Firstly, I’m not against privacy or anything, just ignorant. I do try to stay pretty private despite that.
I wanted to know what type of info (Corporations? Governments? Websites??) Typically get from you and how they use it and how that affects me.
Privacy is important because it gives you control over your life; details, info, thoughts, emotions…
I recently met a guy out of town at a trade show. We were both in the same show, grabbing some snacks, and I complimented his hat. We started talking, a little this, a little that. Eventually we parted ways. On the outro we introduced ourselves by first name only, more as a BTW side note because we might run into each other again. Why am I telling this story?
Because I forgot his name almost instantly and really only remember his hat. I know nothing about the guy. He knows nothing about me. But wouldn’t it be weird if I didn’t just remember his first name, but I knew his last name too? Where he lived, worked, shopped for groceries, sexual orientation, he last time he ordered pizza and what toppings were on it, how he voted last election, etc… If I knew all that about him, I could have a much more in depth conversation with him. And even if I had no mal intent and simply wanted to give him better experiences in life…that’s not my decision to make. He didn’t ask for that. And it’s freaking weird.
But that’s what has been made normal in our lives. Privacy helps keep your life…well, private.
Then the rabbit hole goes deep on nefarious uses. And it’s not “its possible” to do this, but rather “it’s being done” (with absolutely no doubt or argument).
There was a jogging app known as Strava that posted an image on their Twitter that was a heatmap of all the jogging activities of all of their users. Their idea was just to show how popular their app was by showing the entire world lit up. Twitter users were able to locate secret US military bases on that data alone. Turns out nobody jogs in circles in the middle of the desert except GIs.
Recently a group of Harvard students did a demo where they used Meta’s camera glasses and a chain of commercial programs and products to find out people’s names, address, workplaces, and family based only on their facial data.
These are just two examples off the top of my head. Essentially, the more data someone can accumulate, the more info can be analyzed from it. With things like AI tools, that analysis is incredibly fast even with huge datasets.
Let me tell you a story. Many years ago I worked for big banks and insurance companies. One day I was tasked with a project. It was an amazing, from the tech point of view, project. It was something like this: a user navigates to a bank website looking for information about some product. The website presents the user a simple contact form - first name, last name, phone number and/or email. Based on provided data bank would use it to update user data (if there was no official account it would update the “ghost” account, aka “I know about you, but you don’t know about me”). Next the bank would scrape all publicly available social media accounts and build the “hidden” profile (I’ll get to this later). Based on all that data, user would be assigned a score based on which all future interaction with a bank would be determined. For a regular person this would mean that “I’m sorry but according to our system we cannot give you a loan”.
Now, about the “hidden” profile. It’s a thing that all big companies (including banks and insurance companies) hold. It’s all the data collected from all publicly available profiles (and sometimes from the shady sites), used to create a profile that’s not visible to a frontline workers and it’s referenced as a “system decided based on your data”.
Now, to make this more scary. This happened 10-15 years ago. Way before the so called AI. Imagine how much more data those companies have about you in today’s world and how good they are in processing it.
Now i have another question. What’s the issue if they’re ONLY using this info to improve my experience or make sensible business decisions?
What’s the issue if they’re ONLY using this info to improve my experience
Suppose they start out entirely benevolent. That commitment must be perpetually renegotiated in upheld over time. As the landscape changes, as the profit motive applies pressure, as new data and technologies become available, as new people on the next step of their careers get handed the reigns, the consistency of intention will drift over time.
The nature of data and privacy is such that it’s perpetually subjected to these dynamic processes. The fabric of any pact being made, is always being rewoven, first with little compromises and then with big ones.
They are using the info to engineer more efficient ways to separate you from your money. It’s not a benefit to you in any way.
I would have to assume that if I’m buying the product, i want it
Hey guys, this right here is a super valuable point to address and really strikes straight to the heart of the ability of a system like this to give the illusion of choice. People absolutely will still think, despite this, they are still in control and we need to address it not dismiss it.
I’m undoing the downvote on this comment, it absolutely is a big part of the conversation, even if you think it’s naive.
It’s naive to think you can’t be influenced into buying things you wouldn’t otherwise.
Also there’s the matter of pricing: they’ll get you to pay as much as possible, either by pushing more expensive versions or by actually changing the price you see on websites like Amazon.
They don’t use it only for improving user experience. Based on a user profile they can bump your premiums just because you posted a photo on a snowboard (risky activity) or they can deny you a loan because someone posted on your timeline that you own someone some money.
Also based on your profile you are manipulated to buy products/services you don’t really need.
“Improve user experience” tends to mean if you’re poor, the lowest level of hell isn’t gonna compare to how shitty of an experience they’ll give you
You know how you fill in security questions or have a certain knowledge about yourself that other people trust only you to answer to in order to permit you access to your own information online such as accounts?
