Privacy Fears Deterring Almost Half of American Households From Online Shopping (bbc.com) 64
Many Americans are growing increasingly concerned about privacy and security. According to a survey, almost half of American households with at least one Internet user have been deterred from online activity recently. The online activity includes doing online transactions, banking, and posting things on social media, said the survey of 41,000 households by a Department of Commerce agency. BBC reports: When respondents were asked what concerned them the most about online privacy and security, 63% said identity theft. The respondents, who were allowed to give multiple answers, also cited credit card or banking fraud (45%), data collection by online services (23%), loss of control over personal data (22%) and data collection by the government (18%); 13% also said they were concerned about threats to personal safety. The data suggested 19% of US online households had been affected by an online security breach in the previous year. The NTIA said this represented about 19 million American households.
Re:I like how they survey a very small subset... (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever I search for something on Amazon, it stalks me all around the web. I searched for the word "tarp" once (someone asked me how much they usually cost) and for several weeks afterwards, every web site on the planet was showing me ads for tarps- from Amazon and from other shady tarp-sellers. It's just creepy. What if you're at work and your laptop keeps displaying ads for stuff like this? [amazon.com] I don't really like firing up IE just to find crap on Amazon. That's just too high of a price to pay.
Web browsers have come the modern equivalent of the telescreens in Orwell's 1984- but Orwell never realized how popular telescreens would be. ("Big Brother gave me this new telescreen and it's huge, 2 mm thinner, comes with a front side camera, and I get an exercise instructor to monitor my fitness!")
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Web browsers have come the modern equivalent of the telescreens in Orwell's 1984- but Orwell never realized how popular telescreens would be.
He did actually. When the hero gets a new flat the landlord apologises that it does not have a telescreen, which implies that most tenants would have expected one as standard. [Spoiler alert ------------------ it turns out that there is a hidden one]
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Re:I like how they survey a very small subset... (Score:4, Interesting)
Err... you do know how statistical sampling works, don't you? If a bin holds a thousand widgets, and 50 of the first 100 randomly selected widgets are defective, you can by 95% certain that the number of defective widgets in the bin is between 450 and 550.
41,000 households is not a small sample. The big question is to what degree the sampling methods are biased rather than random. But unless the sampling method is astonishingly and probably obviously bad, the inescapable conclusion is that a lot of households are sufficiently worried enough about privacy to curb their online shopping.
On the other hand -- half of all households who do shop online is still a lot of households. Plenty to support a lot of online retailers.
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you can by 95% certain that the number of defective widgets in the bin is between 450 and 550
I'm not a statistician by any means, but isn't that assuming a normal distribution?
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A binary variable (as opposed to, say, weight) doesn't really have a distribution.
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Sure it can. I'm not talking about the number of possible outcomes in a given test (like you said, binary: pass and fail). What I'm talking about is the number of actual outcomes over many tests (how many failed in a given sample): 50 in the first 100, 35 in the second 100, 60 in the third, etc.
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I don't see what you're getting at. A sample is just that, a sample. If you want the exact number, you have to do the whole lot.
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So you have 10 batches of 100 widgets each. You do 100% testing on the first batch, and find 50 failures. Now, the question is what you can predict about the failure rates of the other 9 batches?
If the rate of failure is a normal distribution with a mean of 1/2, then you would expect around 450-550 failures total, with a 95% certainty. However, if the rate of failure is a decaying exponential, for example, then the first batch would have a much higher failure rate than subsequent batches, and you would not
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...and it's got a good chance of being wrong because you can't guarantee that you're not just hitting a cluster of one kind of people. It's like sampling a section of Neapolitan ice cream and getting mostly chocolate, then assuming that it must be 95% chocolate because your sample wasn't very good.
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He talked about biased samples. Learn to read.
Also, if it's a 95% confidence interval it doesn't have a"a good chance" of being wrong. It has a 5% chance of being wrong, which for many purposes is acceptable.
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OK. so why is the conclusion not supported by reality? As the AC points out - online shopping profits are at record highs. If people are leaving in large numbers why is this not hurting online sales?
Instead of being a an ass, back up your assertions with facts, because I sincerely doubt that's what this article is doing. Learn how to think critically.
