maybe it only excludes certain classes of people from being able to attain a reasonable life. Alcoholic/Drug user? Excluded from working. Gay? Excluded from society. Criminal? Excluded from both. The biggest thing in immediate danger with the loss of privacy is opportunity. You must conform publicly in every way to the definition of the ideal or face ridicule, ostracization, or limitation. Privacy is liberty. Liberty to explore your boundaries, interests, and desires. Liberty to fix your mistakes, change your mind, & move forward in life without being restrained by your past choices. Without privacy none of that is possible.
in my country, my sexuality is a death sentence. So yes, I have quite a lot to hide.
We shouldn't have to pay anything for privacy. You're not thinking clearly because of how far our society has gone down the road of routine invasion. Privacy used to be normal, and people had to pay to be known, typically for business but also socially - remember classifieds?
Anyway, the AA meetings are "secret." Not so much searches.
Umm... no, not secret. At all. Anonymous. Which is much different. I assume the author was referring to this online calendar of AA meetings in the L.A. area which is, yes, public.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Except maybe people still using Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. I use Gmail exclusively and the only time I see spam is when I check the spam folder for emails accidentally getting put in there.
I clicked on the link, and AdBlock warned me the site uses targeted ads. LOL. Or maybe not LOL.
I don't see how any of those arguments follow from one another. Ultimately it comes down to forgiveness and personal choice, doesn't it? We must all allow the liberties to OTHERS that we expect for ourselves. I don't see how privacy has anything to do with liberty, it simply removes the ability for those opposed to freedom to hide their oppressive tendencies.
Our history as humans is littered with examples. Women hiding behind male names to express their liberty in books. Irish hiding their ancestry to have the liberty to use services. Jews hiding their religion to avoid being rounded up and shipped to concentration camps.
How do you forgive someone for being Black or Muslim? Can you forgive a convicted child molester who has supposedly paid their debt to society?
Those are extreme examples to be sure but small ones happen every day. An alcoholic passed over for promotion despite 3 decades of sobriety, a teacher fired for taking part in a porno while in college, a politician forced to resign over an internet post taken out of context before they were in political life - all of these things are real events that would not have happened had their privacy been respected. The politician used a pseudonym, the teacher a stage name, the alcoholic attended meetings. All actions that had clear intent to remain anonymous and private under "private in public" doctrine (a foreign concept to Americans but well entrenched in other countries). The liberty to change, experiment, and speak all wrapped up in information that was intended to remain private and limited current/future opportunity for these individuals. Others who look at their situations and are influenced not to exercise their liberty for fear of loosing their opportunities leads to a society that is free in nothing but language.
Also, please don't mistake me. Actions have consequences (like the child molester going to jail), that is without question. Private actions, especially private in public actions, (like participating in a demonstration or shopping at certain stores or internet commenting) are very different and need protection.
It's not simply about shame...
Let's also not forget that in the U.S., it is against the law to track someone who is under 13 years old. But only maybe 1 in 1000 trackers really knows or cares about age. So many trackers in the U.S. are violating the law thousands or even millions of times a day.
And I, for one, object to that. I agree that children should not be tracked. Something must be done.
My own position, and the position EFF has (finally!) adopted is: tracking by opt-in only!
It is the only remaining viable way to protect privacy (and children).
Willing or able? Or does "your privacy or your home" count as a free choice?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
My first run-in with online privacy happened in the late 1990's when a persistent troll found personal info on me and broadcast it all over discussion boards in an attempt to embarrass me into silence.
I realized after the "breach" it's easy to leave inadvertent clues. Somebody with enough patience and persistence can put these clues together to dig around in search engines for personal info and your online trail.
And there are plenty of freaks out there who make the Interwebs their sadism engine. It's their only "power" in life.
I'm much more careful about "crossing topics" now. For example, if I'm on a board about pets, I don't talk about IT and vice versa. But, that's probably still not enough as one tends have certain phrasing patterns that leave sufficient clues for "statistical linking". Most trolls probably don't go that far or are not smart enough, but you never know. They may have a script-buddy to barter for zombie PC time or something.
Table-ized A.I.
That's like keeping your front door wide-open and putting a sign in your yard that reads 'Steal my shit' then getting mad when you're robbed.
No it's not. The sign provides consent.
This is just a bunch of 3rd and 4th -party hearsay that Trump may have had a book of Hitler's speeches. It in no way supports your assertion that "Donald Trump has more in common with Hitler..." at all.
No, it's a first party witness (Ivana Trump) making a statement to Vanity Fair. Yes, it was re-reported by Business Insider making that particular article a 3rd party but the original statement is true as far as anyone can know.