Well a hacker can use that shit and then you have a long road to convince anyone who ever lost trust in you because of that that you have been hacked.
Also you want to protect the people on your contact list if you want to keep their trust.
You shouldn’t even give your phone number out. That’s linked to accounts.
Because you don’t know where this information will end up. Companies often get hacked and the information leaks out.
Your email, address, phone number can be used to spam and scam you.
Other information can be used to make scam you more effectively, or even scam your relatives if they sprinkle enough seemingly private information in it.
Your public photos and videos (tiktok, YouTube) can be used to make a deepfake of you and end up online to blackmail you.
Ask yourself what you have yo gain from sharing information online, and remember that the internet never forgets.
I’m probably gonna mess this quote up, but I thought it was brilliant:
“Privacy is essential to security, and shitty people feel entitled to take that away from you.”
You can’t be secure in your dealings or operate on equal footing (economically speaking, as others here have pointed out) without a measure of privacy.
Because, even if what you’re doing now is fine, moral and legal, it might not be perceived as that later, whether by your friends, neighbors or government. This has become especially relevant in recent years. Even if your own opinion shifts to match later trends, your past actions might hurt you.
You might be doing nothing wrong and still jeopardize your future self.
SSRN is a kind of vast warehouse of academic papers, and one of the most excited and well-read ones is called “I’ve got nothing to hide and other misunderstandings of privacy.”
The essence of the idea is that privacy is about more than just hiding bad things. It’s about how imbalances and access to information can be used to manipulate you. Seemingly innocuous bits of information can be combined to reveal important things. And there are often subtle and invisible harms that are systematic in nature, enabling surveillance state institutions to use them to exercise greater amounts of control and anti-democratic ways, and it can create chilling effects on behavior and free speech.
Everyone should read academic papers regardless of scholarship. But at the same time, I don’t pretend not to be lazy, so let me summarize (no gee-pee-tee was used in this process):
comment 1/2
Section I. Introduction
skip :3
Section II. The “Nothing to Hide” argument
We expand the “nothing to hide” argument to a more compelling, defensible thesis.
“The NSA surveillance, data mining, or other government information- gathering programs will result in the disclosure of particular pieces of information to a few government officials, or perhaps only to government computers. This very limited disclosure of the particular information involved is not likely to be threatening to the privacy of law-abiding citizens. Only those who are engaged in illegal activities have a reason to hide this information. Although there may be some cases in which the information might be sensitive or embarrassing to law-abiding citizens, the limited disclosure lessens the threat to privacy. Moreover, the security interest in detecting, investigating, and preventing terrorist attacks is very high and outweighs whatever minimal or moderate privacy interests law-abiding citizens may have in these particular pieces of information.” (p. 753, or pdf page 9)
Section III. Conceptualizing Privacy
A. A Pluralistic Conception of Privacy (aka “what’s the definition”)
Privacy definitions suck.
- “privacy’s content covers intimate information, access, and decisions”? But your Social Security and religion are private but not intimate (p. 755, or pdf page 11).
- ye olde Harvard Law Review “right to be let alone”? But shoving someone and not leaving them alone isn’t a privacy violation (p. 755, or pdf page 11)
- The 1984 Orwellian thingy of social control by surveillance? But the boring data like the history of your beverage use and marital status isn’t very controlly (p. 756, or pdf page 12)
Since it isn’t only about inhibition or chilling (scaring people into not doing stuff) and more about a helpless powerless relationship with the important-life-decision institutions, Kafka’s The Trial is more accurate: a bureaucracy “with inscrutable purposes… uses people’s information to make important decisions about them, yet denies people the ability to participate in how their information is used” (p. 756-757, or pdf page 12-13).
To make privacy distinct and its issues more concrete – it is kinda a blobby subject (p. 759 or pdf page 15) – we define it as a blurry family relationship of kinda similar stuff (i.e. if it’s similar to the below, it’s in the privacy umbrella):
- Information Collection
- Surveillance
- Interrogation
- Main problem: “an activity by a person, business, or government entity creates harm by disrupting valuable activities of others” whether physical, emotional, chilling socially beneficial behavior like free speech, or power imbalances like executive branch power.
- Information Processing
- Aggregation
- Identification
- Insecurity: Information might be abused. You can think of ways ;)
- Secondary Use
- Exclusion: People have no access nor say in how their data is used
- Information Dissemination
- Breach of Confidentiality
- Disclosure
- Exposure
- Increased Accessibility
- Blackmail
- Appropriation
- Distortion
- Main problem: How info can transfer or be threatened to transfer
- Invasion
- Intrusion
- Decisional Interference
- Main problem: Your decisions are regulated
(p. 758-759, or pdf page 14-15)
((aside by me: Sheesh lol))
The same reason why you have curtains over your windows, so random people cant peek into your private life.
