Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How to demonstrate to people the importance of privacy by showing the data collected about them? (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I wish to convince my friends and family to avoid using privacy-invading ad-based services and apps. Seeing people discuss how much data these companies collect off of us, I want to know if there is a way you could get a sample of that data by yourself and show it to them for them to realize the gravity of the situation themselves.

The closest thing is Google's ad personalization panel in the Google Account Dashboard. It literally lists out the information of the account holder by the things they've browsed, including their gender, age, occupation, interests etc. I could've used it to show to my family but I turned off ad personalization for all their accounts a few years back so they aren't even aware of it.

The next closest thing to this could be browser fingerprinting tests but they wouldn't be able to understand the tech jargon from the results anyway. Also I am not planning to go to the 'deep web' for this. Is there any other way I could get this done, like a website/app specifically designated for this purpose, for opening some sort of userlog in the accounts page?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (8 children)

Show them the consequeces. You might scare a few people who are already anxious by showing data collected, but most people will be apathetic. Illustrate why its bad. Be systemic about it.

The stunt outlined elsewhere of texting someone with their info is good, but "we all know google isn't going to threaten us" is the prevailing attitude. Demonstrate what google is going to do and how it hurts people individualy and directly. Until there are personal consequences, peopae won't really care.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Coming from an outsider, could you give an example of a way Google attacks people individually and directly?

Preferably something more common than traffic accidents, since people drive cars regardless

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, to be open, I don't actually see many consequences, so I don't really do any particular things to protect privacy from like, google. I was sort of hoping someone here would give me one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

This site covers the social cooling effect of these services and how the data you give out may be used against you by banks, insurance companies etc. It's worth reading through (4 minutes). https://www.socialcooling.com/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Oh thanks. This is exactly what I was looking for.

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