This, of course, is just more of what I assumed you really meant, which that Trump is a racist and a misogynist, which is simply what the political class (especially on the left, and this guy is very far left) say about Trump. Sure, you can mischaracterize statements from anyone and claim they are racist, it happens all the time, but it's just hyperbole. This guy didn't really even try to demonstrate any commonalities between Trump and Hitler (except, as I pointed out, hair), rather he used Hitler's election to drum up additional hatred for Republicans in his leftist audience. You can find articles doing that all the time. In fact, I can find lots of similar articles using the same rhetoric about Bush W. and even Mitt Romney.
"Laziness is a trait in the blacks. ... Black guys counting my money! I hate it" - Trump
"China is killing us. They’ve taken so much of our wealth. They’ve taken our jobs. They’ve taken our business, they’ve taken our manufacturing, [audience member screams out “our land”] Our land? The way they’re going they’ll have that pretty soon.Think about it, we have rebuilt China — somebody said to me “that’s a harsh statement” — it’s the greatest theft in the history of the United States." - Trump
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." - Trump
Hitler propaganda, bolstered by his "cabal" or not, preyed on such themes as the "lazy" Jews were stealing from "hardworking" German people. The blacks, the Jews, the Bolsheviks were to blame for all of "normal German's" issues. Much like Trump blames the Chinese, the Mexicans, the "Blacks", etc.
I'm not going to convince you but for most people it's plain as day that he uses the language of hate and fear to gain popularity. Win or lose he demonstrates how easily large portions of the population are swayed by the politics of blame and how large that population is.
Ya, that law was never going to work. You need to be able to track 13 year olds to be able to "not" track them otherwise how would you know if they're 13 or not?
The problem is that you never know what things people know about you today will be seen as illegal/immoral tomorrow. For example, few people would expect something as innocent as providing your religion on census forms could lead to your death later, but for millions, it did.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Those are a few horrible fads and hardly constitute a regression from civilized society. There was a time when putting your real name on-line would get you laughed off of slashdot. sad.
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What exactly is there to be worried about?
Depends on what you own or are trying to hide... For most of us it's "Not much" and "Not Much" which gives you the answer you seek.
The thing you will want to hide is the thing you didn't know you should have kept hidden.
Whenever I read one of these articles about how tiny fragments of information are gathered and assembled into a personal profile I'm struck by how much is based on so little. They make a lot of assumptions about the veracity of these little details that they collect. Thins makes me wonder if active and deliberated injection of miss information could serve as an effective defense mechanism.
If course, you'd have to be sure that the false picture you paint is a favorable one. And that the resulting ad targeting will come in a fairly innocuous form. You are going to get blasted with ads regardless of what you do.. Do you want them to be relevant (attention getting, so you are constantly telling yourself, "No, no, no") or completely irrelevant to you (more annoying, but soon more easily ignored).
Perhaps a browser plugin could be developed that does occasional random searches in the background. Or maybe something that clicks on random ads in a hidden browser session (just make sure you have damn good sandboxing, given the propensity for drive-by browser exploits to lurk behind ad-bait.) Similar things could be done with random email and text messages between users of a misinfo application. I've often thought it would be fun to make a browser plugin that connects to a peer-to-peer network and swaps tracking cookies with other browsers. You'd have to make sure to exchange only cookies from domains know to be associated with tracking and advertising, and not anything that may have login of other confidential data. This would have to be done carefully; but I think it could be done.
The effects would be hilarious. When you op-out of tracking you merely deny them some of the data (and maybe flag yourself as a different kind of datapoint...). But if you intentionally poison the well in a way that is difficult to distinguish from legitimate data then you increase expenses while significantly decreasing value of the whole system, as well as sow doubt one whatever remains after their attempts to filter out interference.
Limiting your exposure by trying to limit what information can be learned about you will only go so far. You will never eliminate all of it. After you reduce it by 95% there is still a hellofalot that can be gleaned from the remaining 5%. But if that 5% can't be disentangled from 95% bogus information then it would be a real thorn-in-the-side of those trying to build consumer profiles of every member of the population. I think that this is the new frontier in privacy protection. Get a few Cryptonomicon-minded people thinking about this and imagine what they could come up with.
(Posted as AC for obvious reasons.)
Privacy is not a fixed thing. There are shades of privacy...
This is what shits me about privacy legislation, it is too black and white (either private in your home behind the curtains, or it public - hey you're on public property I have the right to record you and publish whatever you are doing to millions of eyes and ears). Actually even private is no longer private apparently.
Where is the granularity? I'd like to see some sort of localised expectation of privacy, eg if I walk down the street in my undies, I don't care if the neighbours see me, but does that give someone the right to put on TV? If I have a picnic in the public park with my mistress, should that be allowed to be put on TV?
