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Such a Thing as too Paranoid About Privacy?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Dec 25, 2005 09:34 PM
from the depends-on-how-much-you-like-spam dept.
from the depends-on-how-much-you-like-spam dept.
jackoahoy! writes "As we become more connected, we have the right to be paranoid. But the question is: where do we draw the line between sane and insane privacy? CoolTechZone's Gundeep Hora tackles this issue and uses a recent blog entry on Infoworld to illustrate his point. From the article: 'Whether it's OnRebate.com or any other rebate managing company, asking for the industry you work in and your job function aren't the most personal questions they could possibly ask. However, they must carefully define the conditions for collecting such information. Targeted advertising by user opt-in newsletters and e-mail campaigns (unlike spamming) or internal market research to get a grasp on its customer base isn't unethical, in my opinion. And people making a big deal out of two vaguely placed questions is insensible and out of proportion. If you really are that paranoid about privacy, then do what this reader did and put in wrong information under those questions.'"
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Sure, because we can trust advertising companies (Score:5, Interesting)
If that's their reasoning, then let them ask for the demographic info WHEN the user opts in.
Otherwise they have it sitting there, calling thier name like a chocolate cake in the fridge at 3am. Yeah, they'll never give in to the temptation... and that cake is still sitting there, too.
Re:Sure, because we can trust advertising companie (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Sure, because we can trust advertising companie (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all that difficult. Things start to slack, that info is some mighty fine barter to the right buyer. A 'partnership' later and our data collecting friends have a nice influx of new capital, and some marketing firm claims 'preexisting relationship' and spams/telemarkets the hell out of us.
Re:Sure, because we can trust advertising companie (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly you haven't moved out of your parents basement yet -- when you get your own place, you'll find out it is NOT too expensive. In fact, 100% of mail I recieve is unsolicited advertisements. I have opted for paperless billing with every company I legitimately do business with. I go to the mailbox 2-3 times a week just to throw the junk mail away because the Post Office will slap me with a fine if I ignore it.
They won't call my cell phone because I'm on the do not call list and will file a claim if they do.
The only fine ever levied as a result of the "Do Not Call" list was recently to DirecTV. DirecTV was the number 1 offender with over X complaints, and was fined $5.4 million for 1.4 million complaints -- or less than $4 per complaint, not per illegal call. Incidentially the maximum fine is $11,000 per complaint, so they got off cheap. All of the other offenders haven't been touched at all.
They can send email but Thunderbird's got a great spam filter.
This costs me real money in bandwidth charges, as well as hard drive space (either locally or on my mail server), and a sysadmin (me or my ISPs) to maintain that spam filter.
The problem, besides "a little bit of inconvenience", is that it costs me both money and time to deal with this problem. Normally when you deal with someone elses problems you get paid for doing work for them. Normally when someone makes a career out of making problems for other people, they go to jail for Organized Crime.
~Rebecca
Parent
Re:Sure, because we can trust advertising companie (Score:3, Informative)
Our country is pretty far away from Hong Kong (on the Orwellian map), where you get 10 years prison for spitting gum out on the sidewalk.
You're thinking of Singapore, perhaps, where streets are clean, and the girls are oh so hot. Hong Kong also has hot girls, but the streets are dirty and the sky is brown.
Re:Sure, because we can trust advertising companie (Score:4, Interesting)
Certain products, goods, or services may appeal to statistical outliers, but any marketer or advertiser never appeals to them, they appeal to the middle 2 standard deviations. Niche products even do this thing. About 1 in 5 women are into anal sex, butt 4 out of 5 are not into it and would not be into seeing advertisements for a better anal lube on TV even though it might even change their opinion of that kind of sex. Herpes medication is accepted though, because everybody knows somebody that has it.
I'm not paranoid about privacy in marketing. Nothing I buy that is legal to buy is that interesting. The good stuff is not advertised, nor needs to be. I've heard that Nukes go for something like $10 mil. Buying those might be of interest to some people, but being that the US government is too stupid to figure out which 3rd world country's government owns them or not, I can buy them in relative comfort.
