Such a Thing as too Paranoid About Privacy? 231
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.'"
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: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?
Just fill out fake info (Score:1, Interesting)
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:If the information is so trivial... (Score:2, Interesting)
On a serious note, isn't this what reward cards are for from stores? give them your details in exchange for better deals & money off.
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.
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.
Re:No no no! (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, shit! Run! Here comes Steve Godwin!
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.
Re:Sure, because we can trust advertising companie (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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..
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Strange Days (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thou shalt always (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean like telling your professor how Homeland Security visited you [nyud.net] because you tried to get Chairman Mao's Little Red Book via inter-library loan?
Then being exposed as a liar [nyud.net] because you could not resist embellishing the story and some professor did some fact checking?
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.
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?
Fake IT (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuck them...I am not getting anything for free, so neither will they...
Lies about california (Score:2, Interesting)