It seems that the notion that you are in public doesn't appreciate that public in your local area is not the same as public globally.
Fine, but the fact that your government spied on you illegally (which honestly should have shocked no one who has been paying attention since J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI) doesn't justify unrelated and uninformed privacy invasion theories. And while I don't think I want to waste time reading TFA, if the summary is accurate, I am disappointed in The Atlantic, an otherwise reputable source of journalism.
For example, while I think Google is filled with smug, hypocritical bastards, I have never ever heard a serious accusation that they are selling search results to spammers. Or e-mail marketers of any stripe, actually. If the author genuinely believes that he started getting spam about art purchases because he searched for a gallery's address in Google, that is a HUGE accusation against Google - that they are selling spammers e-mail addresses of people who search for stuff. Fucking HUGE. There's some proof that this is why he's getting spam, right? He's absolutely sure he didn't, for example, sign in at the gallery and leave his e-mail, which was viewed and copied down by others? Or something else? Anything?
You're wise to watch your privacy, if that's something you care a lot about. But be very VERY careful when you start attributing where and how your privacy is being violated unless you can actually prove what is going on and not just making guesses. You can be right about the effects and still wear a monster tinfoil hat about the causes, which still discredits your reasoning.
"95% of all Slashdot
If privacy was normal
Unless you lived in a village, where probably everybody know almost everything. Somethings just where not talked about in the open.
We shouldn't be so willing, as a species, to sell our privacy in return for services. People know Facebook etc are mining everything they put into the platform, they just don't care enough and would stop using the site if it started charging in return for stopping the mining. You can blame companies like Facebook all you like, but as long as the only businesses that succeed are the ones that don't charge users and instead make money by selling the users (as advertising viewers or data directly) it'll keep happening.
You're a Dutch heterosexual?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm pushing 60, the idea that human nature was somehow better in the "old days" is called nostalgia, it is wishful thinking with no basis in reality.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There's a pretty clear difference between raising up anger against people in power at the top of the system, and attacking the "other" because of inherent "otherness". Bernie is mad about people who have amassed so much wealth and power that they make the rules that govern them. Hitler didn't just want the rich and powerful Jews to suffer for his hatreds, he wanted to kill every single one of them.
Bernie just wants the super rich to pay some fucking taxes and not have the power to override the rest of the people.
Cannabis use isn't always illegal, and even when it is, its generally considered a very low severity crime that might get you a slap on the wrist... Law enforcement departments are generally underfunded, so rounding up thousands of users to give them a slap on the wrist for cannabis use would be a terribly poor use of their limited resources.
On the other hand, they will keep record of the fact that you are a cannabis user incase that information proves useful in the future... For instance they may suspect you of a far more serious crime but don't have enough evidence to get a search warrant however they do have enough evidence to get a search warrant to look for cannabis and might just happen to discover evidence of other crimes while looking for cannabis in your house.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
What part of Alcoholics Anonymous did you overlook?
"Privacy in your own home" isn't really at risk here, unless you are talking about "privacy to post on Facebook in my house"
Actually, it is - and big time.
The provider of this story notes that he was being stalked by Alcoholics anonymous in multiple ways - including FB.
This isn't like kiddie diddlers looking at their porn, or any other nefarious use some folks might have for the web - it's a person who looks at an online calendar of AA, and is now branded as an alcoholic by big data.
That is a decision by big data that would have life changing ramifications for some folks.
Let's take me for example. I am a very spare drinker, perhaps a beer a month.
In my job, you couldn't have your clearance and be an alcoholic - mostly - if you were actively getting treatment/counseling - possibly, but you'd likely be transferred at best.
Soooooo if I was in that guys position, branded as an alcoholic while actually being on the very shallow end of the consumption pool, I would probably end up having to join AA and get other treatment for a problem I don't have in order to keep my job.
Coupled with - I would have to pretend I actually was, because if I told them the truth, I'd be declared as "resisting treatment". That's seriously insane.
This is a screwed up world we live in..
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
When was privacy ever normal? In the past you slept in one room with the whole family or, in some cases, an extended family or even a number of families. Everyone you knew, knew you intimately. Sure, there were people on the fringes of society that were not so well known. Hell, lack of privacy was so prevalent that villages were skeptical of outsiders simply because they didn't know them and had assumptions about why you might be traveling.
I don't know where people get this idea that we were somehow a utopia in the past. This is almost always a falsehood. Much of the idyllic past is a myth.
Perhaps you meant the scope? Well, while true, that's because you weren't communicating with people from afar. I am not sure but I suspect we can actually have more privacy today then we've ever had. Of course lots of people give this up (and we can figure out why pretty easily, or make good guesses as to the reasoning).