Parent
Too Paranoid About Privacy (Score:2, Funny)
*ducks*
Stallman's good points and "too much privacy" (Score:4, Insightful)
Stallman is mainly concerned with Freedom, not privacy. The two do happen to overlap, of course, but there's no reason to insult the man for caring, and for being aware of the issues. That's why most of us are here talking about it. Also, what Stallman seems "paranoid" about generally turns out to be the reality of the situation just a few years down the line. The man is a visionary, not a quack. The success of the Free Software movement, Open Source, and Linux, and the attempted corporate dominance of Internet Explorer, Microsoft, and others are all here as evidence of Stallman's deep understanding. Probably best not to deride the guy who's kept your online world sane, huh? ;)
Setting that aside and addressing the article itself, I would point out that privacy is always a trade-off with ease of use. Regardless of what the ideal level of privacy is, we do need good privacy, which few of us have achieved. Real security and privacy is hard, and you're far more likely to run into usability issues before you run into overkill issues.
So, I think it basically boils down to this: implement the best security and privacy you can reasonably expect yourself to keep up without getting lazy.
Parent
If the information is so trivial... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the information has value, why don't they pay me for it?
Is there any validity to the theories (and software) of social networking?
sPh
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:2, Interesting)
No money, no info. It's that simple.
I wouldn't mind all the spam I get if I got paid to receive it, ya know?
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the buy out a box of hot pockets was $2. Now they're $3, with card and signs telling you of your HUGE savings with the card - they're $2 with the card. Cheap bag of chips were $1.50, now they're $1.50 with card, $2 without. Diet Coke $1 before and with card now, $1.50 without. And so on with damn near everything in the store.
To get this card I have to give out my home phone number, address, email address, and show my drivers license to prove I am who I say I am. My state uses my social security number as my driver's license number.
My mom signed up for this and they took that information to spam her email box, do telemarketing, put her on a crapload of junk mail lists, sell that information all over the place, and fuck knows what else. For what? To pay what I paid at regular prices before they bought the store. And then when I decline to sign up for the card the employees not only look at me like I have a third arm growing out of my forehead, but actively argue with me.
This seriously pisses me off. I miss the days when the owners lived a few streets down from me, I really do. I now pay a $30-60/mo surcharge just to be left the hell alone.
Parent
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:5, Informative)
Why? All ya do is say, "I forgot my card, scan a store card". If they refuse (happend to me once) tell them you aren't buying *anything* without the discount. It's much easier for them to scan a store card
then to put back everything they scanned if they dont.
I never do *any* cards for discounts
Parent
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
I freaked out my local Albertsons (Score:5, Insightful)
I freaked out the people at my local Albertson's a few years back (side note: If it's "My store" why is it called "Albertson's"? My name isn't Albertson) when they started doing the valued customers card or what ever it was they called it. Every time I went in, they kept asking me if I had my card yet, if I wanted to get a card, and so forth. And they kept going on about how much I would save.
Every time, I said no.
Finally, I made a form asking for basically the same information they wanted, and offered to pay 10% more every time I shopped if they would just fill out the form and give little cards with bar codes of my choosing on them to all the checkers, so I could scan them with my cuecat each time I checked out. Easy as pie, and it would probably double their profit on my purchases.
This resulted in very amusing conversations with the supervisor, and assistant manager, and a manager--throughout which, I'm proud to say, I kept a straight face. The upshot was, they said no.
I said that was fine, but they really were passing up a good thing, and I'd be sure to make them the same offer the next time I came in. And the time after that.
Oddly, I don't think they ever tried to sign me up for their stupid program again.
--MarkusQ
Parent
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad for you, you could save some money and help your grocer better serve you while giving up no personal data at all. I use several of those cards, and "save" quite a bit over what you are likely paying, and not a single one has any real information about me in the profile connected to them. All they know is somebody in my area purchases certain products. This type of information is of value to whatever store I shop at, and they do in fact compensate me with lower prices for using their card. I give up no personal data at all, and they get to learn what kinds of things their customers buy. It's a win-win situation.
Parent
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:2)
Because they can get it for cheaper and easier in bulk from people you have to tell the info to who then turn around and sell it, or lose it to hackers.
Re:If the information is so trivial... (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me see, less information means poorly targeted advertising. Which means (a) you see even more adverts than otherwise (b) the company spends more on advertising for the same amount of sales. Which means that in order to make the same profit margin, the price has to go up.
Still think you don't get any value from your precious information, sport?
