Blackmail would be completely against their own interests. They make a lot more money selling information about you to other parties. However..... Extremist a

Blackmail would be completely against their own interests. They make a lot more money selling information about you to other parties. However..... Extremist and oppressive governments, like the United States under the guises of intelligence organizations like the FBI, CIA & NSA, can, have and do use information like this to blackmail private individuals. And they buy the information from private corporations that track individual users. [1] [2] Outside of our own country's influence, there are many nations around the world, and states therein, where things like homosexuality are outlawed, sometimes to the point of the death penalty. It's certainly likely that information like this, if collected by a severe enough regime, could use it to repress its citizens. Speaking of which - during the "Lavender Scare" of the 1950s , a massive witch hunt and firings of suspected homosexuals in the private and public sectors chilled the rights of individuals with a particular sexual orientation. It's doubtless that Joseph McCarthy would have relied on J. Edgar Hoover's illegal methods of information gathering and intimidation to harass and persecute those seen as a threat to moral or political righteousness. -- But like I said originally, none of that makes any sense in a capitalist fashion, because blackmail isn't sustainable. It's much more profitable and less messy to simply sell the pictures to the blackmailer. [1] Top-Secret Document Reveals NSA Spied On Porn Habits As Part Of Plan To Discredit ‘Radicalizers’ (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_...) [2] FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr...)