People Are Concerned About Their Privacy In Theory, Not Practice, Says New Study (fortune.com) 62
A new privacy survey from IBM's Institute for Business Value found that 81% of consumers say they've become more concerned about how companies use their data, while 87% think companies should be more heavily regulated on personal data management. Three-quarters of the people felt like they were less likely to trust companies with data and 89% said companies should be clearer about how their products use data. Given these findings, you'd think people would take actions in response to companies losing or misusing their data -- but they're not. Fortune reports: 71% said that they were willing to give up privacy to get access to what technology can offer. Only 45% have updated their privacy settings on products in response and 16% walked away from a company because of data misuse. It's already been clear that one reasons for big data leaks is because there is little financial risk to companies, as Motherboard reported. This new data suggests that companies have even less to worry about, as most people are willing to keep doing business with them.
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Posting two stories based on the same original study, 5:20 hours apart. Well done Slashdot.
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Well duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if we, as a society, had lawmakers and regulators that gave a shit about our personal information, we wouldn't have articles like this that say 'so do people really even care?'.... we would just have our damn privacy.... and maybe give some of that up (KNOWINGLY, perhaps for MONEY) for the furtherance of big data applications.
Re: Well duh... (Score:1)
Better the lawmaker and regulator we know than the corporate scumbags that we don't.
If we hadn't had regulatory oversight, every road and railway in the US would have different widths and none would interconnect without an "interconnect station" which would serve only to bottleneck and frustrate travellers.
Moronic old people who thing regulation is bad think stuff like that is no big deal. They need to have their arses kicked out of the US and sent to countries where retirement isn't a thing, let alone soci
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So you want to be a slave to lawmakers and regulators now.
Grow up.
From the government, to big corporations, to money itself, you are going to be a "slave" to something or someone. At least you have some control over the government.
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That is really the point of the story, People care about their privacy but a too lazy to protect it, so that means, they will push government to do it for them and they will push, harder and harder and harder until they get it. Once they achieve their goal of forcing government to protect their privacy, voila, they no longer have to do anything about doing it themselves. See how it 'WILL' work. You only have to force government once and well, continue to fend off corrupt corporations, corrupt lobbyists and
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It is not a matter of people being too lazy to protect their data. It is more that corporations, web sites, corrupt or not, do things that make it difficult for the public to protect their data. With obscure wording of privacy protection settings, burying privacy settings so deep in a hierarchy those settings can not be found, to requiring multiple selections be set a certain way to get the privacy expected corporations are purposely making it difficult for the public to protect their privacy. Since what
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Not only does it take a great deal of effort ( and knowledge / skill to implement ) but, we're fighting against those whose sole purpose is to hoover up as much information as they can about everyone. ( Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et. al )
They have armies of intelligent folks working this problem from the opposite end.
They have nearly unlimited budgets to do it with.
There is nearly zero oversight over how much data they are allowed to pull and what they do with it because Big Brother ( Government ) loves
Wrong interpretation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that people are not practically concerned about privacy is like saying smokers are not practically concerned about their health. Most definitely are, they are just too addicted and lack the will power to quit that known hazardous habit.
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People are concerned also in practice, not just in theory. But many lack the will power or are outright too lazy to take the appropriate measures.
It's not lacking the willpower, it's lacking the overall concern. Are people concerned about their privacy? Yep. Are people willing to sell it in exchange for a product that can't be had any other way? Also Yes.
There's no dichotomy between theory and practice here.
In theory (Score:2)
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is." Yogi Berra
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Dupe from 5 posts ago on the front page :(
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The editors only kinda, sorta care about dupes.
It's the questions, actually (Score:3)
Asking whether we care about anonymized traffic tracking is one thing, but the cold hard reality is that the actual traffic collection systems record your actual plate and indicator and cell and aren't actually anonymized.
So if you ask people if it's ok for them to know traffic patterns, they say sure.
But if you ask if it's ok for police officers to get information without a warrant, including pictures of your face and the exact times you are travelling, coordinated with the visit to the liquor store and who was in your car, they say no.
Stop being p3rvY
Privacy is only of concern (Score:2)
when money can be made off it by suing someone. So yeah 'the public' (lawyers) are really interested in privacy. The majority of people never cares or more importantly, understands, how their data is shared as long as it's not embarrassing them personally or they can accrue some benefits of it.