My answers (Score:5, Funny)
Industry: RIAA.
Job Function: Extorting the unlucky.
I'm still waiting for my rebate.
to paraphrase... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:to paraphrase... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the actual quote [wikiquote.org] is: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
So, if you assert that your paraphrase is accurate, you assert that privacy and liberty are the same thing, which is where I would differ. Losing privacy can mean giving up liberty; there are some things we do
Persistent and Annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't matter to me if a company has a reasonable privacy policy when they do everything in their power to get your permission for spam anyway. Like all advertising, it is invasive, persistent, underhanded, and extremely annoying. As far as I'm concerned, it has nothing to do with privacy. It is unreasonable marketing practices that piss me off. I think it pisses a lot of people off, and the backlash from that is a demand for more privacy.
Re:Persistent and Annoying (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Persistent and Annoying (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some (stupid) sites that don't allow "+" in the address, thinking it's an invalid character, so I just wrote a Postfix map to remap "foo.bar" to "foo+bar" for incoming messages.
If someone sends directly to my email address without an extension who isn't in my whitelist, they get a higher SpamAssassin score.
It's been working pretty well.
Parent
Dumb ass question alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. You don't have the right to be paranoid... no one can stop you from being paranoid... but that doesn't somehow impart a right to you in the same sense that you have the right to free speech or to practice your religion. Sure, you might want to be paranoid, or be inclined to be more paranoid... but that's a behavior and action a choice on your part, not some sort of right. If anything our "rights" are being assaulted by careless use of the term "right"... everything is a right so that truly important rights become lost in the sea of rights to paranoia, and right to wear a tinfoil hat in public, and my right to run Linux on every single thing that might sustain an electric current.
Please just disregard this idiotic thread.
Re:Dumb ass question alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, see the Ninth Amendment:
Parent
It's the accumulation of data on the longer term (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we are overreacting but what happens with this data in the long run? Who controls it? If the company that holds it goes bankrupt or is bought by another, where does the data go?
Every breath you take... (Score:5, Informative)
Joe Dogooder is not a criminal, in fact Joe is your average, well do-gooder. Pays his taxes, supports his family, visits his community church, where mind you, he's visited since his days as an altar boy. Normally Joe wakes up around 5:00am in hopes of making some decaffeinated coffee, followed by a quick glimpse at the New York Times Online [nytimes.com], while his television is tuned to the news. Today however, Joe woke up at 5:30am - and although he won't be late, he decided not to watch television. Instead he is going to work early in order to catch up with some work.
After his shower, getting dressed, kissing his family goodbye he grabs his trusted cellphone, and heads for his car. "Welcome to OnStar [competitionchev.ab.ca]" flares for a quick second before he turns the service off. He'd know his way to work driving blindfolded, he's been there plenty of times. After stopping for some coffee and paying with his credit card at the local 7Eleven at 6:15am, he makes a right on Main Street leading to the turnpike. Joe always has money on his EZ-Pass [infoworld.com], and although it has been hacked in the past, his information is now safe. He continues to work and breezes right through the toll-booths it is now 6:21am and he's right on time.
Getting off at the Broadway exit, Joe is running pretty early, 6:41am. Pulling into the Shell gas station at 6:45am, he fills up his car and swipes his credit card again through the machine so he doesn't have to walk an extra 20 feet to pay the cashier. Stops at the local Megasupershopper store and buys some chewing gum, a soda, and some shaving cream [bbc.co.uk]. Back in his car, he finally pulls into the corporate garage at 7:00am, swipes his identification card, and continues on his way. This is pretty much a daily routine for Joe, and millions like him.
So who is this average Joe and why should you care? Joe is noone really important, what's important is that you understand how Joe's movements were tracked and how dangerous can be at some point. TiVo recently shoved their foot in their mouths [cnn.com] when they announced that Janet Jackson's breast of mass destruction was the most rewound video capture. Meaning? Watch a TiVo, they'll know it, what time, what it was, and who did it - you do after all have your information attached to it.
