The Privacy Paradox

Dekortage writes "The NYTimes has a piece up about the paradox of privacy: 'Normally sane people have inconsistent and contradictory impulses and opinions when it comes to their safeguarding their own private information.' More specifically, it's all how you ask: if you don't talk about privacy, people won't worry about it. In one survey, 'When the issue of confidentiality was raised, participants clammed up. For example, 25 percent of the students who were given a strong assurance of confidentiality admitted to having copied someone else's homework. Among those given no assurance of confidentiality, more than half admitted to it.'"

Hmm

From that little extract in the summary about students, is that proof of people not caring about privacy unless someone mentions it, or proof that students these days are a bit thick and don't really think ahead or about what they're saying?

(NOTE: I'm actually a student myself and I'm inclined to believe the latter).

Re:Hmm

It's proof that people are more cautious when someone makes an effort to appear harmless. There's a gamut of normal behavior, and telling people that you're not going to stab them in the back with the information you're requesting isn't in that gamut. This study says nothing about privacy.

Re:

Indeed, if they had to go out of their way to assure students it was confidential then it would give the students the opportunity to wonder why they'd need to assure them... was it a survey by their school for instance?

Besides, I can't think of any students who don't clam up when the thought of potentially getting into trouble is raised. It's like handing a kid an armed bomb and swearing you won't detonate it, if you ask me... would you blame them being nervous?

Verb-Space

There was a study or two a little while ago that mentioned that the mind has trouble with negative constructions over time.

"Your data is safe with me. That's right, I am not going to *broadcast your data all over the internet where all the world can see it, reverse engineer your life, and tag it in the southeastern dialect of Klingon attached to a mashup of Steve Ballmer and Jack Thompson. Nosirree, I promise to take good care of you and not *rip your life to shreds and offer your data as bait to the CIA, or Viacom."

The mind melts and forgets it is in "reversal mode", and becomes exhausted from the scare words.

Re: Verb-Space

This is why using the word NOT is counter-productive. When communicating anything you should use the positive form of what ever declaration you are trying to say. Especially with children and young adults. It's also important when thinking to yourself.

Instead of saying "Don't run" you need to say "Stop. Please walk slowly" Since what they hear in the first case may be "Blah't RUN!"

or

instead of "Don't play around with knives"

say: "Playing with knives is dangerous and you will get in trouble"

cause all they'll hear is a suggestion to "Play around with knives"

Re:Hmm

(NOTE: I'm actually a student myself and I'm inclined to believe the latter).
I am a teacher and I am certain of the latter...

Same as with any chore

Talk to people about dieting or brushing teeth and they might do it in immediate future. Privacy is a chore that can cause quite a bit of inconvenience. Damage from it being breeched only happens rarely and takes a lot of time to manifest itself.

Re:Same as with any chore

Privacy is not a chore. Privacy is property. Protecting said property is a chore, you need to actively protect it. In a perfect world, people would respect your property (privacy) and leave it alone. In the real world, that doesn't happen of course. People aren't as moral as they always claim to be.

Trust me

There's no paradox at all. If you ask a girl out on a date she might say yes. Promising that you are not going to cut her up into little pieces and eat her raw over the next 2 weeks does not improve your chances. People are rightly suspicious when they hear someone state explicitly that they are not planning on doing something evil. Economists are always coming out with nonsense like this.

Re:Trust me

People are rightly suspicious when they hear someone state explicitly that they are not planning on doing something evil.

So it was a really dumb idea for a certain company to make their motto "do no evil" ...

It also begs the question* about doctors and "first, do no harm."

*(no, I'm not interested in little grammar hitlers starting a war over "begs the question". Put it in an ask slashdot - or better yet, get a life.)

Re:Trust me

*(no, I'm not interested in little grammar hitlers starting a war over "begs the question". Put it in an ask slashdot - or better yet, get a life.)

What about the big grammar hitlers, can they help you out?

Re:Trolling

Incorrect. GP is making a good point and staying very much on topic doing so:

He uses the term incorrectly, but since most people would understand what he means, normally they would let it pass without notice. However, since he points out that he is not interested in responders mentioning the incorrectness, responders will instantly point it out. This relates to TFA (I'm not sure he realized it himself).

Re:Trust me

That's the beauty of language. And, as to the point you indirectly point out, for a long time doctors DID do more harm than good. Look at the practice of "bleeding" people to "remove the evil humours". This required the trust of people, affirmed with the "We're going to help you."

Sort of like "Give us your information. After all, you have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide ..." Saying "you have nothing to worry about" when you're already in a very worrisome situation?

A friend of mine said he always knew when someone was out to f*ck him - they'd say "Trust me." When you think about it, it makes sense. If I already trust you, you won't have to tell me "Trust me." And if I don't saying those words isn't some magic sauce that will suddenly make me trust you.

"Trust me!" == "I probably think you're stupid and I'm going to fuck you over."

Re:Trust me

If you ask a girl out on a date she might say yes.

You seem to have forgotten to which website you're posting.

I don't understand why you object to surveillance.

Surely if you've done nothing wrong, then you've got nothing to hide.

in this case correlation is causation

... so the correlationisnotcausation tag is misleading. I assume they ran an experiment and randomly assigned half the students to the "mention confidentiality" treatment, half to the control. So there's no way (except an extraordinary fluke) for anything but the treatment to explain the big difference in honesty.

