4 ms·

I know it's of little solace to many, but the truth is, I mostly feel safe in knowing that whoever is collecting data on me, I'm not really worth spying on.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
When I was a homemaker, that was kind of my line of thinking. Then my life changed and that theory stopped working so well for me. YMMV.
chriswarbo 8y ago
> whoever is collecting data on me, I'm not really worth spying on. What makes you think that? This isn't a team of private investigators paid a hefty fee to watch you 24/7; this is fully automated mass-surveillence. It would be more cost/effort to stop spying on you, since that would require maintaining a blacklist. Besides which, if any of the following apply to you then you are worth spying on: - You spend money on products and services - You are eligible to vote in elections, referenda, etc. - You communicate with people who do the above An example of this is the heavily data-driven and audience-tailored presidential campaign of Donald Trump. "Everyday people" made up a large proportion of their target demographic. Even if such data gathering (spying) had no effect on the outcome, it was still part of the winning strategy, which makes it an attractive service for companies to offer, and incentivises an arms race to push it much more extensively in the future.
ozim 8y ago
The thing is you might be interesting just because of that. In case some bad actors (government, gangsters, etc.) would need some scape goat they have much more means to make you into one because by coincidence you might be close to some unwanted activity. People get convicted for things they did not do all the time by mistakes. Now it can be a lot easier to get someone convicted by planting stuff on their devices. So bad guys point you and how are you going to convince judge that you are innocent, everyone is saying he is innocent.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

When I was a homemaker, that was kind of my line of thinking. Then my life changed and that theory stopped working so well for me. YMMV.

chriswarbo 8y ago

> whoever is collecting data on me, I'm not really worth spying on. What makes you think that? This isn't a team of private investigators paid a hefty fee to watch you 24/7; this is fully automated mass-surveillence. It would be more cost/effort to stop spying on you, since that would require maintaining a blacklist. Besides which, if any of the following apply to you then you are worth spying on: - You spend money on products and services - You are eligible to vote in elections, referenda, etc. - You communicate with people who do the above An example of this is the heavily data-driven and audience-tailored presidential campaign of Donald Trump. "Everyday people" made up a large proportion of their target demographic. Even if such data gathering (spying) had no effect on the outcome, it was still part of the winning strategy, which makes it an attractive service for companies to offer, and incentivises an arms race to push it much more extensively in the future.

ozim 8y ago

The thing is you might be interesting just because of that. In case some bad actors (government, gangsters, etc.) would need some scape goat they have much more means to make you into one because by coincidence you might be close to some unwanted activity. People get convicted for things they did not do all the time by mistakes. Now it can be a lot easier to get someone convicted by planting stuff on their devices. So bad guys point you and how are you going to convince judge that you are innocent, everyone is saying he is innocent.