Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

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It is really shocking how absolutely mind-bogglingly ignorant people are when it comes to online privacy matters.

A side note, but it's shocking how people are unable to believe that others are capable of making informed choices. Case in point: I use Facebook. I often get people hounding me- "don't you care about privacy?!?", "Facebook is using your data!"

Yeah, I know. I don't mind. The way I see it, privacy is the new currency- Facebook isn't providing me with a free service, I am paying for the service in the form of targeted advertising. And I am OK with that.

And to go back on topic...

How could any business person in a sane state of mind choose to share its data with some 3rd party company.

Because it's very difficult not to? I have a database on AWS- Amazon has access to that. Doing anything else would be very expensive. Even if I get my own server, whatever telco provider I use for the connection could easily sniff through my data if they wanted to.

You using Facebook is not a problem, because it doesn't affect me. However if you decide to use GMail or GA or Google Fonts or gWhatever, then it forces me into the picture and I really do not appreciate it.

How would you feel if a private company would give away free surveillance cameras to the store operators in return for telling them how many people walked through their doors? Or how would you like your real-estate agent CC'ing all your house purchase documents to a fax service hosted in another country just because it got to fax you for free? This is the state of ignorance that I am talking about. It all starts rather innocently with using gDrive to store some photos, but then bit by bit it weasels its way in and establishes new "privacy norms", where apparently privacy is a new currency - jeez, are you serious? Really? You would let someone observe you taking a shit in return for a free roll of tissue paper? This is wrong. The fact it's an established practice doesn't make it any more right, leave alone ethical. Sober up.

> You would let someone observe you taking a shit in return for a free roll of tissue paper? This is wrong.

Holy slippery slope, Batman! There are plenty of reasonable arguments against Facebook, Gmail, etc etc. You went straight past all of them into tinfoil-hat territory without a second glance.

Arguments about surveillance cameras, free toilet paper, and other nonsense have absolutely no place in discussions about privacy on the web. None.

If you say so.

Actually, when someone equates giving up privacy to a simple monetary transaction, I think it's right calling that out as wrong.

Man, I totally agree with you! That state of ignorance you are talking about reminds me of Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)... that is (almost) what is happening nowadays.

And I am literally laughing out loud with the 'taking a shit' thing. =)

The problem is not when Facebook sends you targeted ads. It is when third parties access your information to target you in other ways.

Think of the Girls Around Me app. Or employers who want to look at people's FB. Or governments who want to spy on their own people. (Anyone who thinks that the USA doesn't should look at the history of the FBI. And you'd be amazed what can get twisted out of shape during lawsuits.) The 21st century has not had any serious demonstrations of how this can be abused. But it is just a question of time.

And that's just generic. Consider for a moment a spear phishing attack. I am trying to attack target company X. I find all of the FB accounts that I can for employees of X. I then find all of their friends. I now target their presumably less careful friends, and when I find one I then send a targeted phishing attack at the person I really want from their friend. (I do something like promise vacation photos, and then show what appears to be an internal server error, but actually is a malicious page. The target gets compromised, thinks it is a bad URL, moves on...)

Girls Around Me was a Foursquare app. And in any case, it only used public information. Facebook offers finely grained privacy controls that allow you to control what third parties can and cannot access- they do a far better job of it than Apple and Google do, IMO.

Obviously, illegitimate access is an entirely different topic.

My understanding was that Girls Around Me used Foursquare to identify people, then connected to Facebook for information such as pictures, interests, etc.

And yes, it "only" used public information. But Facebook has pushed people to make more public than they would really be comfortable being known by the creep who is trying to figure out the right pickup strategy to use.

You're OK with targeted advertising, but you're probably not OK with any number of other things Facebook and others may one day do with your personal information. Or if _you_ are, I think many, many people are not. They use Facebook because it's a great product that all their friends use.

If privacy is a new currency, you certainly don't get to set the exchange rate.

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