Joe also decided to check the news via the New York Times [nytimes.com], and he had to sign into his account in order to do so, meaning his information was gathered there too. What time he logged in, and from where. Sure he could have registered with false information, after all it's free, but unless he decided to manually change his IP address somehow - whether via proxy or other means - the New York Times [nytimes.com] has his information. This is not to say in any way the New York Times [nytimes.com] is selling your information or using it against you, I don't know their policies, I'm simply trying to make you aware of the signs of the 'Times'
We can also average out a time where Joe starts his car every single day for as long as we'd like using his OnStar information [competitionchev.ab.ca], we can determine a definitive pattern of his daily life with ease. What about the chewing gum?, simple, RFID tags gave us that info. Now this may not be a big deal considering Joe Dogooder is an upstanding citizen so he would have nothing to hide. John Cheatman is an altogether different story.
John has been having an affair on his wife of 30 years, and he happens to be a millionaire. Wonder what he'd do if someone threw together a video portrait of his weekly (T
Re:Every breath you take... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a big deal, and most of us have nothing to hide that isn't already hidden, so what exactly is your point? John has been having an affair on his wife of 30 years, and he happens to be a millionaire. Wonder what he'd do if someone threw together a video portrait of his weekly (Thursday 7:00pm to be exact) sexcapade with his executive assi
Oh, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying something isn't unethical "in my opinion" borders on redundancy. Ethics are simply a set of defined rules, and by definition are subjective. But that's not my real point.
Targeting advertising email is spam. The thing that distinguishes spam is the sender's attitude toward non-respondents. A spammer doesn't care what his non-respondents think of him -- he's only interested in the response rate. An advertiser with an ounce of sense realizes that he's going to drive away people by spamming, and doesn't want that. A spammer doesn't care.
A targeted email campaign may be more effective than simple spam, but it's still spam. Cleaning up your list will improve your response rate, but it still is going to drive people away.
I'm not generally in favor of the death penalty, but in the case of people who use my inbox for their foul spam, I'm on the fence.
My take: (Score:3, Insightful)
Prvacy violation or not, the information is obviously of value to the advertisers, especially if they're paying a third-party to collect it. If it's valuable enough for them to pay money for it, it's valuable enough for me not to part with it without seeing some of that money.
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
As advertisers work to get into my home more and more, I'm becoming less and less tolerant of them. Unobtrusive ads that don't collect or use peronal information on me, I'm fine with. But when they start serving me ads based on what country I live in, or pester me about what my age is or are louder then the shows I'm watching, I become annoyed. It isn't about privacy, it's about comfort. I'm not going to provide them with my personal information, unless they offer me a damn good reason for them to have it. They should use what information I naturally give them, and be happy they get that. The idea that it's perfectly fine for shops to expect me to answer any questions they want, is ridiculous (IMO). I'm going shopping to buy items, I'm not going shopping to provide them with demographic information for them to utilize/sell. They should remember what the purpose of their stores are, and to stop trying to be advertising firms. I'm not going to lie to them, I'm simply going to refuse to tell them. If they're going to annoy me with asking for my personal information, I'm going to annoy them by not playing along.
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure you mean this - I think you'd rather not have adverts that are entirely irrelevant, for products you can't buy and/or aren't at all interested in.
Good targeting means actually you see fewer ads, because the advertisers don't have to waste money on advertising stuff to people who have absolutely no chance of every buying it.
This is why spam is so pernicious - it doesn't target one bit. It just indisc
Tigerdirect rebate is no rebate at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
But on another issue, I find the linked article itself to be a troll. The framework of the question starts out right off that bat as "is this sane or insane privacy". By polarzing the issue into a "sane or insane" we lose perspective on this issue and start fighting for one of the two particular sides the author has chosen. This sounds more like a Crossfire! type discussion than a real look at the issues.
Stepping back from the linked article perspective, I'd like to present a different one. Is not providing all the rebate details upfront a breach of contract? If I advertise a $20 rebate for a product, but fail to disclose that you'll have also have to buy $200 in magazine subscriptions until after you've already bought the product, that's not a valid contract.
My major problem (and I think the original posters major problem) is the lack of upfront details on the rebate. Had they told him you'd have to provide job function, company size, etc before they'd issue the rebate then you can make an informed decision if those specific details are worth the rebate price. When they don't tell you the full details of the contract then I think that's at least an ethical violation, and possibly an invalid contract. If you dig deep enough you can eventually find the form to fill out without first buying the product, but who expects a rebate form to ask anything but where to send the check, and who to make the check out to? I certainly don't.
