Ever thought, “Why should I care about online privacy? I have nothing to hide.” Read this https://www.socialcooling.com/

credit: [deleted] user on Reddit.

original link: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/savz9u/i_have_nothing_to_hide_why_should_i_care_about/

u/magicmulder

The main issue isn’t that someone would be interested in you personally but that data mining may put you in categories you don’t want to be in. 99.9% correlation of your „likes“ and follows to those of terror suspects - whoops you’re a terror suspect yourself. You follow heavy metal bands and Harley Davidson? Whoops, you have a 98% likelihood of drinking and smoking, up goes your insurance rate. And so on.

u/Mayayana

Indeed. But most people here seem to have misunderstood your post. One of my favorite examples is from Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, whoo said in an interview (on youtube) that if you think you have something to hide then maybe you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. (Like maybe the Jews on Kristallnacht shouldn’t have been living in their houses?) Schmidt was later reported to have got an apartment in NYC without a doorman, to avoid gossip about his promiscuous lifestyle. :)

u/SandboxedCapybara

I always thought the like “no bathroom door,” “no curtains,” or “no free speech” arguments always fell flat when talking about privacy. Sure, as people who already care about privacy they make sense, but for people who don’t they are just such hollow arguments. I think a better argument is real life issues that people always face. The fact that things like their home address, social security number, face, email, phone number, passwords, their emails and texts, etc could be out there for anyone to see soon or may already be is almost always more concerning for people. People trust companies. People don’t trust people.

u/Striking-Implement52

Another good read: https://thenewoil.org/why.html ‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy

etc

  • @frustbox@lemmy.ml
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    22 years ago

    Why you should care?

    Because the debate is not about whether or not you have something to hide.

    It’s about your right to consent. You should have the right to say no. And you should have the right to change your mind for any reason. You should have the right to regain control of who can store, access or process your data.

    Depending on where you live you may have such rights, or you may not. And the political debate is about granting, strengthening, weakening or revoking these rights. And you should care about having these rights, whether you use them or not.

  • W^Unt!2
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    12 years ago

    Anything you say CAN and WILL be used against you.

  • @Fecundpossum@lemmy.world
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    12 years ago

    Thanks for the great share. I try to convince my loved ones of the value of even small, low effort ways to control their data slug trail. They don’t get it. Not even a little bit. And the vast majority of people won’t care until we’re all living in a black mirror episode.

    Are we already living in a black mirror episode? Fuck.

  • @Rusticus@lemmy.world
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    12 years ago

    I’m more interested in privacy to prevent access to my data stream and PLANTING incriminating data. It’s a hell of a lot easier to frame someone when you have easy access to their devices.

    TL/DR; You may have nothing to hide but you’ve got plenty to protect.

  • @LegionElite@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    While most people are horrible judges of character and when even your own family throw you under the bus… and how a stranger can even cause you much trouble, I could care less about what others may think of me in a world where every lie has become truth and every truth is a mental illness of some kind.

    Been homeless most of my life, but I was different than most other homeless people. I had my fair share of problems but I made better choices than anyone else I met with the horrible plague of being homeless. I learned really quick that it doesn’t matter who or what you choose to be and it doesn’t matter how good of an attitude you have, how great or horrible you are… you’re still not important!

    So yeah, all this privacy garbage is just that… “GARBAGE” and the social credit score system can be whatever it wants but I’m not changing or running in fear, nor am I to worry any longer about a dying and broken down society with some bullshit pipe dream of being a better place one day. It’s not going to ever be better and it was never good in the beginning.

    I’ll die as a man of integrity before I take a knee to the enemy!

    • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      12 years ago

      Been homeless most of my life, but I was different than most other homeless people. I had my fair share of problems but I made better choices than anyone else I met with the horrible plague of being homeless.

      If that’s true, you’re exactly the kind of person who is likely to be mistreated as a result of profiling based on tracking your data. These algorithms don’t have room for exceptional cases, so you would be handled just like anyone else tagged as having been homeless. This could make it hard for you to get a home or credit or a job, among other things. It could trap a person in homelessness no matter what they do. That’s why people oppose this kind of surveillance.

  • @bleistift2@feddit.de
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    12 years ago

    In Germany there’s a private company called SCHUFA that aggregates data about people, mangles them in a proprietary (i.e. secret) way and produces a “score” indicating how creditworthy an individual is. Companies buy these scores from SCHUFA, that’s how they make a profit.

    One of the data points influencing the score is a person’s address. If you live near people of whom SCHUFA thinks they’re not creditworthy, your own score will drop, too. So by simply sharing their your address, you may already suffer detrimental consequences against which they have no recourse.

    This is another instance of the “being put in categories you don’t want to be in” point in favor of privacy.

