Ask HN: How to convince my gf to think more about online privacy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to convince my gf to think more about online privacy?

12 pointsbkfh19 comments

Coming from a tech background, I take a wide range of privacy precautions. I use Facebook's browser version instead of its mobile app, I try to give as little rights to local apps as possible, I use Firefox Multiple Containers on desktop to not surf the web while being logged in to Google, Facebook et al and I use a range of script blockers, all because I think it's worth the additional privacy I get. I hate being tracked across the web.

My gf however doesn't care that much about privacy and is wondering why she gets so much targeted ads on all the platforms she is using.

My problem is that I have a hard time explaining her why it's so essential to think about privacy and be careful with your data in a simple way.

How do you argue with non-tech people about the importance of online privacy?

View on HN

In this particular case, there's probably no need to argue.

If she mentions the targeting, I'd go for something like "yeah, creepy isn't it?" then briefly explain how FB, or whoever, are doing it. Follow this up by, "I can help reduce it if you want" or similar.

I'd only push harder if it's affecting you directly in a way you consider negative. Then I'd make it about you not about abstract privacy concerns.

Something like "I'm trying to control my privacy on the net and FB can track X when you post Y. Would you mind doing Z so that they can't?". Ideally, you can then pivot it into the "creepy" conversation above and help her control her privacy too.

This is the best suggestion I’ve seen in this thread so far.

Unfortunately, I can only give it one upvote.

It might help to make this about feminism, if she is into that sort of thing.

I am a woman. I was a homemaker for a lot of years. Getting a public life has been a difficult experience. In spite of spending most of my life around the military and being fairly savvy about information security, I still did incredibly dumb stuff for the longest time.

I have only recently concluded that this is at least partly rooted in how women get socialized differently from men. Women are expected to give other people access to us in a way men are not. We are actively groomed in many ways to be professional victims. I see her behavior as rooted in that type of socialization. She doesn't like being targeted, yet can't imagine doing anything to protect herself.

Maybe reading up on some of the current buzz words (if you don't already know them), like emotional labor, and rolling your eyes at how she is letting companies take advantage of her, just like rape culture trains girls to let men take advantage of them will be a hook that opens up productive discussion.

(Try to tread lightly. Custom fit to your situation. Other provisos likely apply.)

Best.

Do you have any reading suggestions that helped you open your eyes to the grooming phenomena you describe?

I am 52 years old. I have read a lot of stuff over the years on a wide variety of subjects, from research into women's issues to social psychology to negotiation books. I also did a bunch of therapy in my teens and twenties to sort out my own issues.

I wish I had a short list of reading recommendations for you to sum this stuff up in a nutshell. I don't. I blog about what I think about such things because I am still trying to sort it all out myself and I don't know of anyone or anything that yet has it all figured out.

Ground zero of your position is the premise that you are actually capable of maintaining privacy despite the growing arsenal of Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, ATT, Comcast, etc. [1] while your attack surface is ever expanding. [2]

Random relationship advice from the internet:

The decision to tell one's lady friend that she is using her iPhone wrong suggests a disposition to pursue unwinnable battles. In terms of privacy, your lady friend's pragmatic approach may be less satisfying, but you may be better off accepting it than tilting at windmills. Trying to stick it to Google is an identifying data point.

Good luck.

[1]: Never mind state actors. Mind browser fingerprinting.

[2]: Your social graph leaks information...the business that uses gmail, the colleague who loads their contacts into Linkedin, the FBfriend who shares a link on your timeline, and everything else that allows triangulation.

> I take a wide range of privacy precaution

> I use Facebook's browser version instead of its mobile app

> I use Firefox Multiple Containers on desktop to not surf the web while being logged in to Google, Facebook et al

I'm very confused. It sounds like both you and your gf don't care that much about privacy. Surely you know, because of your tech background, that Google's and Facebook's level of fingerprinting is beyond just using a browser vs. a mobile app, or even using multiple containers.

IMO, if you’re still using Facebook and/or Google, then you don’t really care about privacy. There is no plugin or other technique you can use to protect yourself against them, except to just not use them at all.

Beyond that, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force them to drink the privacy koolaid.

Would you rather have untargeted, irrelevant ads?

Yes, please.

If I'm at a page about comic books, I don't want to see ads about contact lenses or glasses that I was looking for a couple hours ago.

I used to trust much more the ads when they weren't targeted as they are now, and that's just because the ads on a page were related to the content, and not the result of fingerprint and an attack on my privacy.

You need to make the abstract threat more concrete. Set up a microphone in the house and after a couple of days play it back to her sped up and with all the silence cut out.

Look her in the eyes and tell her, "This is what Google is doing to us because you aren't careful. But I love you, so I'm asking you to stop."

That would be illegal, without having her sign a 100 page EULA.

Nonsense. All you have to do is post a notice on your door that informs entrants everything is recorded. (This is not legal advice.)

Short answer - and you may not like this - is, you CAN'T.

Anything you say will likely fall on deaf ears, or worse, be ridiculed / derided.

People like you and me and others here in HN - in the ways we think and act - are a very very small minority, I'd say < 1% of the general population.

I even tried this with my male friends (still living in India), guys I grew up with, who were posting their phone # on facebook walls. Even after I sent them stories of how facebook has no privacy, leaks data, sells data and that people were getting murdered and robbed from info they were posting on facebook etc, hardly anyone heeded my advice.

The response I always got back was

"Dude, you are being too paranoid. Chill."

15 years ago, we were using "your TV is spying on you" as an example of how paranoid some people could be. These days, your PS4 account literally stores a picture of your face and your birth date.

It's crazy how slippery the slope has become.

Arguing hasn't much success, what I recommend is cruel but perhaps work. Get some "not too private" but definitely not publicated photos of her and tell you found them online. Maybe you can make a fake website as well. Ask the question her if this could be stolen what else they can access.

Indeed that would be a cruel way to teach her. My point is that I'm having a hard time finding 'down to earth' arguments why one should think about online privacy.

Whenver I give an argument, she usually can't relate much to it e.g. 'once you hand your data over, you can't get it back. it's out there and no one knows what will happen with it and who will control it.'

Yes I agree, this is the main point. I had quite a lot discussions in the past with my friends and relatives, the thing is, non-tech people doesn't understand the problem itself. I have a friend, I still couldn't convince her to get rid of her 1st gen winXP.

That sounds like just plain lying as it is not caused by lack of privacy controls.

<sarcasm>In my opinion, lying is always the best way to improve serious relationships. </sarcasm>

Reply on news.ycombinator.com