I know data privacy is important and I know that big corporations like Meta became powerful enough to even manipulate elections using our data.
But, when I talk to people in general, most seem to not worry because they “have nothing to hide”, and most are only worried about their passwords, banking apps and not much else.
So, why should people worry about data privacy even if they have “nothing to hide”?
Ask them to unlock their phone and give it to you. Chances are, you’ll quickly find out they have things they’d like to hide.
I have nudes on my phone. I honestly don’t care if they leak one day, in fact, I have been to nudist beaches and I’m pretty sure there are online pictures of me naked already.
That’s completely different to showing naked pictures of me to colleagues, etc.
But if your photos leak, your colleagues could see them. Someone can blackmail you. Or do that using any other sensitive information.
But then I wouldn’t be showing to them.
My problem is not they seeing me naked. My problem would be showing the photos directly to them. I mean when someone asks for my phone, im always like dont like at my photos, I have nudes, then some close friends have still go to my photos and then I dont care.
Indeed, it’s quite rare to find someone who isn’t concerned about their photos, messages, and other sensitive information potentially being leaked online. Good for you, though I don’t believe it’s representative. Even so, there are potential risks to consider. With the right information, someone could manipulate, blackmail, or coerce you without you even realizing it. Our brains are subject to numerous biases, making us susceptible to subtle manipulations. Knowing your traits and preferences allows one to tailor a persuasive message specifically to you. This strategy can be used to sell you anything, from a mobile phone to a politician. The implications of such tactics are significant, potentially affecting billions of people.
I couldn’t care less if a few photos leaked. Nobody in my community would care, if they did I wouldn’t care about them, and blackmail risk it’s far overblown especially within the context of photos. You are far more likely to be exposed by an angry partner. Being afraid that Google had a rouge dick pic that might leak with thousands of others is absurd.
You’re simplifying the issue down to a set of abstract photos that you claim not to care about, ignoring the broader implications. This tells me that you may not fully understand the complexity of our world, the ease with which you can be manipulated, and the potential consequences of such manipulation. The irony lies in the fact that you are essentially replacing my argument:
Knowing your traits and preferences allows one to tailor a persuasive message specifically to you. This strategy can be used to sell you anything, from a mobile phone to a politician. The implications of such tactics are significant, potentially affecting billions of people.
With your own:
Being afraid that Google had a rouge dick pic that might leak with thousands of others is absurd.
Then declaring it absurd. But in fact, it was your argument, not mine, that you characterized as such :)
👌👍 in just a poor confused boy who really doesn’t understand the datalake and pressing systems he builds.
It never amazes me the ability of privacy advocates to just ignore what people care about and then go on to patronize someone by then just saying they don’t understand.
Given that you completely ignore my arguments and replace my thesis with your, I’m inclined to think that you don’t understand all implications and potential consequences. It’s not like you’ve managed to disprove my point. You simply ignored it.
Moreover, the fact that you don’t care about privacy doesn’t mean that your data can’t be used against you. It can be used, it is being used and it will be used in the future.
👌👍
its really more than just nudes, check this comment here: https://feddit.uk/comment/1062371
“But, when I talk to people in general, most seem to not worry because they “have nothing to hide”, and most are only worried about their passwords, banking apps and not much else.”
Sounds like they have passwords and banking apps to hide, You should demand their bank account and credit card details to verify that they have made no illicit actions.
If they point out that they have no reason to trust you with that information, that’s when you point out that police, government, or corporate groups are made out of people just like yourself. They might have some codes of conduct, or a vetting process, but it just takes one person malicious or careless enough for you to be severely impacted.
It’s simpler actually, despite all the words the state still communicates a certain atmosphere of intimidation. When you submit something to the police, it’s not because you consider it obviously right, it’s because you obey their order.
So despite legalities being different, for privacy people still feel afraid to say that they’d hide something.
It’s a matter of emotion. They are not afraid of you, but they are afraid of police. For some people this means that showing something to you is fine and to police not, for others (the majority) - the opposite. You won’t hurt them, police may.
Yeah cause corporations are going to steal money off my card. I’d have zero issues sharing that data if their water a reason… I regularrly share steam/gamepass password. You people are insane with broken logic.
Saying “I don’t need privacy because I’ve got nothing to hide” is like saying “I don’t need free speech because I’ve got nothing to say”.
I like this simil.
Yet here you are, posting on a website that doesn’t allow absolute free speech.
