Millennials Willing To Share Personal Data — For a Price 88
jfruh writes "The rap on the under-30 crowd is that they don't care anywhere near as much about online privacy as their elders — but that's not quite true. According to a recent study by USC's Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, millennials are just as concerned about the use of their personal data online as their elders. The difference arises when it comes to why they share that data: older users share with someone they trust, while millennials share when they perceive that there's something in it for them."
In other words ... (Score:3)
... when we old geezers die, our tombstones won't be marked with our facebook addresses, our famous tweets, our most favorite photo we put online, our favorite song list, and so on
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Here lies a man with sundry flaws
And numerous sins upon his head.
We buried him here today because,
As far as we can tell, he's dead.
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Re:FTFY (Score:4, Insightful)
Similar words have been spoken of Baby Boomers and Generation X by the generations that preceded them. For every meth smokin', Wall-Street Occupyin', Tweeting Millenial, there is a brave, young, volunteer soldier and firefighter, putting the needs of his community and his family above his own, desparately struggingly to make ends meet while being berated and dismissed by a grumpy ex-hippy ticked off that the money he didn't earn with his stock picks in the roaring 90's won't buy him the private island he was planning to sail off to in his yacht.
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Re:There's Nothing in it For You (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Access to a service or a social network is not "something in it for them". In fact, even if someone is willing to pay for your data, you shouldn't be willing to do that and it's hard to even accept that as "something in it for them".
Worse, this article says they're smarter about it , yet the reasons they give for sharing information by these twits are "for coupons and local deals" and "in exchange for targeted advertising" those two things are the same thing, obviously) and... Well, actually, those are the only reasons the article gives. What as shitty, meaningless, irrelevant article. It's literally just an infographic full of information from which the author has derived the most absurd conclusion.
"Teens are smarter about privacy, because they don't care about their privacy as long as it's being used for something in their benifit... like advertise to them".
I give up. Fuck it.
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Addendum: I forgot to mention that creating multiple online personas and putting in occasionally fake information doesn't make them "smarter about it". Haven't we all learned, by now, that your identity can be derived by advertisers with only a few minimal pieces of data? Just because you're using a different username and email address at a site or to register for something doesn't mean *shit*.
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I only buy things using linux live cds and encrypted dns and then I release my ip address and get a new one.
the only connections to be made are email(disposable) and cc info (gift card). and, the fact that I send it to my home address. Wait.
Oh...shit.
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It comes down to TINSTAAFL ...
Really? TINSTAAFL? Some kind of grammar nazi...
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I was shooting for funny/ironic, though I admit I may have miscalculated.
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Re:There's Nothing in it For You (Score:5, Insightful)
Article didn't go into it, but I think of it more like this some times:
Google is probably the biggest one for me. They take my personal information and show me ads that I always ignore but which are targeted specifically at me. In exchange, they give me loads of tools that I don't have to pay them for at all (Gmail, Drive/Docs, Search, Calendar, free place to upload and stream my music on practically any device I own, Android to an extent, etc.).
So, yeah, technically, all I'm getting from it is targeted advertising, maybe a few deals I wouldn't have found otherwise. But in reality, the money they're making off of getting targeted advertising done is paying for all of these tools that I don't pay any real cash for. In my eyes, I'm trading my personal information for those tools, and I couldn't care less about the advertising. Essentially, my personal information is a valuable currency that I never run out of. It's just limited in where it's accepted, and it requires a little more discretion in where I do want to use it than other currencies.
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If you have something you want to keep private, go to the library and look it up in the stacks. Otherwise, don't bother. I don't discuss anything that I would be embarrassed to see in the newspaper on email, text, or chat. Voice only. (Not that the FBI/CIA don't monitor that, but there won't be recordings.)
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Perhaps the greatest danger is the illusion of privacy. Or the false comfort that "they're a big corporation...they would never stoop so low as to scam me." Along with computer literacy, every person should take at least a short course in social engineering to understand how groups and individuals can be so easily manipulated to give away critical information that can lead to identity theft and account hijacking. Just following the history of Facebook it is easy to see how easily people can cause irrever
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I can see where you're coming from.