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What's that got to do with you being a mathematical ignoramus?
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It has to do with the fact that the conclusion being drawn by the math and the reality of the sales figures don't support each other as they should. It's like saying "the videogame industry is dying" after steam releases a report that indicates record profits.
It's astonishing that you're too stupid to understand that.
RL shops can spy on you too (Score:3, Interesting)
They can simply do open WLANs which the phones log in to or detect you when you don't pay with cash. And one thing almost nobody hides when they go to a shop: their face. Camera face tracking technology is almost free these days, the shops can monitor you almost as good as online shops can.
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I doubt most places would bother. I owned and ran a cafe for a while and to be honest we were up to out necks in work and barely making enough to survive, so we had neither the time nor inclination for messing around with spy tech and wireless logs.
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No, its completely passive when searching for acces points. Instead it works the other way round, with the access points sending a beacon frame [wikipedia.org], usually ten times per second.
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Nigerian Inheiritence (Score:2)
I hope everyone is occasionally deterred from some online activities. Certain are just plain dodgy, like getting your news from the beeb. But exercising some caution is not the same as air-gap isolation.
This isn't bad news... (Score:2)
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The reality is quite simple, targeted advertisements have a very damaging subconscious impact. They see that alignment of advertisements with their behaviour and are subconsciously disturbed by it without actually expressing that concern, simply curtailing the behaviour that brings it about. We know what is going on and consciously protecting ourselves or even providing misinformation to contaminate the database, as computer geeks and nerds. They do not (it's all the magic box that does, magic things, they
Why worry about credit cards? (Score:3)
I've never understood why anyone worries about their credit card information when shopping online: it's literally the least-valuable information that I possess, insofar as its compromise will affect me.
I'm not liable for any fraudulent charges made with my card, and reporting mis-use is the work of a few moments (unless the bank notices it first and notifies me, in which case its even less work for me). A replacement card will be in my mailbox in a few days.
Is it a minor hassle to update the card number on file with various merchants I do business with? Certainly, and I'd rather such a situation if possible, but it's a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.
Other information -- social security numbers, for example -- are much more valuable to criminals (which is dumb: there really should be some better way of identifying someone), and it's a good thing such information is only rarely needed and asked for. In general, SSNs can't be changed and it's a huge pain to recover from identity theft, but a stolen credit card? That's a minor inconvenience, at worst.
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I've never understood why anyone worries about their credit card information .... I'm not liable for any fraudulent charges made with my card, and reporting mis-use is the work of a few moments ..... A replacement card will be in my mailbox in a few days.
You need to convince the bank that any transactions between its being compromised or stolen and your notifying them were not in fact yours. Good luck with that. I would not notice a fraudulent charge until the next monthly statement
But you sound as if your cards are often compromised, lost or stolen, so it's all the more suprising if your bank cancels the fraudulant charges at the drop of a hat. You must have such a reputation with them that I wonder why they don't cancel your contract instead.
Re:Why worry about credit cards? (Score:4, Interesting)
You need to convince the bank that any transactions between its being compromised or stolen and your notifying them were not in fact yours. Good luck with that. I would not notice a fraudulent charge until the next monthly statement
I'm not sure where you live, but in the US it's quite easy: most banks allow you to simply mark one or more particular charges as fraudulent using their online banking website. Otherwise, you can report the card as lost/stolen using the website or by calling them. One time, ten years ago, they sent me a form I had to sign and mail back (at their expense) to attest that the charge was fraudulent. Took me about 30 seconds. The one other time I've reported it since then, it was all online with no paperwork. The one time the bank caught it before I did, no paperwork was necessary: they called me, described the suspicious transaction, I confirmed it was fraudulent, and they handled it from there.
There's never been any adversarial questioning or anything from the bank, it's simply routine.
But you sound as if your cards are often compromised, lost or stolen, so it's all the more suprising if your bank cancels the fraudulant charges at the drop of a hat. You must have such a reputation with them that I wonder why they don't cancel your contract instead.
It's happened to me three times in 15 years, never through any fault of my own. I'd hardly consider that "often" or somehow deserving of a "reputation". Even if it was somehow considered excessive, I find it hard to believe that a bank would drop a long-time client simply because they were frequently the victim of crime.
