I often hear the argument that the average user does not care about privacy, but I don't think that this is true.
Instead I think the average user is just not aware of the insane amount of data that is exfiltrated and what can be done with that data, because the software does not make it clear what it actually is doing.
Yes but my anecdotal evidence suggests average people really don't care at all. It seems like only technically oriented people concern themselves with privacy issues.
Most people simply don't care. It constantly surprises me how paranoid people in the technology community are about their social interaction and browsing data.
Here's my theory: most people don't actually understand what having access to your data means. I learned this some years ago when I wrote a little tool that surveyed the people connected to my uni's computer lab (using ssh and who).
The whole project was just for fun, and one of the things I did was logging the names and times of everyone who started a session. I then told about this to some friends, who were like "cool!". But when I showed them the actual data (rows and rows of "this person was on this machine from this hour to this hour"), with real names, they freaked out. Showing them the data they didn't learn anything new, since I had already told them exactly what I was doing. But it wasn't until they saw with their own eyes the real names and times that they actually understood the implications.
And this wasn't your run of the mill facebook user, it was computer science students. So I can understand perfectly why people don't care about online privacy: people just don't get it by being told about it. They have to see it.
So show them their usage logs, and they will understand
Most end users are not as tech-literate as you and I and more than likely don't know just how much of their own privacy they give away on a daily basis.
lol. I hear ya. (But I think Google and Facebook's data are qualitatively a bit different.)
It's anyone's guess whether this online privacy stuff really means anything to most people. Obviously Google, Facebook, et al. are hedging their bets that it's not a big deal.
As users we can only speak for ourselves. This is because we generally don't watch others, looking over their shoulder as they use a computer to see exactly what they do... which raises an interesting question: Does that imply that we are recognising some sort of right to privacy? A lot of effort goes into trying to figure out how others use a computer. But unless it's study of volunteers it's not done by just standing behind them and watching.
What if I don't want everyone in the world to know everything about what I do with a computer?
They're more and more part of everyone's life and not everyone is of the mindset that it doesn't matter if corporations and governments get to look at every little detail of their online interaction. Car tax, criminal law, the weekly shop at tesco.com ... all going to the profilers.
I know this is happening. I know how to stop some of it. But everyone else?
Most people don't see a threat in a lack of online privacy. Since the beginning of mass commercial internet use our online usage has been tracked. It is sort of absurd to think what you do online is private.
Your computer might in your bedroom, but the internet certainly isn't.
You might prefer using sites and apps that guarantee your privacy, but most people simply don't care.
Many of the replies strangely don't seem to debunk the myths. For example, the reply to #5, people's worry that "someone will know things about them that they may want to keep secret", is that "most information is used anonymously", and "to the extent that things are 'known' about consumers, they are known by computers". That isn't a rebuttal at all, though: the fact that "most" information is used anonymously, and much information "known" is only known by computers and used as part of aggregate analytics or ad-targeting algorithms, doesn't address the core worry, that "someone will know things about them that they may want to keep secret". I mean, this is basic logic: you can't debunk a worry that someone is doing X by arguing that some people aren't doing X.
For example, there are no assurances that Facebook isn't giving personally identifiable information about specific users to government agencies without warrants (they refuse to say either way). ChoicePoint's explicit purpose is to collect and sell such information (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22269-2005Jan...). Even at a small scale, I've personally looked at information on systems I sysadmin that I suspect users would "want to keep secret", and I could have legally shared that information; it was purely my discretion and ethical sense that I shouldn't be publishing the results of sysadmin snooping that kept me from doing so. So it seems at least exceedingly likely that companies are attempting to collect and connect information about people that those people would like to keep private, are not all (contrary to this op-ed) anonymizing the data or only allowing algorithms to use it, and at least some are probably sharing and/or selling it.
#7 also seems extremely dubious as a prediction. If indeed someone were given a printout of information collected on them by such firms, I think many people would be unpleasantly surprised. The reason they aren't irate is not the unfounded assertion that "there is no harm from the way it is used", but because they have never seen such a printout, have no way to get one, and have no idea how it's being used or shared/sold.
Much of the rest is simply pure opinion: "so-and-so says X is bad, but in fact I like it". I mean, I can see an argument that privacy regulations will cause more harm than good, but this doesn't really seem like that argument.
We definitely do not represent the vast majority of users.
Many have no idea these risks even exist, or mostly wrong notions about them.
Pretty sure my parents and grand parents don't even want to know their (probably randomly picked) ad blocker could pick up their credit card number every time they type it in their browser.
How could we hold it against them? Computers to them merely are (sometimes cumbersome and annoying) tools.
I doubt the average consumer knows how much data is even collected about them, let alone what happens to it. Viewed this way, one shouldn't assume that they don't care.
Also, it may well be a 'minority of users' who care about privacy at the moment but this may change over the coming years.
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