One thing I often see is people not understanding the difference between secrecy and privacy. They ask why it matters if you’re not doing anything wrong. A UK government minister actually said “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, and then backpedaled when someone pointed out they were quoting Joseph Goebbels. The analogy I’ve seen is simple: I’m sure you don’t do anything illegal in the shower, but I’m also pretty sure most people would be uncomfortable with a law that required you to have a police officer standing in you bathroom with a video camera to record you showering, just in case.
The other thing is the assumption that any information about you that the government actually has about you will only be used against you if you commit a crime, in which case you’ll deserve it - if you’re not a bad person then it’s fine. This is a double fallacy.
First, we’ve seen that information can be used to do all sorts of things regardless of wrongdoing - if someone knows enough about you, they can use it to manipulate you. I don’t mean blackmail or whatever, although that’s an option. I mean that with a clear enough picture of your preferences and biases and habits, someone can tailor their actions and information to your psychology and make you think whatever they want you to agree with.
Second, it assumes that you won’t ever commit a crime because crimes are bad things and you’re not a bad person. This overlooks the possibility of you being mistakenly accused while innocent, but more importantly it overlooks the possibility that the government will change into something that holds different moral values to yours. Even in the modern world we’ve seen places outlaw abortions, or criminalise homosexuality, or pass laws on what religions you’re allowed to follow. If that happens in your country and you find yourself on the wrong side of whatever arbitrary line they’ve now drawn, you may regret giving them so much information about you - information that lets them identify you, prove that you broke their new rules, and ruin your life in so many ways.
The default principal of any exchange with governments, businesses, or any entity taking your information should be to give as much information as is required for them to perform the operation you’re requesting of them, and no more - and wherever possible to only engage with those entities that you trust to have that information; a trust that they earn by a verified and unbroken track record of ethical and trustworthy behaviour.
This is great, well done.
Cite historical examples of seemingly innocuous and public information falling into the wrong hands.
e.g. The Nazis used demographic records (marriages, births, christenings, etc.) in conquered lands to ID Jews and other “undesirables”.
And (if they’re American) when they go “well, MY government wouldn’t do that!” counter with how Meta has already, numerous times, gotten people arrested for talking about getting abortions on Facebook
The US government used Census Bureau information to identify Japanese-Americans.
The couldn’t the person just cite all the times that hasn’t happened?
I don’t think so. Examples of it happening demonstrate that it can happen. OTHO, examples of it not happening does not demonstrate that it cannot happen.
Just because it has a chance to happen doesn’t mean it’s an inevitability.
Feels like an example of confirmation bias.
I’m not even saying I agree. I think privacy is important. I’m just playing devil’s advocate for the OPs question.
It doesn’t have to be inevitable in order to serve as an example of what can happen when even seemingly innocuous information falls into the wrong hands. It’s happened before, and the consequences were horrifying. It will happen again, particularly if people refuse to learn from the examples of history.
Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.
That feels like a scapegoat argument. That reduces down to “bad things happen when bad people do bad things.”
You can argue against anything when you say that.
"Dentists should be outlawed because some dentists have abused their clients " Isn’t a fair argument either.
You have to put the risks into context with upsides. Dentists serve a verifiable and vast positive. Can you equate that to sharing personal information?
IMO at least not generally, as a generic statement.
That is not a fair or accurate characterization of what I have been saying.
How could you explain it better for an argument then?
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I feel like the people in this thread saying you should ask for personal details are kind of missing the point of the ‘nothing to hide’ argument. It’s not that they feel they have nothing to hide from everyone, it’s that they feel they have nothing to hide from those with access to their data (governments/corporations). Knowing intimate life details of someone you know personally is very different from knowing intimate life details of some random person you’ll never meet. I would argue something like this instead:
Unless you’re a newborn, everyone in the US has broken thousands of laws in their life. It’s unavoidable. If corporations/the government have records of all that, if people don’t have privacy, the powers that be have the power to put anyone and everyone in prison for the rest of their lives at their discretion.
Even if you’re not worried now, once your data is out there it’s not coming back. You may agree with the policy of government and corporations now, but can you be sure that’ll be the case in ten years? Twenty? Thirty? Who knows how laws and regimes will change, and through all that, they’ll always have power over you.
While this is far more elaborate, I agree it’s the best approach if the other person is willing to have a discussion.
You may sprinkle it with actual examples of what’s happening in China with their point system: not getting bus tickets or loan grants or whatever because you not even mentioned something critical somewhere but are associated with someone how did.
They may say it’s unrealistic but 30 years ago Eastern Germany was the same. They just lacked the tech and needed to recruit regular people as spies.
