I’m following several privacy focused communities. Mostly as lurker but in few I’m more active. Every time I see a posts like “how to be more private”, I wonder about the reasons behind those questions. What’s the reason you want to remain private (don’t confuse it with being anonymous)? Could you elaborate on your reasons?
Let me start.
I worked (and still working) in a highly regulated industry as a software/devops engineer. I’ve been working with banks, insurance companies, global online payment companies, major credit card vendors, few global corporations. I have seen how data is gathered and (mis)used. Every time someone tells me “I’m sorry but the system…” I know it’s the data gathered by the “system” and my profile created based on that data was the reason for “but”. This is why I care about the privacy, to prevent companies from taking advantage of my current situation and charge me more.
I’m sorry, but that’s private.
- Feeling clean
- Not being exploited
- Minimalism
- Less power drain
- Less data sent
- Freedom
- Everything works better and faster
- I hate spying because they can
- To be honest also because most people don’t care
The only con is convenience.
Why do so many external entities care so much about constantly trying to reduce my privacy?
If they would not have started it, I wouldn’t have started to care.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
From Cardinal Richelieu
Combine this with the fact that entities which have access to our data rarely have our best interest in heart. Governments change, the political climate changes, and people change. What’s honest and just today may not be next decade.
Let’s flip this question. Why do you think an organisation should get my data?
Are they reputable? Are they secure? Are they domiciled in my country and follow the laws of my country?
In a perfect world, data collected by companies would be used to improve user experience. But we don’t live a perfect world and nowadays if a company doesn’t provide yearly income from investment it goes under. And to keep the numbers up, companies screw its users.
Improve user experience?
I don’t give a flying fuck if a web page loads .5 seconds faster.
What u care about is an interface that works, has labels instead of symbols, that doesn’t change every month trying to be more minimalist.
A bank website doesn’t need my browser history or my charges to Amex or what pets I have or what car I drive or the color of my bedroom. But they want all that and a mobile phone number to tie it all up with a common index. VoIP numbers are refused because they change too often.
That’s what pisses me off
Similar to you, but I also hate the advertising industry with a burning passion and want to deprive them of any and all data possible.
There’s no file system in existence that can handle a text file large enough to include all reasons why people care about privacy.
Same reason I shit with the door closed; I’ve got nothing to hide, but it’s none of your business regardless.
To be honest. What made me care about privacy was social media apps such as Reddit. Every single day, i used to get reddit notifications promoting “the most popular post in my country”. Look, at first i didn’t care. Now it got annoying, to the point where i replaced Refdit with Lemmy, getting rid of windows, switching to FOSS (free and open source software) apps and also using Degoogled Chromium. While reddit wasnt the only thing i mentioned so far, i hate how Youtube has to know where you live, and giving you directions to the nearest store (for certain ads). This probably may get malliciously used in the future, that’s what i got really aware of. Now it really hurt me when Youtube has killed most 3rd party frontends (such as invidious and piped). So in conclusion, Privacy can really matter for me as a lot of services i used to use can now collect data about you.
That’s so great! Can I just recommend Firefox over Chromium? Perhaps privacy-wise is similar, but at least you send your User Agent to website as “firefox” which tells the websites to still make them compatible
Because without privacy you can’t be a proper human being. You need privacy in order to have the safe space to develop, to dare try, to explore without the constant judgement of others. If you can’t be a proper human being, can you genuinely have democracy?
It’s both a per-requisite for humanity and what the political system that is often considered as the most just.
That’s why I care.
Privacy is a foundational right. Without it inviduals suffer from the imbalanced power dynamic of the states resources.
Do you people sniff into your stuffs? No. So why do you allow companies to make profit on?
And we need the anonymous part too.
Privacy means hiding our legitimate stuffs to others than could spy on. In this way, privacy is a big family that needs anonymity and security to work well
EDIT : Anonymity and security are not different than privacy, they are a way to achieve it
I care about privacy for the same reason you do. Actually I don’t care about my personal privacy bacause I’ve always been careful to not share too much with big tech companies, but I refuse to use products from amazon, meta, alphabet, apple, or microsoft (outside of work hardware/software) because of how they abuse their position of power over the poor.
Similar to your experience, I’ve seen several large governments and organizations mishandle or mismanage user data by accident or on purpose many times with little or no recompense. If nobody can do it right they should either make it all publicly transparent for everyone or not store it at all.
Misinformation, not using accounts or accounts with incorrect information, multiple accounts, etc counter ops seem prudent at this point as the information system and monitoring apparatus of some of the most powerful governments and corporations in human history remains largely unchecked.
Privacy is an important right to protect and value because of the damage that can and will be done when groups hold personal information (financial, medical, behavior patterns, etc) and either sell it without explicit consent or leak it because they have no expectation of risk or loss if they don’t protect it.
Tl;Dr The oldest rules of the Internet are don’t believe everything you read and don’t dox yourself.
It all kinda boils down to the Cambridge Analytica scandal for me. Harvesting people’s locations and data, accessing and logging our daily lives is what facilitates mass manipulation of the public’s opinion, therefore distorting their view of the world and killing freedom of thought. GAFAM and others are specialists in controlling their users. I ultimately don’t want to be profiled, controlled and/or rail-roaded in any aspect of my life.
Strangely enough, like the wikileaks scandal… Most people are forgetful. But not on purpose…
That’s how good they are in manipulating people’s mind.