    • @Gutless2615@ttrpg.network
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      2 years ago

      You’re right that this is horrifying but as an American working on data broker consumer privacy issues this is hilariously quaint. The problem is so, so much worse in the states. There’s an entire industry of SCHUFAs collecting and segmenting audiences in literally hundreds of thousands of different ways, wrapping themselves in the cloak of “Consumer Reporting Agencies” and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Data brokers are the bane of our existence, the worst thing that no one is aware of in our modern world.

      • RQG
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        12 years ago

        One of the issues is here in Germany we basically got a monopoly. The Schufa is so omnipresent I used to think it was lead by the government. You cannot open a bank account in Germany without giving your data to them. You almost cannot rent or buy anything on credit without their credit score. Yet they are a private profit driven company which doesn’t even tell how the score is calculated. And which is proven to not follow some laws. But noone does anything. Boggles the mind.

    • @miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml
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      12 years ago

      And if that wasn’t enough, their new app violates the law, collecting and sending analytics data without user consent. But no court ever gives a fuck, they all swallow the whole legitimate interest bullshit, that has no actual basis.

      Sorry, had to rant a little.

    • @Whirlybird@aussie.zone
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      12 years ago

      Insurance companies the world over already do this. If you live in a high crime area based on insurance claims your insurance will be higher. Has nothing to do with privacy.

      • @bleistift2@feddit.de
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        12 years ago

        IMHO insurance is another thing. If the insurance company has reliable (statistical) proof that I live in a neighborhood where, for instance, my property is more likely to get damaged, then it’s only right (and fair towards the other insurants) that my fees are higher.

        Living in a poor neighborhood, on the other hand, does not imply that I, personally, am less likely to pay back loans.

        • @Whirlybird@aussie.zone
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          12 years ago

          Living in a poor neighborhood, on the other hand, does not imply that I, personally, am less likely to pay back loans.

          Statistically it absolutely would, just like it does for insurance.

          • @winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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            12 years ago

            Seems like such proof would be easy to put together. If you live in a poor neighborhood you’re more likely to be poor. (If that wasn’t true it wouldn’t be a “poor neighborhood”, would it?) If you’re poor you’re more likely to not pay back loans (due to simply not having money if nothing else). Therefore, if you’re living in a poor neighborhood you’re more likely to not pay back loans.

            All you have to do is put that together statistically and you’re set.

            Now… that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s correct, but it probably is easy to prove.

  • @captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    12 years ago

    I hide not because I’m ashamed of how I live. I’m happy I live this way and believe it to be extremely ethical. Try telling my country folk though that it’s ethical for me to be transgender, gay, and polyamorous and you might start an argument. And however you live might wind up controversial too

  • @lockhart@lemmy.ml
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    12 years ago

    Whenever someone says: “I have nothing to hide”

    I say: “You’re not the one who decides that”

  • @socsa@lemmy.ml
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    12 years ago

    “Having something to hide” is a moving target. With good privacy practices it doesn’t matter what the definition of “something to hide” becomes.

  • scytale
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    2 years ago

    The statement about people trust corporations, not people is valid; that’s why I stopped using the “don’t have doors” and “let me see your phone” argument because people will think it’s different in that you personally know them, instead of some faceless corporation collecting your data.

    It got me thinking of a better example, and the one I came up with is baby monitors and home/door cctv cameras. A lot of companies providing those services lack any kind of security in that anyone can potentially see your camera live feed on the internet. Not that anyone’s watching, but someone could if they wanted. So if you’re not hiding anything, would you be fine that your baby monitor can potentially be used for whatever reason even though no one in your social circle can’t “see” it?

    • Not that anyone’s watching, but someone could if they wanted

      For the record, browsing and sharing open camera feeds was popular on 4chan’s /b/ for a while (like over a decade ago iirc), with commenters treating them like some sort of drama or sitcom. It was fucked up.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still those sorts of people around on better hidden forums.

  • reflex
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    2 years ago

    All good points. I would like to add too, that not being the product for companies like Google is also nice.

  • @SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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    12 years ago

    TL;DR: without privacy you can (and will) be discriminated against, because that’s what people do and there is financial incentive to do so on-top of that.

    A basic examples being higher insurance premiums because of known factors that are out of your control.

    But it’s pervasive. Other people have already posted more thorough examples.

    • @Whirlybird@aussie.zone
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      12 years ago

      Insurance being higher has nothing to do with privacy though. If you live in an area that the insurance company has a higher number of claims from, you’re statistically more likely to make a claim, so they charge more to factor that risk in.

      That’s not anything to do with privacy though. How do you think someone’s privacy is breached in that situation?