1. I feel sorry, on some level, for the people who are not aware of the personal data that they are leaving open, because they are ignoring a valuable asset that they have in that data. At the same time, however, they are taking advantage of that asset, whether they realize it or not.
2. Personally, I am aware of the asset that my data is, and I'm aware of how I'm sharing that asset. I'm aware of how these corporations are utilizing my "very, very personal details" and I've
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the cognitive dissonance that comes from a corporation's computers knowing you're gay or depressed or having an affair before your friends and family do
And what exactly is a corporation going to do with that information? Blackmail you? Target ads for musicals, the Samaritans and Interflora at you?
Who really cares?
There is a simple solution if you're really that bothered about privacy in the internet age: don't use the internet. It's not compulsory.
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the cognitive dissonance that comes from a corporation's computers knowing you're gay or depressed or having an affair before your friends and family do
And what exactly is a corporation going to do with that information? Blackmail you?
Well, they might tell the FBI that you live near Memphis and like the phrase "I'm KC and I approve this message." Those seem like pretty innocuous bits of information: a non-specific geographical location, two initials, and a sense of humor that includes mocking political disclosure laws. This weekend, that convergence of information was enough to win a free vacation with dramatic Federal interrogation and evening news appearances. Probably not what anyone had in mind when sharing that information.
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But you are paying for it. Your payment is the advertisement that you are being served. It is easy to mistake that for "free" while it is not. Nothing is free (in reality) and we all pay for the services we get in one way or the other. The most common approach to do this is with advertisements, rather then subscriptions or paywalls.
Yes, you also pay for slashdot. Both with advertisement and subscription (optional) charges.
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Agreed. In the sense of this, I see my more direct payment to be my data. Most ads these days are based on personal data I have provided by visiting certain sites, posting certain things, etc. That's valuable data to advertising agencies on the internet. I'm providing them said data in exchange for the service that they provide. So, yes, it is not free. However, I'm not directly paying money for it, which provides the illusion of free to someone who's not aware of how they are paying for it. Being aware of
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Exactly. That's why I specifically chose to say "directly".
In my case, it tends to be more along the lines of those ads some times make it easier for me to find what I'm looking for. I may have bought said something either way (often do), but they were often able to point me in a direction that makes finding that easier or some times just the better deal. Result is that they do get my money, funding their advertising, which funds the tools that give an illusion of being free. So, I'm not directly paying for
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Yes, you also pay for slashdot. Both with advertisement and subscription (optional) charges.
I don't see ads on slashdot and I most certainly don't pay a subscription. All I have "paid" is to give them my email address, and if I was that paranoid I could just have used a throwaway yahoo account or something anyway.
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You are looking at it completely wrong. There is something in it for them, something that they very clearly value. They can post stuff on walls, get followers and all the other shit that comes with these social media accounts. Personally, I find it utterly ingenious that companies like these have made something completely intagible into a very prized commodity.
And going on your statement, the users have weighed up the pro's and con's and decided that being turned into a product is worth the price of some pr
Re:There's Nothing in it For You (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember the article a few years ago where high school students took a poll which showed they generally feel there is too much free speech, press should be regulated by government, etc. Then, you have many going around saying things like "well, we have to give up some liberties for safety". And . . . well, none of this should surprise any of us.
We are destined to lose our freedom and our civil liberties. It is unavoidable. Every generation of children are raised in a society just a little less free than the prior one. For instance, young adults in 2013 don't know of a world without a TSA or a world where you didn't have to show your ID before boarding a domestic flight or a world where they weren't fear-mongered with threats of terror every single day. The things that have occurred in the last twenty years that repulse us about infringements on every citizen's rights are things which are just "every day life" and "normal" for young adults, today. Kids born today will know nothing of a world when there weren't cameras constantly monitoring and archiving their every move or drones in every city minding the behavior of citizens.
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The idea that history is cyclic is not new, in fact it is one of the foundations of communism.eventually our descendants will trade away the last of their freedoms and once things get bad they will realize they made a mistake. Then their descendants will have a bloody upheaval and freedom will be restored at least for awhile.
