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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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.
You’re right that this is horrifying but as an American working on data broker consumer privacy issues this is hilariously quaint. The problem is so, so much worse in the states. There’s an entire industry of SCHUFAs collecting and segmenting audiences in literally hundreds of thousands of different ways, wrapping themselves in the cloak of “Consumer Reporting Agencies” and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Data brokers are the bane of our existence, the worst thing that no one is aware of in our modern world.
Insurance companies the world over already do this. If you live in a high crime area based on insurance claims your insurance will be higher. Has nothing to do with privacy.
IMHO insurance is another thing. If the insurance company has reliable (statistical) proof that I live in a neighborhood where, for instance, my property is more likely to get damaged, then it’s only right (and fair towards the other insurants) that my fees are higher.
Living in a poor neighborhood, on the other hand, does not imply that I, personally, am less likely to pay back loans.
Statistically it absolutely would, just like it does for insurance.
Maybe they have reliable statistical proof that it does.
Seems like such proof would be easy to put together. If you live in a poor neighborhood you’re more likely to be poor. (If that wasn’t true it wouldn’t be a “poor neighborhood”, would it?) If you’re poor you’re more likely to not pay back loans (due to simply not having money if nothing else). Therefore, if you’re living in a poor neighborhood you’re more likely to not pay back loans.
All you have to do is put that together statistically and you’re set.
Now… that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s correct, but it probably is easy to prove.
We call that redlining in the US and it’s often tied up with race over here, which can quickly get a credit company into lawsuits https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
One of the issues is here in Germany we basically got a monopoly. The Schufa is so omnipresent I used to think it was lead by the government. You cannot open a bank account in Germany without giving your data to them. You almost cannot rent or buy anything on credit without their credit score. Yet they are a private profit driven company which doesn’t even tell how the score is calculated. And which is proven to not follow some laws. But noone does anything. Boggles the mind.
(Though that said, it’s probably way worse in the States than in Germany…)
And if that wasn’t enough, their new app violates the law, collecting and sending analytics data without user consent. But no court ever gives a fuck, they all swallow the whole legitimate interest bullshit, that has no actual basis.
Sorry, had to rant a little.