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removed by moderator
Reason: doxxed OP
(I am not an expert, just a hobby self-hoster)
Think of how police obtain information about people. They usually do an investigation involving questioning and warrants to receive records and put together a case. They must obtain consent from someone or get a warrant from a judge to search records.
Or, they could just buy info from a data broker and obtain a massive amount of information about someone.
Imagine if every company has this info and can tie it in to your daily life. Google probably has your data location history and can see exactly what routes you’ve taken lately. They can use that information, with timestamps, to estimate your speed. What if they sold it to your car insurance company, who then uses it to raise your rates because you are labeled as a speeder?
What if your purchase history is sold to your health insurance provider and they raise your deductible because most of your food purchases are at unhealthy fast food joints?
Now, with AI being shoved into every nook and cranny in the tech we use, AI can quickly get a profile on you if it is fed your chat history. Even your own voice is not safe if it can be accessed by AI. This can be used to emulate you - Interests, chats, knowledge, sound. People could use this to steal your identity or access accounts.
Actually police (and governments) don’t need to purchase your data. They can gather anything and everything from what people share publicly and constantly on social media. Countless numbers of people have been arrested because of what they shared publicly and the metadata included with that share.
If they need criminal info they have immediate access to it.
The concern isn’t that you do something wrong, it’s that the data that you put out there can be used against you in countless ways. Marketing, sales, and so on are the least of your worries. If anyone wants to threaten you, your loved one’s, or even trick you into thinking they are in a threat situation, most people don’t realize how easy that could be with the data they give away daily.
That’s why I said this:
Or, they could just buy info from a data broker and obtain a massive amount of information about someone.
They don’t need warrants for location data if it’s bought from a company that sells that data.
Whether or not it’s admissible in court is another question, though.
Name, address, GPS localisation data, habits (like apps you often use, moments you use one device or another), gender, search terms in search engines, open web pages on a web browser, connection (other person you know), the work you do and where you work.
All kinds of things, really.
The usage is mostly advertising or identity theft.
I don’t know how someone can both have a one year old Lemmy account and have been born yesterday. A torrent of like-I’m-5 answers to these questions are readily available to you. Did you try any search engine? Or maybe YouTube?
People learn about different things at different times. If we care about promoting privacy we should be accomodating and not hostile about that.
Personally I think its great to have online discussions/questions available on a forum (like lemmy) that are federated and accessible anonymously as it allows answers or discussions to be created and available for others to search and find in the future. There’s a lot of content that I find where answers or discussions were posted on reddit, but I can’t access it if I’m trying to reach it anonymously (bad for privacy).
I would encourage these kind of posts as:
- They generate content for lemmy/the fediverse.
- The new content brings in more people, perspectives, and collaborations.
- People seeing active discussions on this site will inspire others to post more and help bring in other perspectives.
- Understanding the “Ten thousand” XKCD (xkcd.com) perspective lets you realize that people are learning all the time and that trying to get feedback in a forum is not a bad thing regardless of how many other options there are.
First, governments already have all the data they want from you. There’s no way around that. Second, the more information you have on the internet, the easier it is for someone to take your identity. Look up security breaches and hacks and it will become very obvious since many places put your personal info on the web while guaranteeing your info is safe. Third, there are databases that aren’t illegal that store your personal info that people can research to track you down. And it’s not originally meant for unscrupulous reasons. These databases were first meant to replace phone books which would post your contact number and address, but those have since been used for shady business. For example, if you get a lot of spam calls, that means you are on an internet database somewhere.
Another example of why it’s important is a personal experience. I was deployed, and my parents started getting messages from random people asking for my exact location and what operation I was involved in. They claimed they served with me and they wanted a way to send me mail. They refused and then started getting threats of having my niece and sister taken. When I found out, I got NCIS and the FBI involved and not long after the investigations started, there were no more messages.
Another example I can give to you is what started my perma ban on reddit. I saw the story of a man in Wyoming who accidentally ran a wolf over (the wolf was very injures). So instead of putting it out of it’s misery or calling animal services, he paraded the hurt animal around a bar for a few hours before taking it out back and putting it down. I found his phone number on aforementioned databases and posted it on reddit.
The moral of the story is that you are available and findable if you do not take proper steps
In addition to everythong everyone has said, one major thing that people often don’t think about privacy is how it relates to enshittification.
Modern software services try to optimize everything to make as much money as possible. Everything is a/b tested, and whatever increases some arbitrary metric is what gets released.
They do this by tracking a ton of metrics about how you interact with everything. I know where I work we collect data about every time you click on anything, how long you hover over buttons, etc.