There is also the method which is new but the results seem more or less the same. I tend to not do much of my own shopping but when I am home and do my shopping in the village the clerks know what I want well enough so that they often have it ready for me and tell me about something that is new that I might be interested in. They've amassed a profile but it's kept in their head and not in a database.
Don't get me wrong... I am a huge fan of privacy. That's because I want things to change. I want it to change because that's not how it has ever been and how it could be in the future.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Seriously? Your, or rather every potential boss wouldn't care if you were a casual marijuana user in your personal time or liked to dress up in drag on the weekends or a million other things that some people find harmless and others find abhorrent? You're taking it to the extreme of blackmail but I'm thinking simply of being fired from your job, passed over for promotion, or limited in some other way from progressing in your career. Marriage is the same, yes my wife knows I watch porn but it's not something we share. I don't know what she would say/think about what I watch but at the same time she doesn't want to know. She believes that it's private so 'ignorance is bliss' to her. If she pops onto my computer and suddenly gets targeted ads.... that is information neither one of us wants shared. Would she leave me if she found out? No. Could someone blackmail me? Hell no. Is it something I really want out there? Not really because it's easier for it not to be.
These things don't have to be "negative" either. I want to take my wife on a trip somewhere so I start investigating places I know she's wanted to visit and all the sudden the ads switch and she now knows I'm looking at these things - there goes the 10th anniversary surprise. Is it the end of the world? No. Does it ruin some of the romance of surprising your spouse with a special gift? Absolutely.
Everyone does things they don't want others to know about. They express opinions which might not be popular or could be hurtful to the wrong person. They say/search things that, when taken out of context, can land them in serious trouble. It doesn't make you a bad person or someone who "has a lot to hide", it makes you human. If anything I'd be sorry for anyone who was completely honest with those around them.
Precisely. To the best of my knowledge, I don't have any skeletons lurking in my closet. I've never had a run-in with the police, my wife is the only person I've ever been romantically involved with, I didn't see a point in experimenting with drugs, and even though I have several drinks a month, I've never even had enough in one sitting to get buzzed, let alone drunk enough to regret it later.
And yet, despite all of that, I fiercely value my privacy. Why? Because relationships work best when they're symmetrical.
Traditionally, I learn about you as you learn about me, and we have a set of shared experiences that bind us together. But when my information is just out there for the world to see, corporations or other people can read up on me without any sort of reciprocation. In real life, we call those people stalkers, but for some reason we're more willing to turn a blind eye when it happens in the virtual world, presumably because the stalkers have realized that they're essentially invisible online. And while creepy behavior like that definitely bothers me, it's by no means the only problem created by asymmetrical relationships.
Even in the case of someone "harmlessly" (i.e. typical friendly stuff) checking my social networking profiles*, however, it creates a false sense of closeness. When they read something more about me, they feel closer to me, whereas there's been no change on my end. One of the ways we establish meaningful relationships is by sharing our life's stories with others we meet, but because my stories have been reduced to status updates on a timeline, I'm left with little that's meaningful to share. As a result, there ends up being a one-sidedness to the conversation as they catch me up. That one-sidedness, in turn, merely serves to reinforce the false closeness, since their sharing makes them feel even closer to me, whereas my being reduced to a listening post makes me feel even more distant.
Beyond those, however, there's also the issue of security. Asking "why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide?" is no different than asking "why does your castle have a moat it if there are no attackers at the gate?" It's missing the point. You can't easily take back your privacy once it's been invaded, just as you can't easily build a moat around your castle once the invaders are banging on your door. I value the fact that my privacy serves as a moat that makes it a lot harder (though not impossible) to attack me and the people I protect.
As a software developer, I have an awareness of the fact that entities should only be granted the minimum permissions necessary for the job they're doing. Most crimes are crimes of opportunity, and if I live my life in public, I give strangers the ability to greet me with a false sense of familiarity, feign an awareness of a topic that may get me to share more details about it, or just generally make use of all the information I've shared as fodder for social engineering attacks. When it's just me, that's bad enough as it is, but when I consider that my wife and I are planning to have kids, the last thing I want is for a stranger to be able to greet my kids with information they'd think only a friend would know.
Long story short, I don't like having strangers in my personal space. There may be nothing illegal about it, but it's definitely wrong. I value meaningful, deep relationships. You can still have them in a world of social networks, but they're undermined by the asymmetry that a life in public produces. I value my "privacy moat". It admittedly does not provide me with any visible benefit the vast majority of the time, but that's because we'll never hear about the attacks that never happened on account of the people next to me being easier targets than me.
So yeah, privacy. It's good, even if you have nothing to hide.
* Speaking hypothetically, since aside from a brief stint where I reactivated my Facebook profile so my future in-laws could contact me more easily, I've been off the site since 2009.