this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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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

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

it's a false dichotomy; the issue is not whether you do or don't have something to hide, the issue is you choosing what you share and with whom.

the fact that I don't blast the quality of this morning's stool accross all my social media outlets doesn't mean that I'm hiding it, it means that I choose not to share it.

that's my decision and I don't allow my hardware, software, service provider, government, or whoever-the-fuck to make it for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

To quote the girl in Anon:

It's not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want you to see.