I’m following several privacy focused communities. Mostly as lurker but in few I’m more active. Every time I see a posts like “how to be more private”, I wonder about the reasons behind those questions. What’s the reason you want to remain private (don’t confuse it with being anonymous)? Could you elaborate on your reasons?

Let me start.

I worked (and still working) in a highly regulated industry as a software/devops engineer. I’ve been working with banks, insurance companies, global online payment companies, major credit card vendors, few global corporations. I have seen how data is gathered and (mis)used. Every time someone tells me “I’m sorry but the system…” I know it’s the data gathered by the “system” and my profile created based on that data was the reason for “but”. This is why I care about the privacy, to prevent companies from taking advantage of my current situation and charge me more.

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    12 days ago

    Law enforcement used Facebook private messages to investigate and prosecute a woman for an “illegal abortion”. This is not a hypothetical, this happened.

    I care about my privacy because I don’t want right-wing weirdos and perverts incarcerating me for controlling my own body.

    There are more reasons. This is just the one most recently in the news as a glaring red flag real-life example.

    • fart_pickle@lemmy.worldOP
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      12 days ago

      Don’t want to be a devil’s advocate here but nowadays it’s left-wing weirdos that use publicly available data to cancel people they don’t agree with. Let’s keep personal political views out of this discussion.

      As for the first paragraph, I vaguely remember reading about this. And this is a great example.

      • Vanth@reddthat.com
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        12 days ago

        You asked, I answered. Thinking about what right wing weirdos and perverts might do when in power is absolutely part of why I care about my digital privacy.

      • antmzo220@lemmy.ml
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        12 days ago

        Lmfao bro did not just cry about “leftist cancel culture” as a whataboutism in response to a real story about the right wing government literally incarcerating someone for getting an abortion based on Facebook PMs?..

        Then talk about keeping “personal political views out of this discussion”?..

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        12 days ago

        You’re the one who brought in a personal political view, and basic history realize your claim, which is why you didn’t actually cite any.

        I mean, what’s a good example of cancer culture? If some white guy says something horribly racist, and then he loses an election, he complains about cancel culture. But that’s a good thing, because we don’t want racist bastards in office. Of course he doesn’t see it that way. So he looks for some new term to describe the phenomenon, some way to make himself a victim.

        The term itself was created by right wing people who decided to deploy it against those they didn’t favor, as an excuse to justify their own bigotry, but the idea of public shaming and goes back centuries if not millennia. Quite naturally, the establishment has a strong interest in public shaming if it will keep them around longer.

  • Psyhackological@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago
    • Feeling clean
    • Not being exploited
    • Minimalism
    • Less power drain
    • Less data sent
    • Freedom
    • Everything works better and faster
    • I hate spying because they can
    • To be honest also because most people don’t care

    The only con is convenience.

    • IDew@lemm.ee
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      12 days ago

      I hate that most people don’t want to care for convient’s sake… “You’re only make your life harder for yourself”. I simply want to be in control, not the corpos.

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
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    12 days ago

    It’s kinda like this. Say you lead the most boring, law abiding, square life, top 20% of the bell curve in that zone.

    Would you want strangers in your house, even if they couldn’t technically touch or take anything? Would you want them in your spouse’s closet? Your kid’s room? Looking in your fridge?

    Creepy and “hell no”, right?

    That’s what privacy is about. The right to lock your door against strangers snooping.

  • Deckweiss@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Why do so many external entities care so much about constantly trying to reduce my privacy?

    If they would not have started it, I wouldn’t have started to care.

  • piyuv@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

    From Cardinal Richelieu

    Combine this with the fact that entities which have access to our data rarely have our best interest in heart. Governments change, the political climate changes, and people change. What’s honest and just today may not be next decade.

  • Menschlicher_Fehler@feddit.org
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    12 days ago

    The right extremists are on the rise in my country. I would rather not have them knocking on my door in a few years to detain me for calling their leader a cunt on the internet.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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      12 days ago

      Judging by your username: same country, same reason here! I‘d have been put in the chamber back then and I dont want people to do it once the swastika is back on our flag.

  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Let’s flip this question. Why do you think an organisation should get my data?

    Are they reputable? Are they secure? Are they domiciled in my country and follow the laws of my country?

    • fart_pickle@lemmy.worldOP
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      12 days ago

      In a perfect world, data collected by companies would be used to improve user experience. But we don’t live a perfect world and nowadays if a company doesn’t provide yearly income from investment it goes under. And to keep the numbers up, companies screw its users.

      • LordCrom@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Improve user experience?

        I don’t give a flying fuck if a web page loads .5 seconds faster.

        What u care about is an interface that works, has labels instead of symbols, that doesn’t change every month trying to be more minimalist.

        A bank website doesn’t need my browser history or my charges to Amex or what pets I have or what car I drive or the color of my bedroom. But they want all that and a mobile phone number to tie it all up with a common index. VoIP numbers are refused because they change too often.

        That’s what pisses me off

  • Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de
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    12 days ago

    Privacy should be a basic human right.
    Data collection could be massively abused by oppressive governments.

    Not caring about it = Not caring about your rights.

    • fart_pickle@lemmy.worldOP
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      12 days ago

      Ok, but why? And to be clear, I’m not against what you wrote, just wondering about people’s motives.

      • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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        12 days ago

        Well opressivs governments dont work by serving good policys to the people, they work by blaming a part of the people for all problems and then promsing to get rid of them/punish them. A scapegoat basically. The opressors don’t make it better for the people, but the people are happy because the ones they think causing their suffering get punished.

        Historically this has been the communists in Nazi Germany, or faschist italy, modern faschists try to make gay people and people from the far east this scapegoat atm.

        The problem is: the scapegoat is never the real cause of the problem. After taking them all to the kz, and life for people still not getting better you need a new one. For Nazi Germany those where Jewish people, just because of their religion, has Hitler proposed the “kommunistisch-jüdische-weltverschwörung” (world conspiracy of Jews and communists) When after the pogromes stuff still would get better, they would blame everyone not arian. (Not blonde, blue eyed, northern heritage)

        If a fascist government tries to exclude you or not is just a matter of time, at some point they will rum out of scapegoats and come for you.

        You never know which aspect someone picks to exclude you (gender, political view, haircolor, Parents, lastname, sexual preferences, religion, mental health, physical health etcpp.) So it’s better to not have someone gather all that info about you in the first place.

      • Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de
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        12 days ago

        Imagine living in China,
        where the government is able to request data of each company in their country.

        Imagine that China would setup an AI/LLM, to feed all private chat data into it,
        and automatically flagging opposition of the government regime.

        Imagine a white van appearing in front of your house and disappearing into a concentration camp because you got flagged after expressing your opposition to the government to your mate in a private chat.

        All collected data can be abused like that,
        or by other means (E.g. a country at war gets hacked, which could lead to leaking critical private information on political/defensive decisions).

        To me the question is not if data collected on you will be abused, but rather when will it be abused?

        Just having it stored somewhere imposes risks.

  • hightrix@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    Similar to you, but I also hate the advertising industry with a burning passion and want to deprive them of any and all data possible.

  • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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    12 days ago

    Same reason I shit with the door closed; I’ve got nothing to hide, but it’s none of your business regardless.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    12 days ago
    • having a stalker, makes privacy very important

    • Having identity theft, makes privacy even more important

    • Being pigeonholed, makes privacy important

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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    12 days ago

    There’s no file system in existence that can handle a text file large enough to include all reasons why people care about privacy.