Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
For me, I make the analogy with companies outside of the internet. They can contact me to try to sell me stuff as long as it's through appropriate channels or use the data I give them (and even that would have to be within certain agreed upon limits). But if a company started following me around, taking snapshots of everything I do, going through my mail, I would object.
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Er, define "appropriate channels". For instance, I get lots of postal junk mail. Most of it is from credit card issuers who want me to open a new account with them, or transfer existing balances. My SO and I have a number of cards, from Amex, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa, and because we pay our bills on time and usually pay more than the minimum, we have a high credit score, and get
lots of offers like that. I just announce "land fill" when I pick up the mail, because most gets torn up and tossed out unread.
(Some of it is announcements of changes in our accounts, and my SO says "They just raised our credit limit again!" My answer is "So? We have credit cards. We run up balances. We pay them off. We have a high credit score in consequence. We are the kind of customer they
want, and we are being given the opportunity to run up higher balances and pay more fees as a result. Since we don't plan to actually
use those higher credit lines, who cares?")
All of it appears because of existing relationships we have with the various CC companies. My SO also gets a number of catalogs from mail order retailers she sometimes buys from.
As for "going through my mail", my primary email account is Gmail. My mail resides on Google's servers. I established a Gmail account back when it was still in invitational beta status, because a fellow member of a mailing list I was on worked for Google at the time and was handing out invites. I happily took one. Another list member was balking because <gasp>
Google could read her mail. The chap offering invites simply explained that the things that read her mail were search algorithms looking for keywords so Gmail could offer hopefully relevant ads for things that might be of interest. I carefully bit my tongue and did
not say "Assuming they could, why should a
human being at Google
bother to read your mail? Who are you? What makes
your mail of any particular interest?" (The real answers to those questions would be "nobody" and "nothing".)
Back when I got email via POP and read it on Outlook, I was still theoretically vulnerable - email would be delivered to my ISPs email server, and deposited in an Inbox directory assigned to me. It would be removed from the Inbox when I downloaded it, but would still be available while it was there and could theoretically be snooped upon by ISP employees. I was essentially trusting that my ISP would play by the rules, and not attempt to snoop on my mail without a valid court order directing them to do so.
In both cases, I am one of many,
many customers, with nothing to make me stand out or give J. Random Human Being at my ISP or Google any reason to go digging. (And I've
been a mail admin. I could create, remove, and repair
accounts, but I didn't have the ability to read mail
in those accounts, and I didn't have time to casually snoop even if I had wanted to.)
And I've
never considered email secure, and as a rule, I generally don't say things in email that would give me heartburn if they were seen by someone other than the intended recipient. Should you happen to be able to read my mail, have fun. Unless you are me, you will be mystified or terminally bored. You won't find out anything I would be unhappy about you knowing. If it's
that sensitive, I either don't say it in email, or I use GPG.
Quote:
That's why I object when it happens on the internet.
Whether I'm important or not has nothing to do with it. And it's not a question of paranoia. It's a question of privacy.
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<shrug>
I generally advise people to think about what privacy they
need, and what steps to take to get it.
On the Internet, "privacy" is a tricky concept. By being online at all, you are normally visible. To be
really private, you disconnect your computer from the Internet and don't
go online. That's a higher price than most folks are willing to pay. (It's a special case of the old saw "The perfectly secure computer is the perfectly unusable computer. It's
always a trade off between security and ease of use.)
As mentioned, I don't especially care that where I go and what I look at online can be tracked. I'm not doing anything that would make me stand out or appear on anyone's radar screen. I had a discussion like that at an SF con a while back with a chap worried about being snooped upon by the US government. I asked what would make
him of special interest?" "I call them
fascists!" "You and about a million other people. I repeat, what makes
you of special interest?"
Most discussions I see of online privacy have roots in feelings by the ones making complaints that they are helpless, powerless, and not in control of their own lives. I don't share those feelings. I could theoretically take more steps than I do to guard my privacy, but don't bother. I reserve my efforts for things I consider more important. I have the control I need, and don't sweat the rest.
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Dennis