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We are destined to lose our freedom and our civil liberties. It is unavoidable.
"Can't win, don't try. Got it."
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Every generation of children are raised in a society just a little less free than the prior one
My solution is simple: we should destroy all technological and scientific knowledge acquired after about 1400 AD and go back to a feudal system. With me as king, obviously.
I feel like exercising my droit de seigneur on a naked, petrified Natalie Portman covered in hot grits right now.
It all depends on what you mean by freedom.
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You are looking at it completely wrong.
Actually, GP isn't. If you look at the survey, it's things like 'trading personal information for more relevant advertising' or 'deals for nearby businesses'. In other words, giving away privacy for coupons.
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Your comment is actually supporting my position. You and I might not think that targetted advertising is worth trading for all your privacy, but apparently these folks do - so it sort of means that the GP is looking at it wrong. There is a perceived benefit which is being traded for privacy.
I personally hate coupons, advertising and prefer to keep my privacy, but apparently I am in the minority.
I don't think there is anything in it for you... and there is nothing in it for you... are not the same thing.
One
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I totally agree with you on all but one point. The end users see *some* value in giving away all their privacy. They might not understand what the consequences are, but they are agreeing to give it away.
I don't use facbook or other social media as such, I find it a pointless waste of time, I don't care who just did a really great big poo, or who went out to where, or what sad fuck is sad right now - but a lot of my friends do - and they seem to be happy to have access to all that stuff in exchange for those
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I don't care who just did a really great big poo
Not even if it's Miley Cyrus?
not old enough!? (Score:2)
the phrase "thank you sir may I have another" has no meaning. they too will learn :) and get off my lawn
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To be honest with you, when they make that trade, because there is "something in it for them", I think they often make bad decisions, because they don't fully understand what they are giving up in exchange.
If they keep that up, they will regret it later.
Under 25 (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say you need them under 25, since science keeps proving my theory that they're still children until 25+
http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familylife/tech_assistance/etraining/adolescent_brain/Development/prefrontal_cortex/index.html [hhs.gov]
This brain region gives an individual the capacity to exercise “good judgment” when presented with difficult life situations. Brain research indicating that brain development is not complete until near the age of 25, refers specifically to the development of the prefrontal cortex.
Seems though that once they're used to being Facebook's bitch, they can age to any level and post justify their adolescent actions. As many on this thread will no doubt show.
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Semantics! (Score:4, Interesting)
The older crowd will share info with people they trust, and the millenials when they can turn a buck. I don't see the difference, really -- the only variable is the currency. Trust relationships are also based on a give-take, but it's implicit. In the latter case, the relationship is an explicit give-take. So what this comes down to is exaggerating the differences between two groups -- and gee, go figure... news agencies thrive on creating differences where none exist in order to generate a story.
14% is very significant (Score:3)
If that eventually translates into 14% growth in profits for themselves, then ad agencies will no doubt try to exploit and encourage the difference.
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Shit, some of us were doing this in the early 80's, on the actual internet, not AOL or some walled garden.
And some of us were doing it in the '60s and '70s in the pub or at the beach. Maybe it's time for a Campaign For Real Life, and let the advertisers try to sell their crap to the void...
i'm in the group that only shares personal data (Score:3)
in exchange for sex.
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in exchange for sex.
Spoken like a true virgin.
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Sorry to break your fantasy but that type of personal data is shared on every breath you take, every move you make. From exhaled aerosols through skin flakes, hair loss and nose droppings. By the time you're geared up (or -down) for having sex you've shared enough to create an army of clones.
Millenials? (Score:2)
Is that like a weed that I can use RoundUp on? Maybe some Landmaster?
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"The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard." - David Gerrold
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FTFY.
Easy to remember (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, it's really easy to remember how things work, and it really doesn't matter what the market is. All you have to is remember one very simple thing and you will have a clue.
If your not paying for the product, you are the product.
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These days, you're the product even if you pay.
At last (Score:2)
What the fuck's a millenial? (Score:2)
Who gives a twopenny toss about what a bunch of children think? They'll change their minds when they've grown up a bit anyway.
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It's a synonym for Generation Y.