Re:in this case correlation is causation

Exactly! People here on slashdot seem to have the habit that if they see anything related to a study, they always use the "correlationisnotcausation" tag. Yes, it is good to remember that they are not synonymous things, but in a controlled environment, it quite often is the case. Otherwise, there would be no point in doing any studies about anything.

Out of sight, Out of Mind

Rule #1 -- everything you do on the Internet is discoverable.

Most people forget that rule most of the time, to their eventual detriment. On July 3rd, a judge ordered Google to hand over log records containing user-identifiable data on every YouTube video ever downloaded. Did you ever think your YouTube habits would become publicly available? Read Rule #1 above. 'Nuf said.

Surprising?

Is anyone terribly surprised? How we answer questions depends on how the question is asked. Specifically, we try to read social cues as to how the information will be received. Ask someone a personal question in a context that makes them think their answer will garner praise, and they'll answer much more readily than in a situation where it's implied the answer will lead people to condemn them.

I remember in college a bunch of people were taking purity tests, and one girl took the test and scored on the relatively pure end of the spectrum, and seemed proud of that. When everyone was much more impressed with people who scored incredibly impure, she took the test again and managed to get a much different score.

two fears compounded?

If not given the assurance people think only about the bad outcome caused by their confession, when given the assurance they actually compound two fears, the fear of bad outcome and the fear of having the promise broken.

I never copied homework

Why bother if you can just copy the test itself?

People are accustomed to bait-and-switch language

We live in a world today where pretty much anything that a government or a private entity tells you is more or less the opposite of reality.

People are accustomed to seeing legislation such as the "Defense of Marriage Act", which attacks and limits people's right to marry... the "Patriot Act", which exploits patriotism toward ends which no patriot could support... etc. How many Congressional bills DON'T have a name that is 180-degrees opposite from the bill's contents?

People are accustomed to private sector speech meaning its exact opposite as well. You never see a food company describe its product as "gourmet" unless it isn't. "Employee Rights" policies are generally about limiting employee rights. More relevant here, anyone who has even glanced at a "Privacy Policy" from their bank or other business institution knows that it really deals with how little privacy you have, and the hoops they make you jump through even to protect that.

Where's the "paradox" here? We have grown accustomed to any language about our "rights" actually being a bait-and-switch. So, yes... when we hear assurances that our privacy is safeguarded, we assume that you wouldn't even have brought it up unless it wasn't.

Re:silly

Who do they resell their data to?

I don't know and it doesn't affect my privacy.

What has access to their system? Is every single tech person they employ trustworthy?

I don't know and it doesn't affect my privacy.

Is their security good enough?

Yes, in the sense that even no security on their end would be "good enough".

Who is middle man to your TCP transmitions?

I assume my ISP and maybe the NSA.

Do you trust your ISP?

No.

Do you login outside your PC? Can you trust those computers?

I don't have to trust them. When I do use another computer, I use an OTP.

Who else has access to your PC? Who can hack your PC?

Doesn't matter; they can't do anything with it.

Basically, you're asking all the wrong questions. If you have to rely on your ISP to be trustworthy or your computer not getting stolen, you have already lost.

Re:Paranoia

I think we're pre-programmed to trust and assist everyone in our tribe by default, and distrust anyone not of our tribe. The problem is that this doesn't work well anymore, since we don't know everyone in our tribe. It's likely quite useful when you hunt wildebeest, but not as useful when you work for a hospital, protecting patient records.

Most of us don't think of trust at all, but assign perceived trustworthiness automatically, and only by being reminded of trust do we pay it any thought.

Social engineering takes advantage of this. You get the victim to draw the conclusion (without being told -- it has to be subconscious) that you belong to the same work tribe as them, and thus trust becomes implicit.

Some warning signs that you may be subjected to social engineering:
- The person starts using your first name without you having ever met.
- The person refers to an authority figure in a jocular/friendly way, in order to make you draw the conclusion that the authority figure knows and trusts this person.
- They will try to appeal to your vanity. E.g. they may imply that they called YOU because you're so friendly and helpful. Ask yourself whether, if it really was this urgent, they would be calling you instead of those whose job it is to deal with this sort of situation. If you believe for one second that it's because of your demeanor, you're not only stupid but vain too.
- They mention a common foe. "You know how accounting is..." Yeah, everyone knows that accounting are bastards to anyone not in accounting, in every company in every country. That doesn't lend credence to you being on the same side.
- They mention an interest of yours. "I had planned to take my son fishing this weekend, but I guess I'll be working, trying to fix this". Why would they tell that to a stranger? (Especially if you have a sticker saying "BITE MY BASS" on your car.)
- If face to face, the person smiles a lot. Nothing disarms suspicion as easily as a smile.

And yeah, cops learn this, and with time become pretty good at it too.

My main advice is to never trust a person who smiles. Ever. That invariably means they want something. Yes, this includes loved ones too; what they want might be something you're willing to give, but they're still unconsciously trying to lower your defense by smiling. A smile is always a mechanism to disarm the one who sees it.

Re:Paranoia

You must be really fun to hang out with.