Asklemmy

43889 readers

2918 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

156

Why is online privacy so important? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by BigBootyBoy@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Firstly, I'm not against privacy or anything, just ignorant. I do try to stay pretty private despite that.

I wanted to know what type of info (Corporations? Governments? Websites??) Typically get from you and how they use it and how that affects me.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Broken@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 weeks ago

Privacy is important because it gives you control over your life; details, info, thoughts, emotions...

I recently met a guy out of town at a trade show. We were both in the same show, grabbing some snacks, and I complimented his hat. We started talking, a little this, a little that. Eventually we parted ways. On the outro we introduced ourselves by first name only, more as a BTW side note because we might run into each other again. Why am I telling this story?

Because I forgot his name almost instantly and really only remember his hat. I know nothing about the guy. He knows nothing about me. But wouldn't it be weird if I didn't just remember his first name, but I knew his last name too? Where he lived, worked, shopped for groceries, sexual orientation, he last time he ordered pizza and what toppings were on it, how he voted last election, etc... If I knew all that about him, I could have a much more in depth conversation with him. And even if I had no mal intent and simply wanted to give him better experiences in life...that's not my decision to make. He didn't ask for that. And it's freaking weird.

But that's what has been made normal in our lives. Privacy helps keep your life...well, private.

Then the rabbit hole goes deep on nefarious uses. And it's not "its possible" to do this, but rather "it's being done" (with absolutely no doubt or argument).