This is a good point and got me thinking of something that would be a better example. I understand the point that it’s because they don’t really care about some corporation without a face collecting their info, which is different from you who they personally know asking them to unlock their phone and give it to you.
Maybe a good example would be their baby monitor or home camera? Let them know that anyone on the internet can tap into their camera feed because those companies don’t lock them down. Not that anyone is looking at it, but anyone could if they wanted to. Would that be a more convincing argument to ask if they are fine with that since they have nothing to hide?
Finally someone who gets it. Imo, the comments asking those people to hand over bank details and similar stuff can harm the argument. I mean, if someone told me that, I’d just say I do that every time I go to the bank. Or my bank has those details and they’re made up of people like me. It won’t really convince me that privacy is important since most of them probably have never experienced getting their accounts hacked.
Ask them to poop in front of everyone at work.
Every, single, time, they have to go.
Do you have curtains in your house? Can I look at your income tax records and all purchases made on your visa and bank card?
Edward Snowden remarked:
Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
There is a wikipedia article regarding this argument
This is a nice quote, however it misses the goal of the original post.
For example, I fall into the group of people that don’t care about their digital privacy, but I fully support anyone who decides to go invisible on the internet.
I may have nothing to hide, but that doesn’t mean I want it on public display either.
I wonder if websites like Pornhub have enough dirt on foreign officials that they could change international policy. Maybe the great unification of nations will be started by Pornhub.
Identity theft.
Not the only response but I haven’t seen it in the comments and it’s a simple answer without room for a semantic argument. People with that kind of attitude will often be dismissive of any response over three words in my experience 😂
A bit more historic, but still very relevant. The FBI used surveillance in repeated attempts to discredit Martin Luther King JR. It’s chilling how they used the information they gathered to try to get rid of MLK any way they could. They were even trying to use information they gathered to convince him to commit suicide.
Just ask them a bunch of indiscreet questions. Do you watch porn? What category of porn turns you on the most? Do you think it’s appropriate to have sex in a room on the ground floor without curtains? What? You own curtains? What is your salary? What’s the amount of money in your savings account? Why do you have so many loud disagreements with your partner? Don’t you like visiting your in-laws? What’s inside the drawer at the bottom, next to your bed? Have you had any embarassing and cringy moments in the last few years you’d like to share?
Of course this is only the beginning. It’s not like the corporations collect data and then don’t do anything with it. You’d also have to be okay with them deducing information about you. Try to use that information to manipulate you into giving them attention, buying the stuff they want you to buy. That system is in place to nudge you into thinking what the algorithm wants you to think. App developers are actively trying to make the apps more addicting so you spend more time with them… People just get exploited with the help of all of that data.
If people really are that tame and have no secret fantasies, no sensitive data, no shame, no personal shortcomings they’d like to forget… And they don’t care about the annual security breaches of big platforms people use willingly, but that information then gets used by people who use it to send you spam or impersonate you and trick your grandma to send her retirement to some scammer… And they like to be shoved around by big corporations like cattle, used to fuel the capitalist system… …I myself tend to leave them alone. There is nothing that can be done at this point. Those people are lost, and they don’t want freedom for themselves.
I don’t think this works, because any sexual stuff they don’t think google / Mega Corp cares about. Which is true google doesn’t give a shit if you have sex without curtains, they only care if you are shopping for curtains.
And the rest of the questions only matter if you are running for office or something which again 99.9% aren’t, so they don’t give a shit.
I’m all for privacy, but the argument I have nothing to hide except bank account passwords etc is hard to argue with, when it comes to the average person, because the truth is that they don’t matter and most likely no-one cares about their specific data.
Most data is only valuable in mass, unless you’re being criminally investigated or something.
I think we’re talking about an abstract concept here. The example with the sex questions is more of a metaphor/image to make you remember there is stuff out there, we’d like to keep private. It’s not necessarily your main concern regarding google. Those are different things but way less graphic and more difficult to explain, so i went with this example instead.
only matter if you are running for office or something
You’re close to the category of people i described last. You don’t care for freedom. You don’t care your attention is guided by other people. Information that is shown to you is gated by algorithms. And their power to manipulate you comes from the knowledge they have about you.
no-one cares about their specific data
Au contraire. Companies pay big money for data. The more specific, the more valuable. The biggest companies of today, like amazon, google, twitter, meta… Their business model is to collect data about you, sell advertisements, maybe even sell the data they’ve collected about you. And all of that is worth billions and billions of dollars. Why do you think they let you use TikTok or YouTube or something for free and the comany still makes millions? You’re right. That’s the cumulative sum. Your own data maybe is only worth 15$ to some company. Maybe more to some hacker if your credit card info gets leaked, too. But it doesn’t make it any better if you’re not the only one who gets exploited, but you’re part of an exploited majority… The TikTok algorithm, the ads etc are specifically tailored to your personality. To influence specifically your attention.
