this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2023
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Privacy
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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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I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
I don't understand how anyone still trusts any off-the-shelf smart device. Even the companies that explicitly promise not to do something have been found doing it.
Smart devices aren't so much the issue as internet connected ones. I use a number of ZWave smart devices, but I avoid buying any smart device that connects with wifi. You do need some kind of hub device ultimately but even in that case you can use your own hardware and software for that.
Just run your own router and block all the outgoing connections you don't want. I love my EufyCams, they work great and store video on premises. All I have to do is block the connections it makes to send video previews in push notifications.
It's so crazy to me that people will install spying devices in their homes that X number of random faraway people can access and they will PAY to do it. Even if everything is 100% honorable and well-run initially, most everything changes given enough time.
especially cameras inside their houses if you need a security cameras to monitor whats happening outside your house go pay someone to install them this way you control the access instead of trusting a 3rd party with info about when your home or not
They 'trust' it for the same stupid reasons anyone trusts bad ideas, uncritically. They don't think it'll happen to 'them'. Same reason people drunk drive. Same reason people smoke. Same reason people have unprotected sex. Same reason they do anything. It only ever exists as an abstract notion until the crosshairs visibly point in their own direction, and they suffer consequences as a result.
I thought I took privacy seriously as a person that's fairly conscious of it, until I turned my own, 'advanced', layman OSINT skills upon myself, and was shocked at what I was able to uncover. In detail; incidentally. And I was never prompted to do that, until I lost a job opportunity which involved an extremely 'extensive' background check, that included a 'highly' speculative interpretation of a few key events of my life, which were completely inconsequential.
And most people will continue to behave the same way, until something similar forces them to revise their prior thoughts on it. It's like thinking you're going to defeat prostitution through moral lectures; and you won't. Not until people experience loss or pain. Pain's always a more instructive teacher for people, because pain always raises the question of 'why' it's there. It forces you to think about how you ended up where you are. Unfortunately, most people are just blissfully ignorant.