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.
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.
I don’t think society on a local, national, or world level is past persecution for stupid reasons, and I fall into a number of categories that certain people might go after me for if they got into power. I want to make that difficult for them.
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
I don’t like being misinterpreted.
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.
- 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.
I hate that most people don’t want to care for convient’s sake… “You’re only making your life harder for yourself”. I simply want to be in control, not the corpos.
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.
There’s no file system in existence that can handle a text file large enough to include all reasons why people care about privacy.
Privacy is a foundational right. Without it inviduals suffer from the imbalanced power dynamic of the states resources.
I’m sorry, but that’s private.
Same reason I shit with the door closed; I’ve got nothing to hide, but it’s none of your business regardless.
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
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.
Also, people change over time, and more and more of our lives are ending up online earlier and earlier.
Do you really want some stupid “hot take” you were passionate about as a teenager effecting how someone sees you a decade or more down the line?
Everyone deserves the right to change their mind and not have old beliefs hang around their neck forever.
If you have ever had a psycho (or two) stalk you online and/or in the real world, you will understand why privacy and anonymity is important.
Because in real life I don’t like people looking over my shoulder at everything I do and digital snooping is the same (or worse).
