My brother seems to not care about his online privacy. He registers to services too easily without pondering, he’s not outraged we need a fucking account to use a vacuum cleaner, it seems he doesn’t care about all the potential risks of having videos of our indoors saved in a cloud. I don’t have strong arguments to convince him that privacy matters other than “if someone gets that, you could be in trouble” and “it’s like having someone watching you h24” and so on. How can i persuade him?
I remember a discussion with a friend of mine while I was probably droning about privacy, surveillance capitalism, etc.
She politely listened then said she didn’t really mind or care.
I feel quite strongly about this and as I know she is pretty smart was somehow surprised by her reaction so I tried to illustrate my point more directly. We were in a bar so it went a bit like this :
- A: so, can I ask you how much you earn?
- B: yes, sure
- A: can I tell others here in the bar
- B: I guess
- A: can I instead sell others that information so that they can try to sell you goods and services?
- B: no
So my point was that she associated a problem with privacy with a friend who might be a bit curious. When she started to see it as a systematic commercial endeavor that was unfair to her, she did change her mind.
Maybe a short thought experiment like this could help your brother see what’s troubling to you?
You can’t. As more generations are born into a world where 24 hour a day surveillance, constant data tracking, and a monthly subscription for literally everything are the norms the expectation of any kind of privacy will sound like something from a history book.
Soon it will seem odd to people that anyone wouldn’t want every thought and action to be tracked and recorded by our corporate overlords. People who try to maintain any type of real privacy will be seen as misanthropic at best or highly suspicious at worst.
If they agree that Trump/Republicans are fascist, ask them why they think it’s an acceptable risk to allow the government to construct the most pervasive and advanced surveillance state that has ever existed for fascism — a system so advanced it would make Himmler cream his pants — why build big brother so all they have to do is simply take over, turn a key, and use it against the world?
If they’re insane and think Trump/Republicans are the good guys, repeat the above but swap out the perpetrator for liberals/trans/immigrants, or whatever “other” is the flavor of the week.
If they’re not American, ask them what they think will happen if the world’s strongest ever superpower — a kleptocratic failed state, straddling the knifes edge of fascism — with a secret police who have backdoor access to the tracking device in their pocket, all their data, and all their historic communications — became a fascist dictatorship? … Point out how “woke” they are (sex before marriage, gay marriage, whatever) … and ask them how comfortable they would be if the tens of thousands of people working at the NSA/CIA were converted into fascist “troll farms”, and started using AI and analytics of all their personal data, to unilaterally wage a cyber war on everyone they deem “woke”? Do they think their government or military could defend them from a bad actor that has the ability to hack anyone on Earth… A bad actor who, if they want you out of the picture, just has to remote into your machine, download some child porn, and tip off the local police… Good luck trying to prove your innocence. You don’t even know what most of those words mean! You weren’t even aware that this was a possibility 30 seconds ago!
Find his information in a data breach and log into one of his accounts. Post something to prove it and show him how important it is to care about privacy/security
Holy shit dude! His email has been recently involved in a data breach but i’ve made him change it. I should’ve asked this question before 😄
There’ll be more breaches. Believe that.
Don’t do this. It’s illegal in most countries and could result in criminal charges.
Instead, DM them and ask “Hey, is your password for x still y”? That’s usually enough for people to feel vulnerable and start to take this shit seriously.
Yes. And if possible message them with encrypted messaging, like signal or at least Whatsapp, not discord. Then again, the credentials are already public.
This will be something of a unhelpful and unpopular answer, by you probably can’t.
What would convince you to stop eating meat from factory farms? What would convince you to only buy electronics from completely ethically sourced companies? What would convince you to only eat healthy nutritional food? To exercise regularly? So on and so forth?
There are many good and important, but inconvenient, things to do. But for most folks, the first step is wanting to. If he doesn’t, it will be an uphill battle.
Kind of unfair considering there isn’t ethical consumption under capitalism.
Your not wrong, though that kinda re-enforces my point. What would it take to convince a society to abandon an inherently unethical economic system?
Dunno, I wake up and ask myself that every day. How do people want to be a slave?
I still can’t roll my head across the reason as to why a vaccum cleaner needs an account? What is next, account for using the faucet or toaster?
That will never…
…oh no.
It seems the question now isn’t whether an appliance will get smart features, it’s a question of when.
Also whether non-smart versions will remain an option.
Don’t give them ideas, ffs
In my experience, /most/ people don’t care and further, they don’t want to care.
Even those that do care have to exist on a sliding scale of compromise in order to function.
easy: “why do you wear clothes?”
Of course he keeps his credit card number and such private. So he cares about privacy.
What you are talking about is related to privacy, but about others’ actions. How can companies and governments abuse us by spying on us? That is where we see interesting things. If I wanna fix my car with a $50 part but it’s off brand so I gotta pay $500 instead, that’s not cool. If McDonald’s charges me more for a Big Mac right after pay day, that’s messed up. If the grocery store charges more for a box of eggs because their ID system knows the customer is poor, that’s messed up. And this is the present and future. These examples are all about privacy, control, and equality.
It depends on the kind of risks you have in mind.
Are you worried about someone hacking an account, stealing passwords and committing identity theft? If so, the stakes are pretty high, but the probability is low as long as your brother takes care of updates and passwords. Also, avoiding shady software and sites helps too. I prefer to call this category security, but it certainly has privacy aspects too. IMO online security should be a high priority.
However, if you’re mainly concerned about Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google and other companies collecting data about you, the situation is very different. I call this thing privacy, and the risks are smaller, but the probability is very high.
When it comes to security, you just need to show what has happened to other people who screwed up and made themselves an easy target. However, privacy is a bit trickier. Appreciation of privacy is a more philosophical matter, since the practical side of it isn’t as tangible. If your brother doesn’t have certain values, principles or philosophy, it’s going to be difficult to convince him that privacy matters.
If your brother already takes good care of online security, but ignores privacy, you could talk about the way companies use your data. Focus on the ethical side of these practices. If not, forget about privacy and focus on security instead, since that should always be the higher priority.
You don’t
Privacy is something that is fairly personal and different for each person. Trying to force it one someone is going to end badly and will not help at all.
Ask him for his passwords, and when he says no, ask him to explain why. He’ll surely have things he doesn’t want you to access. Then explain that other people he doesn’t even know have that access right now, because he keeps thoughtlessly giving away digital access using apps and linked accounts.
If he gives you his passwords, log into his stuff and print his browser history or something. Stick it to his fridge.
This is something I struggle with constantly. I feel like everybody around me does not care about their privacy. All of them say the typical “Why go through all the effort, sacrificing a lot of functionality and convenience for the sake of privacy? I have nothing to hide!”. It drives me crazy, and I feel kind of powerless without a convincing argument that makes them at least understand that installing stuff like Instagram on your phone is basically willingly installing a virus. They don’t even get surprised anymore when the ads they see are about stuff they were talking about with someone else in real life, and never mentioned or searched in their phones. I’m afraid that this will only get worse with time, and new generations that are being born under these circumstances are going to see it as normal. This means that making them understand the implications of not taking their privacy seriously is going to be harder and harder. I won’t give up, though. I’m still searching for my “irrefutable argument”.
Some time ago, concerned with toxicity on their World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard Entertainment decided to implement a “RealID” system which would attach the customer’s real name from their records to their forum post. In a sort of “self immolation” protest to show Blizzard how absolutely terrible the idea was, myself and a few others posted our own names willingly before the new system was implemented. It was predictably bad as you might imagine and the plans were scrapped entirely.