In each case, it's been quite obvious that the charges were unusual and fraudulent: As an example, when my card was compromised one time I lived in Arizona and I regularly made various routine charges (e.g. groceries, gas, food, etc.). It didn't really make sense that my card was used to buy $300 worth of gasoline at a gas station in Florida 20 minutes after I bought my regular groceries in Arizona, so the bank flagged the transaction and called me. Another time it was used to buy household appliances in some distant state I'd never visited to be delivered to an address I had no connection with whatsoever.
Either way, dealing with the aftermath of the fraudulent credit card usage was only the most minor inconvenience. I don't understand why people get so worked up about such things: I'd be more concerned with my name, address, and other account details getting leaked since those can't be changed as easily (if at all).
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That's the theory set forth by the ba
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That's why I essentially never use debit cards and advocate the use of credit cards: if I contest a charge on a debit card, I'm contesting whether or not I should get my own money back and, as you say, the money may be unavailable during the investigation.
With credit cards, I'm contesting if I owe the bank money and I'm under no obligation to pay until the investigation and any related processes are ongoing.
In regards to eBay, the merchants never get your credit card information. Virtually all transactions
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I'm under no obligation to pay until the investigation and any related processes are ongoing.
Sorry, it's late. I meant to say I'm under no obligation to pay until the investigation and any related processes are complete (and I'd only need to pay if the investigation shows the charge was legitimate; obviously I'd not need to pay if the charge was fraudulent).
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I don't disagree with what you say, but I would like to add something in defense of debit cards: they do not go on your credit record. I try to stay under the radar as much as possible. Financial people call me a "ghost" as I have no credit history. Zero. And I like it that way.
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Is it a minor hassle to update the card number on file with various merchants I do business with? Certainly....
I don't consider it a minor hassle to change the card number for all my auto-billing, but ok, I get what you're saying. Personally, I like using Paypal for online purchases because that way you only have one point of possible failure. Leaving your card numbers, along with your billing info, on dozens of servers is just asking for trouble, IMO. I have friends and relatives who are afraid to use their credit cards online, and I always tell them to use PayPal for everything, for the reasons I mentioned. I've b
The profit-centric view (Score:2)
FTA:
"[Our] initial analysis only scratches the surface of this important area, but it is clear that policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the internet and the resulting chilling effects."
Hmmm... "chilling effects". Are they worried about the chilling effect on sharing ideas and doing useful research? Are they worried about the effect on the Web as a kind of social hangout? (I mean the kind of 'social hangout' the Internet was before the 'play date' v
Part of the problem? (Score:2)
Aren't the venerable institutions of hospitals, insurances, lenders, CC companies, credit reporting serrvices, all asking for your crown jewel - SS# - or parts thereof and the bribed lawmakers allowing one unique key assigned to every person in the US used to index every fart one is doing the very cause of distrust? Try asking one of those mega $ corporations to please give me a dump of what personal data you store about me and see what respone you get - NIL! One needs to hire and pay a lawyer to make any
I have insightful observations on this topic (Score:1)
...but I'm afraid to post them online.
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I got a call from them not long after XP expired when there were precisely zero windows machines in the house.
I'm pretty impressed that they're willing to help Linux users.
I fear bricks and mortar stores more (Score:2)
Imagine standing at the checkout and the clerk pages the pharmacy over the PA for a price check on dragon dildos.
Deterred? (Score:2)
Buy your stuff online from a trusted site. (Score:2)
I think one reason why Amazon has been extremely successful is that they have been among the most diligent in protecting their retail web site from a hacker attack. They better be, given they are the world's largest online retailer and also a major provider of cloud computer services.
My parents (Score:2)
My parents are over 65 years old, my Dad a retired Sr. Electrical Eng. III who worked at Applied Materials and my Mom a (still working) computer lab educator (teaches kids computers). Neither of them will shop online, they outright refuse to give their credit card information to anyone. They are fine with email and browsing websites but have this mentality that credit cards are only for emergencies and should never be used for convenience. They still pay for groceries with a checkbook and for any store that