But as I said previously, tigerdirect isn't exactly well known for holding up their end of the bargain.
Need To Know Basis (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if the company starts asking my age, education level, bank account number, purchase history etc, I'm going to be seriously offended. If they do, I just lie outright. Give the dirty data fiends some serious false positives. Why I'm a 36 year old primary school dropout who will be buying at least $20,000 worth of home applicances this year.
Thou shalt always (Score:3, Interesting)
NEVER give anyone anything, ever.
The *ONLY* exceptions are banking and police/gubmint.
Everyone else gets a flaming chainsaw up the ass sideways..
I often find myself... (Score:5, Informative)
The result is the typical baffled look, since it isn't the typical "paranoid" response. I then ask them how much their company paid for the "collection module" for their POS software - I know it isn't cheap. I then ask what they paid to have it setup, and have the results of this current campaign implemented. That isn't cheap either.
I then ask how long it takes the average cashier to gather the desired information. 15 seconds? How long does the average cash transaction take without this? 30 seconds? By gathering this info, we've effectively cut the cashier throughput - meaning to maintain that throughput, the store needs to increase its cashier staff by that amount... a full third in this example. That is NOT cheap.
Clearly my zipcode is worth an assload of money, I conclude... and if they are willing to spend THAT kind of money to get it, then I'm an idiot to just GIVE AWAY something they deem so valuable.
That's the general concept, at least... and it is quite effective as it cannot be argued against. This information clearly has significant value; Paranoid has nothing to do with it.
If you're paranoid, it's already too much (Score:3, Interesting)
What you have to remember when discussing privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we looking at the right problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me throw a different perspective in here...
As we are social animals, we are bound to want to share something of ourselves with others. We need to believe that we have something of value to share with friends as well as strangers. Exactly what information we choose to share is determined by how much trust we believe we can place in the other person. ("Person" including groups and organisations as well as individuals).
That's what the real problem comes down to - we are being given no choice. We are made to believe that our information is of no value, and so we should willingly give it up to some person whom we increasingly find ourselves unable to trust. It is not that we don't want to trust them, so much as the behaviour of those people reinforces to us that we cannot trust them.
When asked to provide private information as partial payment for goods or services (or to receive discounts or rebates on same), we instinctively feel cheated because we are trading our humanity for cash. We fight down that instinct at every turn, as we manage to convince ourselves that it is only a small loss for such great gain.
As other posters have pointed out before, if it's really of so little value, why are we repeatedly given such incentives to give out such information? Especially when the information we provide is so irrelevant for the goods or services provided?
A credit card company needs to know that you are 18 years of age, and have some way of uniquely identifying you - but date of birth is too much information for the former, and too little for the latter. Is the email address I provide when I enrol going to be used to save trees, or is it really just cheaper marketing? We're lapping up the convenience on offer, enjoying the opportunity to get something for almost nothing, and feeling trapped by something we just can't put our fingers on. And now, as individuals faced with increasingly long and complex forms (and an out-of-control legal system), none of us really knows how much information is required by law, and how much is just an opportunistic marketing grab.
In the end, I don't believe the problem is that we lack privacy. Most forms carry no penalty for lying. No, the problem is that we neither know nor trust the people we're giving our details to. And that's a situation that won't change while most of us chase after our personal privacy.
Fake IT (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuck them...I am not getting anything for free, so neither will they...
Re:There such a thing as too paranoid... (Score:2)
Re:There such a thing as too paranoid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just fill out fake info (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd go a lot further. (Score:4, Interesting)
I find this as a compromise between real address and dead-end junk, because, for a good deal of sites, I do want them to send me the email... I just want the option to ignore all their email later, should conditions change.
Parent
Re:I'd go a lot further. (Score:3, Informative)
I once subscribed to a national magazine, to remained unnamed, that had a disclaimer at the bottom of there subscription form stating that all data supplied would be kept confidential. Out of curiosity I supplied a fictitious middle initial with my name. It didn't take long before I started to receive junk mail with that very obvious marker showing up.
Needless to say, the letter I wrote the magazine wa
Re:No no no! (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, shit! Run! Here comes Steve Godwin!
Parent
Re:No no no! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:No choice... vote against the big two. (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, part of the GOP strategy seems to be to shift to the reactionary right (past conservative), and then tar the mo