Um, wait... (Score:2)
Going with the 'consumer choices reveal minimal interest in privacy' angle would be one thing if we could compare between known good and known bad actors with
Info overload? (Score:1)
Perhaps not enough of their friends have been majorly burned or not enough news stories about burned people have been shown to make them focus. There's a lot of potential problems floating around that all vie for our attention: pollution, climate change, additives, old meat in one's fridge, traffic accidents, termites, overdue re-roofing, physical home security, insurance scams, fake news, upgrading from Windows XP, remembering to make data back-ups, etc.
Longer than Hamlet (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that people can read and understand terms and conditions is ridiculous. The idea that people knowingly agree to Ts and Cs is a lie. The Ts&Cs are too long for even a lawyer to read:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
Read and get all the details buried in a document longer than Hamlet, including all the little nuances? Not realistic.
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The idea that people can read and understand terms and conditions is ridiculous. The idea that people knowingly agree to Ts and Cs is a lie. The Ts&Cs are too long for even a lawyer to read:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
Read and get all the details buried in a document longer than Hamlet, including all the little nuances? Not realistic.
Hence why these documents are not enforceable in court. In the UK you have the legal concept of the "reasonable man" and that any contract must be understandable by the reasonable man in order to be enforceable. At best they protect the company against being sued by their customers, but even then it doesn't magically indemnify them, especially against consumer rights.
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Read and get all the details buried in a document longer than Hamlet, including all the little nuances? Not realistic.
Well I wouldn't mind quite that much if there was one version of Hamlet or even a reasonable family tree of licenses with proper revision control. Reality is though that ever company writes their own Hamlet-like book copy-pasting vast amounts of boilerplate but putting their own twist on it. And they'll randomly and without warning make some minor edit on it and ask you to re-agree to the whole agreement without any indication what has changed. Something like the CC licenses but for commercial terms or at l
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Unfortunately, courts in the USA have already ruled that its permissible for contracts to state one thing in the summary and contradict it in the details, with the detailed version controlling.
Privacy is not... (Score:2)
... an individual problem. The fibre optic cable we've laid over the planet has given private businsses trivial ability to defraud and force policies on the population. Online drm in videogames and the theft of PC games more generally over the last 20 years starting with rebadging PC RPG's as mmo's and steam in 2004 with half life.
The public cannot hope to defend itself when they are 100's of miles away from these companies. The idea that any one individual can hope to fight off the attacks of every comp
Irony that these websites talk about privacy (Score:1)
I find it ironic that these three websites are reporting on if people care about privacy while the same websites share the web page visit with so many third parties.
In other words... (Score:2)
In other words, they want government to save them from themselves, right?
People have been concerned about smog in theory... (Score:1)
People say they're concerned about their use of heroin, and yet they keep using heroin. I guess they don't care in practice.
Eventually people will take action on privacy, by electing politicians who will meaningfully regulate the big tech monopolies. Collective action is required here.
article summarized (Score:2)
Article summarized:
Mugging-industry shills write report saying most people in theory don't want to get mugged, but since most of them have not yet learned Krav Maga and several other martial arts, _clearly_ they don't really mind getting mugged.
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I'm concerned... (Score:1)
and financial transactions, too? (Score:1)
That Playboy subscription your bought in college? That bong you bought at your local dispensary? Those psychiatric services you received? If, for some strange reason, you didn't pay cash, then it's all on your permanent record.
Sure, we all love and trusts banks with our lives... but do they share this information with third parties? If not today, then maybe tomorrow? Pl
This closes the circle (Score:2)
In theory, there is no difference... (Score:2)
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/... [wikiquote.org]
No way out (Score:2)
We the people aren't concerned "in practice" because there is literally no way to opt out of data sharing. There are all kinds of services that we use every day on condition of being willing to allow the vendor to use and share data about us. Pretty much all of the WWW relies on advertising, which is one big privacy breach. Go ahead, try an ad-blocker, see how well that works for you. Try NoScript, the Web suddenly becomes inaccessible to you.
What's a person to do? Get angry? What's the point?