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?
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!
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 exactly as predictably bad as you might imagine and the plans were scrapped entirely.
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
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.
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.
I actually did something similar to this before. After a breach I torrented the data to query my own creds (old passwords were leaked, from my pre random gen password manager days). I then searched my friend’s emails and messaged them asking them if their password was still “xyz”. I got a lot of “bro, wtf!?!” that day!
Honestly, it’s gonna be an uphill battle & maybe a futile one at that, depending on age. I share so many articles & what not w my parter and friends showing them that so and so is bad for your digital privacy. They respond like wow ok I should do something about this 😮…anyway, back to scrolling on Meta apps and buying stuff from ads that are fed to me. It’s not until they click that one wrong ad and compromise their financial info/identity data that they come back and ask what I was talking about that one time re: online privacy 😅😒
Don’t even get me started on ppl who have cameras indoors. Honestly, it’s just really creepy to me that people go back and watch what others are doing throughout the day. It’s funny that some ppl in my circle are so ACAB & what not, yet when I share that their Ring cameras share access to law enforcement they’re like oh wow really? & that’s about it. 🤦🏼♀️
I have had some success using this video to introduce ppl to some real life consequences: https://youtu.be/F78UdORll-Q I think what really helps drive it home is the escalation of tactics & real world ramifications of failing to understand how important privacy can be, not just for the individual, but for our communities/society.
Good luck 🍀! I hope you can find a way to persuade him to take it a bit more seriously!
Just try to find out his old Xbox comments or wherever the heck he used to post on forums. Make them appear on the Google search with his name in quotes, and tell him that employers or his future date can easily spot his poor behaviour as a part of background check. Use Bing for better results. Google hides some result, but not Bing.
It’s tough, I’ve been trying since about 1998…people are willingly blind.
I have an associate who’s a network security admin… And he just says “I want the convenience”… He’s almost 50, with decades of experience. 🤦🏼♂️
The best I have to offer is a video by data scientist:
“Taking Control of Your Personal Data” by prof. Jennifer Golbeck, published by The Teaching Company, ISBN:978-1629978390
It may be available at your local library as a DVD or streaming (through apps like Kanopy… I know, a streaming app through the library, with your information attached to the account…).
I forget which episode, maybe #3, she talks about what data is collected, and it’s worse than even my paranoid mind realized (I’ve also been in It since the early 90’s, and thought I knew the data collection that was happening early on).
I would have him watch it, he’d probably get bored (though she’s a great presenter, knows how deep to go, and when). Maybe watch it yourself and pick out the pieces to show him.
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?
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.
The fridge wants a word.
Don’t give them ideas, ffs
I would refer to the recent FTC questions to “algorithmic pricing practices”. Long story short it was about some companies are using browser data, accounts data, etc. for “smart” pricing. Your brother may not care about someone watching him but I don’t think he wants to pay for the same goods more than others.
Aks him his passwords, see if he doesn’t care
Show him camera footage of him masturbating.
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”.
I have nothing to hide
“Ok, pull down your pants and hand me your unlocked phone.”
Most people aren’t ready to accept the message of privacy importance. I would say that’s the vast majority actually. Many in my family throw all sorts of personal information into “online contests and signups”.
Privacy now is like climate change was 20 years ago…incredibly important, but hasn’t come to the forefront for most people, governments, etc. Say your message politely and only when welcomed, and otherwise leave people to make their decisions.
If you’re actually interested in changing people’s minds, it is an incredibly difficult and complex process, but you can start learning about it. Here’s an author whose podcast I follow and he’s doing really good work on the subject:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/09/how-minds-change-by-david-mcraney-review
A lot of other comments talk about hitting him with some bullshit " gatcha" or some variation of scolding…which is all bullshit and counterproductive.
Post his social security number online, next to a scan of his photo ID. He’ll realize the importance of privacy in a few months.
I think, when you explain things to people (i.e. in instances where it’s not an absence of knowledge that’s the problem), the vast majority of people know we’re correct, but are held back by convenience. They’re embedded into the Google ecosystem or whatever, and it is a pain in the ass to migrate. There are many popular services for which there isn’t a 1:1 private alternative. I can openly and confidently say that I sacrifice some convenience for privacy, and to me it is worth it. But other people, while they agree that they don’t like being spied on, are used to being spied on and therefore have a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” attitude. They’re already using spyware and it’s not had an immediately obvious acute consequence for them, so there’s not really any turning point at which they would go “this is enough” and change.
I think so long as they’re aware, if they do value privacy, over time they should slowly replace the things they use. Also, some of my friends get Signal just to speak to me since I’m not really on anything else (unless they want to email me lol), so that kind of effect may push them in the right direction.
If your brother doesn’t care though, he just doesn’t care. Privacy is actually very straightforward: it’s creepy for someone to be spying on me and watching my every move, therefore I take precautions to make that difficult for people wanting to spy on me. You don’t need to convince people that being spied on is creepy. They know that, and are stopped by inertia, which they can only overcome on their own. I don’t think it’s worth nagging them about it when they already know what is to be known.
