Seriously? You're blaming the victim?
The person whose nudes were stolen and published did not deserve it and did not ask for it, but it's not productive to tell them (and society at large) that there was nothing they could have done to avoid or mitigate the situation. There are bad actors in this world and we all do things tens or even hundreds of times a day to minimize their impact.
The recommendation to not ever send a device with secret information to maintenance and repair still applies. As I said perhaps the device never reached Google. That is probably relevant for liability, perhaps the delivery service is at fault.
It doesn't even have to be a malicious actor, the repair process could expose such images to the technician in some cases.
Somebody else: "You should probably take or hide the cash when you get out of your car."
Offering wisdom for how to avoid a bad situation twice is not the same thing as blaming the victim.
I would blame the mechanic, sue if necessary, but it's still good advice not to let any valuable in your car if you lend it to a 3rd party.
Advice that is strongly needed, because most people think "they have nothing to hide" until they discover than:
- they do
- they can't
The “advice” would also apply if you ever logged into your bank or bought anything, if you ever read your email, if you have any secret keys or certificates for authentication of anything, if you ever visited a web site or searched for something you wouldn’t want someone else to see, if you have a list of contacts, if you have any personally identifiable information, if you ever worked on something considered confidential by your employer, etc., etc., etc.
It's not an "or" proposition.
You can fully push for a society where such behavior is dealt with or inexistant, because that's the right thing to do.
At the same time, you can ackownledge this life is full of terrible unfair things, and preparing for them can spare you a lof of pain.
I agree, but I’m confused; I didn’t make an or proposition, and you followed that statement with one. We can realistically deal with privacy problems using laws, and we cannot realistically ever expect people to never repair devices that have private information on them. Right?
There’s also an unfortunate environmental downside to suggesting that people avoid repair.
And deal with privacy problems at the society levels, not just using laws in particular.
And it's not "or" them. It's "and".
You defended the specific idea of avoiding repair. If we’re talking about other “precautions”, I’m not sure what you mean because you haven’t made it clear.
My point, I guess, is that “advice” about taking “precautions” really does boil down to victim blaming. There are no reasonable precautions that the general public can take when sending a device in for repair; private information will be available to the person with physical access to the device.
We already have some laws protecting against privacy violations, and the issue in this article is likely covered by some of them. The remaining solution is for Google or Google’s subcontractor to be held accountable and pay damages, which is exactly what is needed to address privacy problems at the social level: consequences for breach.
Otherwise, I don’t see how your suggestion to take “precautions” is helpful or realistic.
However the number of mistakes along the way is ridiculous: taking nudes in the first place, not wiping/backing-up your data regularly, not using 2fa, etc.
These would not be an issue if you would never send your device back to google."Don't be evil" as a motto is just a facade, it's well-known throughout history that if you want to do something evil or bad, you do it in plain sight, especially when the entire globe knows about you.
Unless people don't get "hit" by the reality: google is not the saviour of humanity and it has many flaws, many of which >can't< be avoided statistically speaking, considering the amount of employees and people they effectively manage, then no lesson will be learned.
Bringing awareness to the issue could help.
It is NOT what you do in order to determine fault if a bad thing DOES happen.
Not to tell adults after their privacy has been violated.
Do you really find it a useful comment? Was it not an immediately obvious conclusion that none of this would have happened if they had just fired their phone into outer space rather than hope to have their warranty honored?
But still. Come on.
Google is supposed to be trusted with the world's emails, photos, and other Android data backups. If it is necessary to take precautions against Google misusing data, then that cuts to the heart of their business model, and is a material threat to consumers that they should be informed about.
risk = probability X severity.
If something is a big deal to you, take precautions, even if it's unlikely, because the severity is high. This is why we take huge precaution with nuclear plants, because the likelyhood of an accident is low, but the severity is high.
If you have nude on your phone, severity is high. The probability that googles will mess with you is low, but it's good advice to tell you to protect yourself.
Incorrect, for societal reasons.
For women, the severity of nudes being stolen is very high, regardless of social stature. The majority of nudes published without consent are of women, and the majority of 'revenge porn' nudes published explicitly to demean are of women, and the majority of societal outrage excluding public figures is directed at women. The long-term impacts of nudes being published without consent never fade, and is nearly as likely to result in loss of employment and social stature years later.
For men, the severity of nudes being stolen directly correlates with whether they perceive their career or social stature to be at risk if nudes are stolen are shared, as in the majority of cases men are blackmailed for payment before stolen nudes are published. The long-term impacts of nudes being published without consent fades rapidly for private individuals, hinges on their career and social profiles rather than being effectively universal across their gender, and is often disregarded altogether.
For public figures, the employment and societal circumstances vary wildly, and the overall risk of permanent harm to men increases considerably; however, the risk of permanent harm to women decreases only slightly, and typically only for women who already publish nudity of their own accord, and thus have already factored in the societal harm of doing so.
My time is limited, so here's one contributing citation only:
Intimate image abuse in adults and under 18s (2019) https://swgfl.org.uk/assets/documents/intimate-image-abuse-i...
Arabs have a wonderful proverb for that: "trust in God, yet tie your camel"
I really wish the masses had never heard the term "victim blaming". 95% of the time i see it used, it's nonsensical pearl-clutching insisting that no one can ever take steps to protect themselves.
The comment is completely consistent with the interpretation: "it's unintuitive and thus understandable that the victims didn't do this, but one should eat the cost of devices with unremovable sensitive data instead of sending it anywhere".
> If you can't see that, you need to reboot, install updates, and look again
I think I'm good with the version I'm running. Apparently it allows me to have enough going on in my life that I don't have the desperate impulse to get a dose of morning outrage from interpreting everything in the least charitable light.