And what do you even tell the few people who actually suffer consequences? Like, i read stories about women being stalked with the help of social media. Sometimes even police officers using their computers to stalk ex partners. Their data gets collected in mass. And stored for legitimate reasons… Do you tell them: Bad luck you’re being stalked by some scummy person? We the 99.9% of people don’t have this specific problem?
I care a lot about freedom and my personal privacy. The data collected by apps doesn’t invade my privacy, and cannot reliably be used to harm me in any way, so I don’t care.
Do you care that you’re on video at the bank? Same thing.
data collected by apps doesn’t invade my privacy
Sorry, i’m really at a loss here. I don’t understand. App data is used to make you transparent. To learn something about you to sell advertisements and show them to exactly those people who are the most likely to be influenced by it. This is how targeted advertisement works.
You’re right. You’re not ‘harmed’ in the original meaning of the word. You’re just being manipulated. And so are millions of other people on the internet.
It isn’t used to make anything of me at all. You don’t seem to understand how this data is collected, aggregated and sold.
Literally no one has a profile on me specifically. Relevant bits of data are captured and filtered and packaged and sold without any human interaction.
There is no database entry for you as a person.
I’m not being manipulated because I am neither 12 nor a Republican.
How do you think TikTok recommends videos you like? How do you think YouTube shows you videos about astronomy or diy-stuff or whatever you like and omit the videos about kajaking? How do you think amazon recommends you similar items or shows you what you bought in the last 6 months?
They all have a specific profile for you as a person. It doesn’t really matter if they don’t file it with your real name as a key. It may be called a number or just contain your email address. Nonetheless it get’s loaded and used when you open your browser, when you log in to those services. Rest assured they know you and your behaviours well enough. They don’t need to store your name along with that. And don’t tell me you have 20 google accounts, clear your cookies and have all the browser extensions installed to evade all of that.
TikTok recommends me stand-up comedy and thicc goth girls because that’s what I’ve swiped on. Every now and then MTG card reviews pop up because I think that dude is funny.
I’m not a child, so I’m capable of curating shit I watch
I’m a huge fan of TikTok and YouTube’s algos because they show me shit I am interested in. Same with my targeted ads, except for the shitty mobile game ones.
Regardless, this is not a specific profile for me as a person. It’s a profile for that service, on this phone, taking some info from common internet connection points.
“the data collected by apps… Cannot reliably be used to harm me”
So you’re saying that someone can’t use your location, recordings of your audible surroundings, recordings of your devices camera view, and whom you may be interacting with cannot be used to harm you?
Correct.
I’m all for privacy, but the argument I have nothing to hide … is hard to argue with, when it comes to the average person, because the truth is that they don’t matter and most likely no-one cares about their specific data.
In that case, please post your real name, tax id (SSN in the States) and annual household income.
N.B. None of this information is private.
Yea obviously not that… Like I said bank account stuff everyone gets… Google isn’t harvesting bank account numbers.
Privacy and not getting hacked is not the same thing.
My point is that most people just keep their banking safe and don’t care about the rest, hence “I got nothing to hide” attitude
Perhaps you never heard of the psychological targeting done for political purposes through the misuse of mass data. (Cambridge Analytics)
Edit: to be clear, people in the comments have already provided many examples of situations where corporations/governing bodies have misused specific people’s personal data (zoom employees watching webcams without knowledge), however I also don’t think it makes sense to brush off the impact of mass data available as a result of much of the population freely giving away their personal data.
but the argument I have nothing to hide except bank account passwords etc is hard to argue withIt’s simple to argue against: any and all data points are either potential threat vectors, or will in aggregate paint a better picture of the individual they pertain to, for the data’s possessor to use as they wish. A default-deny policy for data creation/access makes as much sense for individuals as it does workplaces.
I get it, I’m telling you why it doesn’t resonate with 99% of people. Once you have to explain threat vectors people shut it down and call you a paranoid person.
Again, I don’t agree with it I’m just telling you why I have nothing to hide is so pervasive.
And also “do you always obey the speed limit in your car, and who is your insurance company?” or something among those lines…
This is a great question to use because how many of these people have given their smartphone location permissions? Google knows when they speed already.
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Pull out your phone, state “You’re ok with this, right?! After all you have nothing to hide” and very overtly put it in voice recording mode.
Then start asking the questions.
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