Consumers increasingly don’t care that “the lawyers said it was OK because it’s on page 73 subsection C line 4 of the use agreement For the product.” Privacy is the new black.
Things like this do take time. New companies are being built right now that plan to base their entire identity on personal privacy and respect. Someone is building the next generation of competing products that offer privacy as a priority feature. I would cite Apple as a potential candidate in this pack with some caveats and unknowns...
Trust is a tricky thing to establish and virtually impossible to regain. For me, it's not hard to initially gain my trust if the intent is clear. If I feel the vendor of my home security product is actually trying to use the best techniques, encryption schemes, etc. to protect me, I will be much more likely to trust the solution. If I see buzzwordy bullshit on the box or get a whiff of negative experience or intent from other users (whom I trust), you are immediately starting out with -10 to charisma. Good luck getting out of that hole.
The bigger challenge is making people care, they don't understand how their private information gets weaponized against them, usually to manipulate them to spend more.
Just look at the popularity of streaming models, "I know Facebook listens to my conversations but what can I do?" type conversations, the prevalence of porn games on Steam (which broadcasts what you're currently playing to friends and anyone who looks at your profile), and the popularity of porn tube sites
This isn't merely "compartmentalizing their dalliances," it's compartmentalization of public vs private (or at least quasi-private) self.
I really don't think that's a fair assessment. Yes, people are comfortable living their lives in the open, and people do prefer convenience, but is that really because they don't care about privacy? Or is it more because we have all the abilities to do this?
If you grew up before that ability, did you really have all that privacy? Or did you only have it because of the lack of technology, and not by choice.
> the prevalence of porn games on Steam (which broadcasts what you're currently playing to friends and anyone who looks at your profile), and the popularity of porn tube sites
What does this has to do with privacy? Maybe the current generation is just more open about the fact that they look at porn, or play some porn game. It's really not a taboo subject anymore, we all know everyone does it, so why hide it?
I'm sure.
My daughters generation isn't fazed in the least by being bombarded by ads, and I've even heard some of her friends express (paraphrased) "why worry...everyone has something embarrassing on the Net".
Ring is (apparently) wildly popular. I know dozens of houses in my neighborhood who have installed it, and many of them think the privacy invading parts are, at worst, a 'necessary evil', and some folks think the parts like "open access for LEA" are awesome. I've only talked to perhaps 2 homes where they were "I'm not comfortable with that".
Trust is a tricky thing to establish and virtually impossible to regain.
I don't disagree, but I don't think 'trust' is still built on the things it used to be built on.
Imagine being able to type in anyone's name and see their entire search history for the last 10 years. It would be total chaos. We'd have a constitutional amendment enforcing digital privacy within a few months.
Any one of these on its own should be enough but i'm not convinced the average person on the street could tell you what the deal was with any of these scandals.
E.g.: When a wave of echo users are blackmailed after their private conversations or sexcapades are snooped on, then you’d see outcry.
Incognito mode does literally nothing. You're still doing your Google search from the same IP address so they still know it's you and store it the same as anything else.
The only way something even as bad as what you stated will cause a change is if it affects politicians directly and they have personal messages and DM's with back-door dealings revealed that make them look bad. Sadly this is typically the only way things get done now is if there's some personal vested interest in the lawmaker.
I am honestly not sure what would have to happen. Cynical part of me thinks a powerful senator needs to be seriously compromised, exposed and then, if he/she retains power, things might change a little.
Another option is to attempt to run yourself and be the change you want to see, but I have charisma of a wet blanket so it is not an option for me.
Well, sure, because "a breach" isn't anything scary in-and-of-itself, it's just the possibility of something scary.
If tons of people were suddenly victims of credit-card fraud or identity fraud due to the breaches, I don't think that would have been desensitizing in the same way, because that's a real consequence, not just the possibility of one.
South Park plot, Danish Trolls
I can't manage this per device. Some, I don't want to, and most, I can't. Let's move the bandaid from the fingers to the wrist. Sell me a privacy aware router that sends 30% of my packets to 0.0.0.0.
Yes, yes it will be another page from the arm's race. Yes, websites will stop rendering content for not letting the tracking get through. I don't care, I live a year at a time and that is how this race is run. We won't win it, but we can die before we finish.
While an ad-blocker will only work on devices that can install one, a PiHole will drop traffic you don't want regardless of the device requesting it.
Very useful, and no subscription needed.
Is that not sufficient for what you need?
From what I've seen the most important factors in customer use and purchasing behavior are user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, and user experience, in that order. Did I mention user experience?
I've even been a little shocked in the B2B market by how rarely corporate customers ask about privacy or security. Only the most seriously security-conscious customers have ever asked my company about e.g. what kind of crypto we use, and these are people dealing with financial or national security data. Everyone else seems to not even care.
Someone on reddit was making a statement about how they didn't care that X product was secure. So I entered their username into one of these reddit user analyzers. After I asked them how their dog was enjoying the weather in (wherever they were), they promptly deleted those messages and their account.
When people are willing to pay more for privacy focused products, then we'll know that the tide has turned.
Decentralization seems like the only good outcome for privacy but it seems unlikely. Privacy has a monetary value and the simple fact is that most people are willing to trade it for very little.
The move for decentralization seems dwindling but I have hope. If companies become the target of sophisticated cyber attacks, there will emerge an economic opportunity for decentralization.
Or when politicians realize that people care and start including stricter laws as part of their electoral campaigns. Privacy shouldn't have to come at a cost.
It absolutely is not. There is no evidence of this. Also, why do I keep seeing privacy stories about only one of the video doorbell vendors?
You can argue how successful their privacy-first search engine is or isn’t going to be. But I think this is yet more evidence that the pendulum of privacy is starting to swing back in the opposite direction.
This is the beginning of change.
My internet connected device (not factory IoT) goes through extensive lengths to not ask for a password or ask the user to make an account or provide any data outside exactly what I need to do the job. It’s a lot more work.
At the end of the day, I think privacy loss will have to have a materially negative impact on people's lives before they start to care enough to change their behavior. Right now, the only material negative impact requires what I would characterize as fear mongering.